Slitherine

I noticed a complaint on another forum that a lot of people are choosing to build armies from the Seleucid army list. I am doing Mid-Republican Roman.

Looking at the Seleucid army list, I can see why. The Seleucids have analogs to the Mid-Republican legionaries in their Agyraspides, better cav in Cataphracts and Companions, good light troops, good light cav...about the only thing the Seleucids can't duplicate the Romans in is the Triarii.

The Seleucids also have the Phalanx, which, when in good order, can outperform the Mid-Republican legionaries, and they cost about 8 pts per stand, compared to 14 per stand for Hastati and Principes.

Am I missing something here?

It seems like a Roman player has only one real configuration available for him, but the Seleucid can either match the Roman configuration, or really mix it up. Ptolomaic seems to have a similar advantage.

In all fairness, I have only played one game so far, and I am still working on putting together my mid-republican romans. I am just wondering if I made a mistake in my army selection. I chose mid-republican roman prior to getting a book, basically because I like they look of them. I just didn't realize the army list would be so limited.

So can some mid-republican roman player clue me in on how to take advantage of the Roman army list?

Cassius wrote:I noticed a complaint on another forum that a lot of people are choosing to build armies from the Seleucid army list. I am doing Mid-Republican Roman.

Looking at the Seleucid army list, I can see why. The Seleucids have analogs to the Mid-Republican legionaries in their Agyraspides, better cav in Cataphracts and Companions, good light troops, good light cav...about the only thing the Seleucids can't duplicate the Romans in is the Triarii.

The Seleucids also have the Phalanx, which, when in good order, can outperform the Mid-Republican legionaries, and they cost about 8 pts per stand, compared to 14 per stand for Hastati and Principes.

Am I missing something here?

It seems like a Roman player has only one real configuration available for him, but the Seleucid can either match the Roman configuration, or really mix it up. Ptolomaic seems to have a similar advantage.

In all fairness, I have only played one game so far, and I am still working on putting together my mid-republican romans. I am just wondering if I made a mistake in my army selection. I chose mid-republican roman prior to getting a book, basically because I like they look of them. I just didn't realize the army list would be so limited.

So can some mid-republican roman player clue me in on how to take advantage of the Roman army list?

I would say that in my experience(just my view mind) there is'nt a killer army, they all have there plus's and there faults. Knight in fog are good but they cost a fortune pikes are good but they cover less ground ect. I find if you have a feeling for a army you'll enjoy playing it should you win or lose.
Yes the Seleucid has a good army ie Pikes good cav and Elephants but all these troops can be dealt with all it takes is a plan and some nice dice. Thats strange you see in the 15mm FOG at the challenge out of 48 armies no Seleucid army.
dave

I'm not a roman player however you have, in my oppinion, done the correct thing in choosing an army that you like based on appearance not performance.

Thanks Sadista. I think I will have fun with Romans whatever the outcome.

David, I understand what you are saying, and I don't really see that there is any inherent advantage in any particular troop type. It just seems odd that any advantage the Mid-Republican army list can manufacture can be duplicated by the Seleucid army list, whereas the Successor states seem to have a lot of other configurations available for countering the legion-style army. Playing Romans against Seleucids (Over the long term) seems like playing Rock, paper, scissors, with only the paper and the rock.

The Seleucids seem to be one of the few (maybe only) who can have imitation legionaires that are as good as the real thing - superior armored skilled swordsmen. I am not sure what evidence there is that implies later Agyraspides armed as Romans were as good as Romans. Like other Seleucid lists in other rules the rating of Seleucid troops seems to be based on title rather the battlefield performance.

I would assume that the reason tha the Seleucid list qualified the Agyraspides as superior in general is that they are mentioned as being better grade troops in the army. (I'd have to find my copy of Bar Kochva to get references.) Is there any evidence that the Agyraspides equipped as Romans showed worse performance than those with the more traditional Phalangite armament?

The biggest problem that a Seleucid army is likely to have is the temptation to use a little bit of each of the good troop types it can have and end up without enough critical mass of any of them. The Seleucids certainly cannot run anything like a Mid-Republican roman army with the imitation legionaries as the decisive element. A Seleucid army may be able to use them to support other troops as the decisive arm but this will not be the same as running a Roman army of legionaries by a long shot.

Delbruck wrote:The Seleucids seem to be one of the few (maybe only) who can have imitation legionaires that are as good as the real thing - superior armored skilled swordsmen. I am not sure what evidence there is that implies later Agyraspides armed as Romans were as good as Romans. Like other Seleucid lists in other rules the rating of Seleucid troops seems to be based on title rather the battlefield performance.

