Another Marathon

Recently I was feeling the need to play a wargame. Endless painting and my frustration with the Chinese navy (or at least glueing the masts in place so they are straight and do not wobble) had made my wargamer edge a bit blunted, so a battle was required.

The first question was ‘What?’. I do not really have a campaign going at the moment – the Japanese invasion of Korea is in the offing, but not ready yet – and so it needed to be a one-off action. Taking my own advice (yes, in that book) I needed a simple, low-stress wargame. After some thought, rejecting the ECW and a Romans versus Celts bash, I rewound right back to Marathon.

I am sure Marathon needs no introduction to most wargamers. It is probably one of the most famous battles of the ancient world, and has been immortalised in story and song ever since, or at least, up until World War One when the world which looked back to classical Greek civilisation collapsed, at least according to some accounts.

Anyway, Marathin is not a complicated battle. The Athenians and their allies lined up at one end, the Persians at the other. The contest is between the Persian archery and the Greek prowess in close combat (plus their armour). There is not much room for manoeuvre. The only real question is about the presence and role (if any) of the Persian cavalry.

Anyway, I have, according to my record, run five Marathons previously, and each time I have increased the number of Persian infantry, following Phil Sabin’s suggestion in Lost Battles. It has to be said that each time the Persians have lost, and so I am not at a break-even point yet.

This time the Persians had 28 bases, two of cavalry and the rest of infantry. Charles Grant’s write-up of Marathon from years ago suggested that the Persians might have had some Ionian Greek hoplites in their lineup, but I ignored that here, although I have used them before. He also added some Greek skirmisher javelins, but again I did not use them. The Athenians and allies have 20 bases, so the Persians are getting towards a healthy numerical advantage.

As I said, the setup is simple. The Greeks are to the left, with their doubled wings and slightly denuded centre. In the original, the Greek wings beat the Persians and then turned in. The Persians have matched the frontage of the Greeks with a double line of infantry, with a couple of bases in reserve, and the cavalry on the far right of the picture. At the top is a line of steep hills and nearest the camera, obviously, is the sea. There really is not much room to manoeuvre.

The trick, it seems to me, for the Persians is to break up the Greek formation with archery, so they can get the overlaps when in contact. This is quite hard to achieve as the dice rolls are matched, but it is not impossible. The Greeks just need to get into contact as quickly as possible and rely on their depth and advantage of advancing to give them the edge.

In the game the Greeks advanced, although their centre was slow to get going. The above picture shows them just in bow range, and the Persian arrows have achieved some minor damage. This will take the Greeks some tempo points and some general time to fix, but nothing too serious.

The first clash was not very clear-cut. On the Greek left there was some delay caused by Persian bow fire. I also allowed the Persian infantry to move back half a move to suggest that they would try to extend the time they had to cause damage. I do not know if this is justified, but I am trying to find out how the Persians can win this. The Greek centre is also delayed slightly, but this does not matter as they were not supposed to be the battle winners. On the Greek right, nearest the camera, the furthest left block has been hit by bow fire, while the next one towards us was previously delayed, The next hoplite block has successfully driven back their foes, who are in trouble. Nearest the camera it is the Greeks who are in trouble, having been defeated in close combat and then hit hard by bow fire. Lucky dice rolls, of course, but it does hint at the possible.

A move or two later and it is starting to go pear-shaped for the Persians. On the Greek left (top), aside from one bounce, they have lost two bases routed and the other two sets of infantry are in trouble. On the Greek right the leftmost bases have hit home and routed their opponents. The only Persian success has been routing the Greeks nearest the sea. The Persian morale has started to wobble, understandably.

The end came a move or two later, as seen above. On the Greek left (top) the Persian infantry has fled, except for one brake block still peppering their foes with arrows. On the upside, the Persian cavalry charged home against the inmost hoplite block and routed it, fortunately for the Greeks not taking the attached general with them.

On the Greek right the block attached to the general has turned in and taken the leftmost Persian infantry of the centre in flank. I discovered a lacunae in my rules at this point, as it did not say what happened if the troops were recoiled from that onto another base of friendly troops. I invented the best possible outcome for the Persians, so they simply shuffled back a bit. But at this point, having lost 12 bases, Persian morale collapsed and the army routed. That said, Greek morale also was wobbly after the cavalry attack and they got a fallback result, so there was no pursuit.

So another victory for the hoplite over the hordes of the East. The Persians did get lucky to cause the damage which they did cause, but it must be possible to beat the Greeks somehow. Actually, the extra Persian infantry used as a reserve did not really contribute much, so there may be a need for more pondering there.

Still a good, fun and quite quick wargame, and I feel the better for it. Now, back to the Chinese fleet...