Wargame Warrior

Possible starting set up?

Not that I am getting involved with the scenario of course...

is this platea? i dont think so, but could be wrong not knowing enough of the era

Jim at September 25, 2011 at 5:05 AM

is this platea? i dont think so, but could be wrong not knowing enough of the era

That's the idea. I try to steer clear of line up the two side and fire starting gun type scenarios.

Platea was broken up into a number of interacting engagements (IIRC) The Greek battle line wa scattered when they were forced to retreat to the hills to secure drinking water sourses and during the redeployment a Spartan commander threw a strop and refused to retreat. The Persians attempted to take advantage the following morning by launching an all out attack. The Spartans having cocked up their move got to fight the Persians alone and when the Athenians returned to try to help  were intercepted by the Medizing Greeks (ie those on the side of Persia.)

This setup is one way to represent this situation. Just to get debate rolling.

As per discussion on Sunday, i've had a look at the battle on the interweb and think that the set up outlined above is the best way forward.  the questions now are do we want to do both battles (Spartans/allies Vs Persians & Athenians/Allies Vs Thebans/Allies) or one or the other ?  5000 Spartiates (10,000 total), 8000 Athenians are probably the figures we should work from, I've got a full list of Greeks but most apparently didn't do anything, just like the Persians in fact.  The Medizing Greeks were anything up to 50000 but probably more like 25000 although again most did nothing - feigning fear against the Athenians - and only the Thebans attacked and were repulsed with minimal casualties (300).  The persians attacked with Cavalry and archers which then withdrew when the infantry arrived no mention that I've seen of numbers (except they totalled up to 300000) but I've got 4 units of persian archers already and 6(?) units of other infantry with another 6 or so (maybe more) that could be done with little work on my part so not sure if we need any more Persians as we could reuse them in waves.  If we use 1000 per unit we would only need a couple of proper Spartan units as we have a fair number of hoplites already.  we can discuss on Sunday.

Osprey are due to publish a book on Plataea next month

nick at November 6, 2011 at 9:28 AM

Osprey are due to publish a book on Plataea next month

Nice spot. I don't think the information that exists is that hard to find, not that it's me doing the finding this year...:P