My son as new'ish paper has opted for Selecuids partly due to an interest Alexander, viewing it as an ultra -late alex mac army . Also because of the spread of good troops (as in expensive in points and therefore easier on the pocket-money front). He has come up with a sensible option of critical mass pikes and all other troops are there to cover the pikes doing the business.

I am a roman player (Later Republican Roman) and I am not looking forward to playing it. However I have always enjoyed the romans but under DBM in an open competition the Bd(o) where just breakfast for the Kn armies that exsisted. I just seem to be always fighting kn's

MRR is a good army and if you look at the Allied options you can come up with some interesting combo's. Stick an army you like the look of and are interested. I did look at MRR but instead went with LRR ~100BC. Only because you can have loads of Superior legions and the elites are just fun to have. I have themed my army around a Greek Theme /client state at the turn of the centry. Elites are brought are painted along the lines of recently converted Trairi from MRR. Cavalry are Greek models. and the Superior HF are painted along the lines of "late" MRR. Therefore with careful selection of figs you can use the same army for either MRR (Late date period in the list) or LRR (early period in the list).

AS said above, there are no killer armies only killer players but go with period you are interested and even go and do loads of research and pick and army/battle that interests you. dont forget there is no strict figuare ratio so you could pick an army from a famous battle and pro-rata the troop types/BG's to the protions of men.

Cheers
Nigel

I've played both LRR and MRR with later seleucids a few times. It seems to be about a toss-up. The LRR are wider with good troops across the board. If the pikes stand up to their initial charge the pikes may win it. If they don't the romans will go through the pretty quickly. The cataphracts seem to be the LRR's main problem. It often comes down to who gets pulled out of line in the initial approach being beaten.

The MRRs have done surprisingly well against me with a lot of average legions. The skirmishers almost always get the Seleucid line to break up prematurely and the romans tend to be able to beat a couple of units before the armies are fully engaged. The triarii are really nasty.

On paper it might look like the Romans are disadvantaged but they always seem to do well on average against a Pike army.

Only have to disrupt a pike once and the Romans will eat it up, while the Romans can take forever to destroy.

The better lancer cats are relatively easy to counter, use cheaper Lt spear cav in single ranks and evade if charged, the cats will spend the game chasing the Lt spear cav.

Remember all that good stuff is expensive. As the Romans are armoured you don't need a lot of LF to cover them.

Bear in mind there is no reason why a particular army list should be balanced. Some armies were very versatile and had a lot of different troop types, others are more one-dimensional.

Otherwise, Terencio Varrus may have cried at Cannae: "Hannibal, you cheesy!"

Polkovnik wrote:
Bear in mind there is no reason why a particular army list should be balanced. Some armies were very versatile and had a lot of different troop types, others are more one-dimensional.

This is more apparent than real. In truth, no ancient army had much versatlity (they had to fight with what they had) although some armies may have had a degree of flexibity because of a variety of troop types available.

At their core the Romans and Seleucids had heavy infantry and heavy cavalry. The Seleucids probably had some advantage in cavalry. The Romans had a huge advantage in infantry. They had the entire population of Italy which could supply an almost unlimited number of legionaires. The Seleucids had a much more limited population of settlers which supplied their infantry. The Romans could recruit auxiliaries from the entire Mediteranean, the Seleucids were limited to the eastern Mediteranean and western Asia. Both probably had similiar numbers of auxiliaries available to be recruited. Despite the proganda, the Seleucids were forced to recruit larger numbers of auxiliaries because of their deficiency in infantry. On the other hand, the Romans recruited just enough auxiliaries to support their legions, which they (rightly) regarded as their battle winner.

The Seleucid army was created out of necessity, not beacause Antiochos III was in search of a perfectly balanced force.

Batesmotel wrote:
I would assume that the reason tha the Seleucid list qualified the Agyraspides as superior in general is that they are mentioned as being better grade troops in the army. (I'd have to find my copy of Bar Kochva to get references.) Is there any evidence that the Agyraspides equipped as Romans showed worse performance than those with the more traditional Phalangite armament?

But the important comparison is not that the Argyrasipds were better than pikemen, but were they equal to the Romans?
(1) I doubt the Roman-armed Seleucids could match the Romans in skill or numbers. The results speak for themselves.
(2) And I doubt if any later Seleucid infantry were equal to the equivalent type in Alexander's army.

But, in the end eight bases of superior Roman-armed Argyrasids are not usually going to have an excessive influence on play balance.

Cassius wrote:The Seleucids also have the Phalanx, which, when in good order, can outperform the Mid-Republican legionaries, and they cost about 8 pts per stand, compared to 14 per stand for Hastati and Principes.

