Antigonus Gonatus at Lisbon

[grahambriggs]

I thought it might be of interest to post the design of army i took to lisbon for the ITC this year.

The period I was in was republican Rome and it's foes; 900 points on a 6x4 table. So there would be a lot of Romans and Successor pike armies. I went for early Successor, Macedon; Antigonus Gonatus. In deployment order:

2x4 LH av, LS, javelin, 6 LF av LS javelin, 6 LF sup bow (all unprot)
8 MF drilled, Av, armoured, Off Spear. 8 undrilled average MF Heavy weapon. 2x2 Elephants
3x4 drilled, armoured, superior cavalry, Lance, Sword.
2 drilled average heavy artillery, Galatian Ally: 12 HF sup undrilled protected Impact foot, Sword. 4 undrilled cavalry armoured, LS, Sword, superior
3TCs and allied TCs

the plan in summary:

- keep the surprises to the 4th deployment.
- 900 points is a lot but the heavy foot will be about 28 per frontage (proper legions, mix of average and superior pike). So half the table or will be weaker troops or the power troops will need to spread out.
- the galatian warband is wide enough that you can't avoid it and tough enough that you must fight it properly. So the heavy foot must conecentrate to take it on or it will break through. so this will mean less strong foot elsewhere.
- the heavy artillery working with the light foot can do some real damage when enemy get in range because you only need two hits for a test and it's an extra -1 on the test. Ideal for shooting at 12s of pike or elephants. And it gives the enemy generals a lot of work.
- so having concentrated the enemy heavy foot the rest of the army is stretched.
- four units of good cavalry is the best in show (more than the minimum cataphracts were barred). In the open we should be able to bully enemy mounted, and drilled lancers can exploit really well.
- the two MF units are better than the Romans get and the equal of other successors.
- the elephants are good against legions so that's an option but Plan A was to get them fighting alongside the MF in uneven as they have an edge against much of the MF. They'll tip the balance at impact which really helps the MF chop through.
- one LH on each flank. Usually, one falls back to control the tempo of a weak flank. On the attacking flank they can do a lot of damage charging flanks (or shooting up elephants in one game).

So how did it turn out? I played against early successor, Later Macedonian (both had a lot of pike), Pontic (24 pike, 8 legions), Late Republican Roman. Generally successful; though the cavalry didn't really do much (thracians were probably a mistake as their general fough with the warband so they couldn't rally and the lancers had few targets (though proved good at facing off pike). The usual random dice (some triumph against odds, some disaster). Galatians did great, inflicting a lot of damage and only once breaking. Artillery were good value and did their job. The LH, MF and elepahants were all really good.

We broke the early successor and the pontic and did heavy damage to the roman and a narrow loss against the Late Macedonians.

[hazelbark]

Can you tell more specific tales of the Heavy artillery?
It sounds fun as well as different.

[grahambriggs]

The idea with the heavy artillery was to deploy them last as they are effectively immobile so you need to get them in the right place. Generally, I thought I would be outnumbered in heavy foot, so likely to have an enemy heavy foot centre pressing in, perhaps covered by LF. With that in mind, plan was to deploy the Art in the centre, close to my LF and expect to have one LF unit and the Art shooting at the enemy. They tened to be quite near the Galatian warband, as I was a little worried that enemy elephants would target those and the Art hit elephants on 3s.

As soon as enemy foot come in range of the Art, they should be hit by 3 LF dice (4s or 5s) and 2 Art dice (5s). These dice only need to hit twice to cause a test, and that test gets the -1 for being shot at by Art. So you should get quite a lot of tests, and the odd enemy unit should disrupt. So enemy LF screens might lose the skirmish battle, and the enemy has to keep a general near to bolster. If they get withing 6MU of the Art the Art get 4 dice.

If the enemy try to press the attack into the Art, then I had enough mobile stuff around to draw them off.

What I found in practice is:

- against Hubert's Later Macedonian we shot a lot against a superior 8 of pike with 5 dice (7 when they got close). This forced a general to the pike to keep them brave (they kept disrupting then bolstering, and lost a base) and eventually they had to veer off to face some lancers.

- Against Chris' Early Successor, a 12 of pike came down the middle but then had to turn to try and shore up a flank.They never got there as the 5 dice shot them down.

- Against Jacques' Pontic they shot a bit but did little as the LF were elsewhere slowing down power troops.

- Against Richard's Romans, their presence meant he had to lead in the centre with legions, not elephants. I think with the cretans they disrupted the protected velites, who had to withdraw, losing Richard time to redeploy in the centre, which made a big difference.

[richafricanus]

Graham, thanks for taking the time to post on this. It's one thing to see the army list of one of the better players ( I think you qualify for this category ), but it's another to understand the thinking behind the design. Very interesting. And nice to see rare things like warband and heavy artillery making an appearance.