Wargame Warrior

is there anything interesting happening in the main battle line in this battle? Or is all the important action and questions to be resolved happening on the cavalry fight? Might be worth thinking about fighting just the important area of the battle....

All that I've read say.......NO ! Pompey's boys stood there, Ceasar's boys marched up, realised nothing was happening, dressed there lines and then threww missiles and charged in. The cavalry drove off Ceasar's cavalry, got attacked and beaten by the 'hidden' cohorts (Pompey went back to his tent for a costume change at this point), who then attacked the legions in the flank. Game over. No real mention of any of the light troops, no suprise there then, auxilliaries mentioned in general terms early on but nothing in the actual battle. Standard stuff really, Legions did all the work with the odd significant unit(s) mentioned if they did something exceptional.

Academic paper by a SOA chap:

https://independent.academia.edu/StevenJames1

click here.

How many units of legionaries are we looking at Les?

March 5th reply - How many Legions, is that total, how many I have ?

March 6th reply - Look OK in the photos, what do think as you've got the metal in youyr hand ?

Was going to contact you RE this tonight anyway, needed to know if I needed to have a base frenzy.

I think they are okay and very quick to churn out! I am still quite keen on the "zoomed in" concept as we get to use all your 15s. A.because you have them and B. Because they will look good. Added advantages are that the zoomed in areas will conceal a big portion of the battleline so we will not have to represent every legion despite having the full battlefield on show. Also we will be playing with a sensible sized PK armies of twentyish units a side, so we will get a result over the course of the day relatively easily.

Need to know how many cohorts you will be able to get based so that I can plan the tabletop and work out how many 2mm bases I will need to get.

How do we represent the relative difference in sizes of cohorts between the armies, if at all?

I think I've got about 20 * 4 base legion units.  Can give a more accuate figure later on.  All can be based in time.  Easter's coming up and I'll need something to do to stop me watching 'The Great Escape' again. 

There are also the various auxilliary type units we can make up from the other 15mm that i have in my possession.

Depending on the scale we were going to use, could represnt a legion by 2 (Ceasar) or 3 (Pompey) units rather than one unit equals one legion ?

Or have some casualties already on the unit for Ceasars men - all are 3 bases rather than 4 ?

Ceasars men have higher moral/plus on dice for BDV than Pompeys ?

If a cohort is ~480 men at full strength (?) A piquet unit is around 2 campaign strength cohorts, or 3 cohorts of Caesars depleted legions. As there is no suggestion that the depleted cohorts were at a major disadvantage due to their size or that the battle line was very different in length we could force the Caesarian legions to fight in battle line to make up the same overall frontage as the Pompeian army in battle order.  The up 1 in melee for battle order will be counterbalanced by being down for missile fire and a better target for enemy fire. Caesars Veteran elite cohorts will still be on level pegging for melee, which reflects the evenly balanced fight. They will be outnumbered if they are hit by two enemy cohorts in battle order and don't get a melee resolution first (their superior pila prowess should allow them a free melee if they disorder the enemy.)  Interesting balance...

Your 20 units could represent a couple of legions a side in theri trademark three line checkerboard formation.

That was how Ceasar matched the length of battle line, he deployed 2 lines deep to Pompeys 3.  The more interesting bit is how to tackle the cavalry defeat to infantry.

Did you see that Gunther is flogging his GNW Saxons?

Every account I have seen (not saying that is exhaustive...) have Caesar sending inhis 3rd line as the coup de grace whn the flank is going his way and he sees that Pompey has already committed all of his... I am open to persuasion otherwise! I suggest Caesar's 3rd line would be fairly light anyway as he had sent 5 cohorts to help the cavalry already. I suppose any fresh troops when the enemy has none can be decisive.

Hanni at March 8, 2016 at 2:21 AM

That was how Ceasar matched the length of battle line, he deployed 2 lines deep to Pompeys 3.  The more interesting bit is how to tackle the cavalry defeat to infantry.

I have been wracking my brain over the cavalry:

The Pompeian cavalry (PC) will all be trained militia at best.

PC in 6 element units? (Less manouvrable and less dangerous than multiple standard sized units.)

Cavalry commander should have Indecision card (kills remaining initiative for his command.)

Caesarian sub general with a Billiant Leader card.

"Ambush" cohorts to be veteran elites.

"Ambush" cohorts to be able to move additionally on Native mobility card (picked, lightly encumbered force.)

Maybe use the seperate morale chip totals for each command. Means PC command can be effectively defeated without having to destroy every last unit and the main battle line cannot sub them Morale Chips (Or be affected Morale Chipwise by the losses on the flank.)

Will that do it, do you think?

Interestingly the paper by Steven James (above) reveals that only 3600 of the PC can be identified, the remaining 3000ish are presumed to be part of the 5000 auxiliary infantry supporting the cavalry. If we field them as bigger cumbersome units then we would only need 6 or 7 units for the PC. (And a whole bunch of rubbishy light infantry...)

Gunther! Noooooo!