Maccabees in FOG 2

[sIg3b]

At 1200 points, the current Seleucid 166-125 BC list gets 5 units of pike, including Argyraspids, and the revised Seleucid list will get 7. Ptolemaic lists will also get more pikes.

+1

"It has been fairly convincingly postulated that the 3 Thracian cohorts and 3 Thracian alae of the Roman army of Syria in 88 AD may have been Herod's old Thracian units."

We give them the benefit of the doubt.

Okayyy, so if I get this right, this is supposed to be a pro-Roman Jewish army. I can buy that. But wouldn´t the same list also be used to represent a rebel Jewish army? I suppose they couldn´t have counted on non-nationals.

[rbodleyscott]

"It has been fairly convincingly postulated that the 3 Thracian cohorts and 3 Thracian alae of the Roman army of Syria in 88 AD may have been Herod's old Thracian units."

We give them the benefit of the doubt.

Okayyy, so if I get this right, this is supposed to be a pro-Roman Jewish army. I can buy that. But wouldn´t the same list also be used to represent a rebel Jewish army? I suppose they couldn´t have counted on non-nationals.

It is meant to represent the army of the Kingdom/Tetrarchy of Judaea. In this period it was a Roman client kingdom.

I think you are being needlessly picky here. The rebels issue would apply to most of the army lists in the game, as rebels would usually not have access to all of the troops in the list.

[sIg3b]

I think you are being needlessly picky here. The rebels issue would apply to most of the army lists in the game, as rebels would usually not have access to all of the troops in the list.

No, I think it´s an exceptional case. Minor nations whose independent existence is precarious usually don´t have access to foreign mercenaries at all.

In a Judaean army fighting Rome Thracians would feel grossly ahistorical.

[rbodleyscott]

I think you are being needlessly picky here. The rebels issue would apply to most of the army lists in the game, as rebels would usually not have access to all of the troops in the list.

No, I think it´s an exceptional case. Minor nations whose independent existence is precarious usually don´t have access to foreign mercenaries at all.

In a Judaean army fighting Rome Thracians would feel grossly ahistorical.

A Judaean army fighting Rome in this period would be ahistorical. The first Jewish-Roman war started in 66 AD, outside the period of this list.

[Yaitz331]

Having finally got around to reading Bar-Kochva's Maccabees book, here are the proposed revised lists, with also the Late Hasmonean list for comparison. (All at 1200 points)

The finalised changes will be in the patch accompanying the release of the next DLC.

Hasmonean4Idumaean.jpg

Yeah, that seems good. The later Jewish forces will have both an advantage and a disadvantage with the raw phalanx; it'll allow them to wield more men and fight on flatter terrain, but it'll weaken their strength of light/medium infantry. The small amount of cavalry is definitely good for them, but has its own challenges; they'll have to use it effectively against the Seleucid's far better and more numerous cavalry.
Thanks for reading the book.

A Judaean army fighting Rome in this period would be ahistorical. The first Jewish-Roman war started in 66 AD, outside the period of this list.

Well, there was a major revolt against Herod during the Parthian invasion in 40 BCE. The last king of the Hasmonean dynasty, Antigonus II, was installed by the Parthians as a puppet king, and fought against Herod, who was the governor at the time; Rome itself was busy defeating the Parthians in Syria, and could spare little time for Herod. Antigonus had the support of both the aristocracy, angered by Herod's taxation, and the common people, who hated Rome for snuffing out their independence. Herod was pushed back to the Galilee, but held out there until Roman forces arrived in 38 BCE, allowing him to sweep back out and besiege Jerusalem in 37 BCE, capturing it after a fierce siege and executing Antigonus. However, that army could be kept under the late Hasmonean list.

By the way, is there an army list that could be used to model local Seleucid garrison armies, as separate from the main Seleucid force?

[rbodleyscott]

A Judaean army fighting Rome in this period would be ahistorical. The first Jewish-Roman war started in 66 AD, outside the period of this list.

Well, there was a major revolt against Herod during the Parthian invasion in 40 BCE. The last king of the Hasmonean dynasty, Antigonus II, was installed by the Parthians as a puppet king, and fought against Herod, who was the governor at the time; Rome itself was busy defeating the Parthians in Syria, and could spare little time for Herod. Antigonus had the support of both the aristocracy, angered by Herod's taxation, and the common people, who hated Rome for snuffing out their independence. Herod was pushed back to the Galilee, but held out there until Roman forces arrived in 38 BCE, allowing him to sweep back out and besiege Jerusalem in 37 BCE, capturing it after a fierce siege and executing Antigonus. However, that army could be kept under the late Hasmonean list.

Fair enough, but the army list represents the main Herodean army. If someone is determined to play a Jewish revolt army in this period, they can either use the current list and refrain from using units they don't think they should have, or turn off the Date filter and use the later Jewish Revolt list.

The army lists are mainly designed to represent the normal armies of a nation, not armies of popular revolts, although there is usually enough choice in most lists to weight the choice in favour of lower quality units.

We can't get into the minutiae of providing special revolt lists for every nation that had revolts (i.e. Every nation that ever existed). Even if we thought it was worthwhile, it would usually be highly speculative. (And no #sig3b, this really isn't that special a case).

By the way, is there an army list that could be used to model local Seleucid garrison armies, as separate from the main Seleucid force?

Not as such, but the campaign system has a mechanism for generating "Rear Echelon" (i.e. garrison) forces from the existing lists, by increasing the proportion of the lower quality units.

Failing that, it is in fact quite easy to add your own custom army lists. (As usual we STRONGLY recommend you do this in a cloned version of the vanilla ArmyList.txt file in a user folder rather than in your main build).

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