The Protagonists II. The Ptolemies

Since cataphracts featured so heavily in the last campaign, we wanted some different troop types for this campaign, and hence the conflict in Syria more or less chose itself as the only arena where we could field enough compatible armies.

I figured I'd be something Hellenistic as I had suitable figures to use from the Bactrian Greek army. There were only two Hellenistic powers standing by this date though, and with the Seleucids having too many cataphracts, and being but a shadow of their former selves, that left the Ptolemaic Egyptians. So I shall give battle as king Btobemy of Egypt, the first (and probably last) of his name*.

I've never really looked at the list much before, but it turns out to be a handy army. The core of pikemen is augmented with lots of peltasts (Ax(S)) for controlling difficult terrain, cavalry wedges that are excellent at killing Romans, and there's a good selection of mercenaries available from Elephants to ferocious Galatian swordsmen. The standard pikemen can also be augmented with superior guardsmen (Pk(S)) but that'd mean I'd have to paint them, so they'll only be used if really needed.

Battle plans should be pretty simple, some terrain to close down the table, then hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle with the pikey boys. Peltasts, elephants and wedges will deal with anyone wanting a nibble at their flanks.

That then was the plan in their first outing, a side table** game against Wayne's Nabateans, and a waterway on one flank, sand dunes next to it, and a BUA on the other meant the terrain was set up perfectly. However, when Wayne deployed, I found that the cunning Arab had stymied my simple and elegant plan by building a wall (dry stone wall TF) all across the centre of the table manned with two dozen bow elements. A quick check of the rules showed that rather than the factors of 7 vs 3 I'd been anticipating for pikes vs bows, I would now get 4 vs 6. The pikes therefore moved up to just outside shooting distance from the wall and stayed there for the whole game.

Needing to do something different I attempted to seize the sand dunes next to the waterway with my peltasts, while sending my heavy cavalry through a narrow gap between the dunes and the water to outflank the wall. The peltasts outclassed anything in the other army, and I expected them to seize the dunes easily and ease the exit of the cavalry from the narrow gap. However, they failed miserably in their task rolling a whole bucket load of ones, and allowing Wayne to adroitly bottle up my cavalry column by transferring his own cavalry from the other wing. My cavalry wedges tried to bust their way out of the gap, but while doing some damage, the were defeated and broken.

With two plans foiled, and cursing my dice, I switched my attention to the other flank, and tried to work around the wall from that side. Here I deployed more peltasts and some Galatian mercenary cavalry. Wayne's flank was guarded my a large command of horse archers, but as soon contact was made my dice luck switched around and Wayne's flank guard was swept away and broken within a couple of bounds. With their position behind the wall hopelessly outflanked, and no more reserves, the Nabatean's positions crumbled. A nineteen - six win for the Ptolemies then, and nineteen valuable bonus points to use in the challenge game against Nash and Romans.

* Some of you more scurrilously minded folk (I'm looking at you Suetonious's grandad) may be wondering whether Btobemy really married his sister. Well damnright he did, as she's well hot, and looks just like a young Elizabeth Taylor.

** One day someone will make a post about the campaign rules, but basically there are two games each round, a challenge game which will eventually determine the campaign winner, and side table game where you can win bonus AP to use in the challenge games.