Parthian Civil War Part I

It's been a while since the last post, though we've played a few games since, with Wayne's Rus beating up sundry opponents, and only being stopped by Parthians. Since Wayne has also had some success with these, we felt we needed to sort out who was the true King of Parthia.

The figures we used were much the same as for the Kushan civil war, but the absence of elephants changes the dynamic significantly and lets cataphracts rule the battlefield. As it happens both Wayne and I had bought 4 bags of Baccus cataphract figures, and so have the same numbers of elements available. With no advantage either way there, the choice of allies could swing it.

Sarmatian Friends

This then is the report of the first battle between King Watagases I (Wayne) and the usurper rightful king, Bobarsaces. Hoping to get an advantage in the knight arm wrestle, I brought a Sarmation ally consisting of 8 fast knights. Suspecting that Watagases would turn up with a huge bunch of bow toting Arameans, I also brought some Armenian friends to counter them. Watagases though had even more friends on the steppe, and bought both a Sarmation and a cursed Skythian ally. However, to afford all that he had to leave some cataphracts in the box, making us about even in the heavy department.

Initial Deployment

Hoping to appear decisive, Watagases attacked, and placed two marshes bracketing my deployment area, hoping to box me in. There was some rough on the centerline on my left too.

Watagases decided to keep the real Parthians in reserve, and let his allies do the fighting. Bobarsaces placed his Armenians on the left to occupy the rough, and squeezed two more commands into the central area. The Sarmatian allies were delayed in the hope that they might make a surprise impact.

The deployment dice rolls made Watagases deploy first, and also get first move. This suited his purpose of trying to bottle me up, and the Sarmatian and Skythian allies advanced rapidly. Being outflanked in the rough could have been a problem for them, but Bobarsaces Armenian allies were initially unreliable, and couldn't advance to occupy it.

Sarmatians and Skythains advance rapidly in the centre

Still seeing two commands of Kn(F) advancing headlong into my well formed lines with minimal flank support, I felt quite confident, a feeling reinforced by the timely arrival of my own delayed Sarmatians, and by killing the opposing Sarmation ally general with a lucky 6:1

Sammy Sarmatian takes the early blood bath

However, the death of the leader spurred them on, and they retaliated by killing the Armenian ally general, and the Armenians folded like a wet paper bag. Several cataphracts were slain too, and only the arrival of my Sarmatians stabilized the situation and allowed Watagases two allied commands to be repelled and broken. By this time though, Watagases reserve line of cataphracts had trundled up, with support from the light horse command that had initially been wide on his right.

Watagases reserves arrive. My army is a mess.

So we squared off for round 2, Watagases with two fresh commands, and Bobarsaces with one fresh command (the left) and two battered ones in the center. While the forces were evenly matched, Watagases had the problem that having lost two whole commands, he couldn't take many more losses before reaching his army breakpoint. Indeed in the end, it was losses suffered by light horse trying to fight knights, that finally pushed his army over the 50% mark.

The final showdown.

Watagases himself though had stayed out the central action, and instead lead a force to attack the light horse on Bobarsaces far right. Since the latter were somewhat starved of pips by the need to dress the lines in the centre, he was able to achieve some success, trapping them against the table edge, but not quite doing enough damage to break them before his own army collapsed.

Watagases side quest

All in all, a close, fun and brutal game. Somewhat unusual in that both sides initial front lines were pretty much blown away, and it came down to a fight between the reserves. Since Watagases himself survived, we'll have to repeat the exercise and try to finish him off.properly.