Battle of Charonea 86BC: a Polemos SPQR Refight

I managed to get in an all-too-rare game earlier this week - this time, a refight of the Battle of Charonea 86BC. The scenario is taken from the Polemos: SPQR rulebook, of which more anon.

 

Essentially Charonea features a large and varied Pontic army taking on a significantly smaller and simpler Roman army, helped out by Thracian allies. This works out as:

 

Pontic Army: 18 bases Pike, 11 bases Stratiotas, 4 bases javelin skirmishers, 4 bases Archers, 6 bases Cavalry, 4 bases Light Horse, 3 bases Scythed Chariots

Roman Army: 12 bases Legionaries, 5 bases Thracian stratiotas, 2 bases Cavalry

 

The SPQR scenario gives some more details, but that gives a raw summary.

 

Set-Up: 

The Pontic Army is on the left, with a huge phalanx in the centre - flanked by archers and preceded by javelinmen, a smaller phalanx behind and to the right (i.e. bottom-left), cavalry to the right and then some stratiota coming down the slopes of Mount.. at the bottom of the shot. Top-left (i.e. on the Pontic Left) is a 

The Pontic flanking detachment on the slopes

The main Pontic force: one main phalanx, one smaller phalanx in reserve (top-left), a cavalry detachment on the right (bottom-left) and the light cavalry and a supporting foot detachment on the Pontic left (top-right)

The Romans have the legionaries on the right (top) and the Thracians on the left (right); each wing has a small cavalry detachment

And another view

The Battle:

The initial set-up  - plus the logic of the game mechanics - make this a game of blow-by-blow; so Pontus moves forward with its Scythed Chariots and its Cavalry and its flanking Stratiota.

The battle lines have clashed! The cavalry fight is sort of even so far, with the Roman cavalry pushed back, but the Thracians have formed an effective block and repulsed the bulk of the Pontic horsemen; the Scythed Chariots have caused some disruption and losses, without sweeping the legionaries aside.

A little later, we find that the Thracians and Roman Cavalry have had rather the best of it on the Roman Left (near); the Legionaries are tidying themselves up as the Scythed Chariot attack has lost its impetus somewhat on the Right (towards the top)

The Roman Cavalry on the Left counter-attacks, causing severe panic amongst the Pontic horsemen! They are putting themselves in some danger of being cut off though...

Meanwhile in the centre and on the Roman right, the Pontic light troops (horse on the Pontic Left, top; foot in the Pontic Centre, centre) are skirmishing with the Legionaries and other Roman cavalry, without much effect other than slightly delaying some of the Roman line-straightening moves, having dealt with thre remnants of the scythed chariots

The Romans have (surprisingly) chose to charge home, to try and get the initiative away from the Pontic phalanx (centre)

The Roman Cavalry pursuit on the Left (bottom-left) ends when faced with the phalanx of Bronze Shields comprising the Pontic Reserve

The action hotting up in the middle - the Romans take the fight to the Pontic pikemen, causing some disruption, especially with the Pontic javelinmen intermixed; the Roman Horse on the far right (top) have charged home, but the Pontic Light Horse have fought back surprisingly strongly

The remainder of the Pontic Cavalry (foreground) have been worsted by the Thracians (bottom-right) and are in severe danger of being entirely routed

The battle of legionary and phalangist in the centre ebbs-and-flows

Game Notes:

I stopped the game at this point, feeling a bit disheartened.  This was a clash I had been waiting a while to do and was looking forward to playing, but it didn't really click. There were a few issues I had with the specific scenario and a few with the rules, which didn't help - although I have played and enjoyed Polemos: SPQR many times, so I don't have a general issue with them, so it might well have been my brain at fault rather than the rules on this occasion. 

In any case, it makes sense to concentrate on the scenario first. In general, it is a very good scenario, decent background and lots of options - 'small', 'medium' and 'large' scenarios are detailed (essentially more or less bases on a bigger or smaller table), but I would argue there are in fact four: the units given on the scenario map imply a 'regular' scenario, situated somewhere between the 'small' and 'medium' sized battles. However, the map, although attractive and clear, has a couple of obvious issues and one more subtle one, which ended up being the main problem I had in my refight.

The first obvious issue is that of dead space: over a sixth of the not very big battlefield is impassble, because the River Cephisus is  considered unfordable. Not an issue, with a little re-orientation of the map, it can be seen that it will/should fit on a fairly small board indeed, hence my selection of a 2'x2' board for this particular game. But doing this reveals (more clearly) the second issue: the deployment of the Pontic Left. I think it seems a bit unlikely that any army would deploy like that - facing an unfordable river, and with no space for it to advance, whilst refused behind the Centre. Obviously the latter wouldn't be a problem per se, but it is a problem if it means the Left can't actually do anything.  The whole army lines facing each othere are at a very strange angle, which becomes quite clear if you orientate the scenario map so the unpassable river is the top-edge. The Romans, if outnumbered to any degree, would seem to have been unlikely to choose such an angle of deployment.

The more subtle issue was how the deployment on the map fits with the concept of the group in Polemos: SPQR and the concept of orders. I got into a real muddle with the phalanx - this is the first time I have used one in a game (since this is the first time I have had pikemen available - more anon!). The SPQR rules allow mixed troop types in the same group, but within limits. This implies that the skirmishers preceding the phalanx have to be a different group (you can't have unformed and formed troops in the same group). Presuming the skirmishers to be unformed and the phalanx to be formed, they therefore operate differently. But also, if the skirmishers are ahead of the group, it is very different for the phalanx to pass through the skirmishers, because the Phalanx has to break apart into separate groups to pass through the skirmishers (or have the skirmishers pass through them). To pass through, the leading rank of the phalanx must separate from the remainder, which then becomes a separate group.  This ends up costing a huge amount of Tempo Points (i.e. command points) for a Phalanx five bases wide. Perhaps the intention is that the Phalanx leads the attack with the skirmishers in position? But that is tactically so sub-optimal (the Legionaries will make mincemeat out of them) that it feels difficult to imagine that is what was intended.

Now, there probably are some sensible solutions to this. But I reached the point where I felt I was trying to master a euro-game rather than refight Charonea as a wargame, so I decided to stick a fork in this game and maybe return to it later with SPQR when I had it more sorted out in my head.  They are a reasonably intuitive set of rules, but there are a lot of factors in some of the tables and it has been a while since I had had a game.

As a last thing, I thought the scenario might have been a little more informative about troop types - for example, Pontic Cavalry are definitely Raw (in the scenario) but they might also by Armoured/Unarmoured and Formed/Unformed. I expect that they should be Unarmoured Unformed (this would be the logic from the Army List), or perhaps Armoured Unformed if the Roman Cavalry are counted as Armoured; and whether the Roman Cavalry are Formed or Unformed. It was easy enough to make a ruling, but it is always good if the scenario designer lets us players know what they used. 

On a more positive note, perhaps regular readers will notice some new troops in action! These are a bunch of some of the 6mm Baccus ancient figures that the Polemarch had deemed surplus to his requirements and kindly offered them up for players wanting to re-home them. So I was really pleased to get this new army to the table. I am still deciding whether to rebase them or leave them as is. I had originally intended to do the former - I find the 60x30 bases more handy for gaming, and they would fit in better with my own armies - but OTOH I now see possibilities of using them entirely separately, since the collection is maybe big enough to do that. Still thinking this one through...