Am I missing something here?

I think it is a very complex calculation, but for starters:

8points of Pike would die VERY VERY quickly vs 14 points of Hastati or Principes.

You can't go by points per base, at the very least you have to go points per fighting frontage.

Pike and Armoured Impact Foot Swordsmen are pretty even up to the pikes being 3 ranks deep, therefore you're actuallty talking:

32 points for 4 ranks of Pike vs 28 pionts for 2 ranks of Romans.

Even then it's not a given. Much depends on the dice, as if you disrupt him it's all over bar the shouting.

Incidentally, I thought pike were 6 points, but I don't have a rule book anywhere near me, so...

Ian

madmike111 wrote:On paper it might look like the Romans are disadvantaged but they always seem to do well on average against a Pike army.

Only have to disrupt a pike once and the Romans will eat it up, while the Romans can take forever to destroy.

as experience has taught me more than a few times...

i use the argyraspids to bolster the line. i take two 4s, and drop them between two 12s of Av pike. makes the pike far less brittle, and butchers other HF.

BUT, versus romans it's a dice game they can all too easily win. one bad cohesion test and your on that downhill slide.

OldenTired wrote:versus romans it's a dice game they can all too easily win. one bad cohesion test and your on that downhill slide.

Most definitely. I think this true of all 'pointy stick' armies.

I've found that you don't get the chance to get pikes or offensive spear back. With my Huscarls you get the chance to bolster them back up as often they will have a remote chance of 'doing more or equal' but pike and spear seem just to keep going backwards.

Tough as nails while they keep cohesion, but a lost cause once they lose it. I think this is entirely historical and correct.

Ian

OldenTired wrote:
versus romans it's a dice game they can all too easily win. one bad cohesion test and your on that downhill slide.



Most definitely. I think this true of all 'pointy stick' armies.

I've found that you don't get the chance to get pikes or offensive spear back. With my Huscarls you get the chance to bolster them back up as often they will have a remote chance of 'doing more or equal' but pike and spear seem just to keep going backwards.

Tough as nails while they keep cohesion, but a lost cause once they lose it. I think this is entirely historical and correct.

From a game design the way pike/spear are done in FOG is very simple but the result is superior to any other game I am aware off, i.e. how they drop off quickly once cohesion is lost.

madmike111 wrote: From a game design the way pike/spear are done in FOG is very simple but the result is superior to any other game I am aware off, i.e. how they drop off quickly once cohesion is lost.

yup. i'm liking it.

sure makes having a TC handy all the more important.

Thanks for the input guys.

Looking more closely at the army list, I see that the Seleucids are limited in the number of the Argyraspides they can take. Max of 8 bases. I missed that before.

So they can't quite field a Roman style legion.

Polkovnik wrote:Bear in mind there is no reason why a particular army list should be balanced. Some armies were very versatile and had a lot of different troop types, others are more one-dimensional.

caliban66 wrote:Otherwise, Terencio Varrus may have cried at Cannae: "Hannibal, you cheesy!"

This isn't really my concern. At the last FOG day at the local game store that I showed up for, there were 4 Seleucid armies, 1 goth, and 1 LRR. On the forum used by the locals, this seemed to be a trend in the local groups.

The reasoning seems to be that the Seleucid and Ptolomaic armies will be more fun over the long-run, because they are so versatile. I just wanted to hear if they had some innate advantage.

I will stick with my MRR army. They seem tactically flexible enough for my taste, and I really like the look of the bricks of Hastati and Principes I have been painting up.

Seleucid is a decent army but by no means spectacular. I think what your local group is suffering from is "group think" to be honest there is a degree of that in all areas so for example in the UK as a whole at present there is a trend to Dominate Roman and anti-Dominate Roman armies being popular.

I don't think a Seleucid army has managed a tournament win in the UK to date. I may be wrong but I can't remember it happening.

It is ofcourse possible that there has been a missinterpretation of the rules in your group that means for some reason that Seleucid is really good but I can't off hand think of a likely error that would result in that being the case.

hammy wrote:Seleucid is a decent army but by no means spectacular. I think what your local group is suffering from is "group think" to be honest there is a degree of that in all areas so for example in the UK as a whole at present there is a trend to Dominate Roman and anti-Dominate Roman armies being popular.

I don't think a Seleucid army has managed a tournament win in the UK to date. I may be wrong but I can't remember it happening.

It is ofcourse possible that there has been a missinterpretation of the rules in your group that means for some reason that Seleucid is really good but I can't off hand think of a likely error that would result in that being the case.

Ahem... perhaps not in 15s, but it has in 25s, although it was Late Seleucid.

Steve P