Battle of Granacius for Triumph Normal

[Lembit Tohver]

OOB for Battle of Granacius for Triumph Normal
Terrain:
1) River 12 MUs from the Alexandrian board edge running from left to right side of the map. River is considered bad going terrain but is fordable its entire length.
2) Large Edge Hill in the center of the Persian side of the board.
3) There are no camps in this battle.
The deployment below is free deployment within the guidelines. Below that is a diagram of the map with the historical positions shown. Players must agree to use one or the other.

Macedonians
Deploy within 6 MU of the river
1 x Knight (KN) (4) Companions w/Alexander
2 x Bad Cav (BCv) (8) Greek Merc.
1 x Jav Cav (JCv) (4) Thessalian
6 x Pike (Pk) (18) Macedonian
1 x Raider (Rdr)(4) Hypaspists
3 x Light Infantry (LI) (9) Macedonian, Thracian, Macedonian Peltasts
1 x Heavy Infantry (Hop) (3) Merc. Greek Hoplites
2 x Bow Skirmisher (BSk) (6) Cretean and Macedonian Bowmen
Total Points: 56 Pts

Persian
Deploy between 6 MU and 8 MU away from the river:
2 x Jav Cav (JCv) (8)
3 x Bad Cav (BCv)(12)
1 x Elite Cav (ECv)(4)
Deploy within 8 MU of friendly board edge:
3 x Bor Skirmishers (BSk) (9) Bowmen (One used for Archer Support)
2 x Light Infantry (LI) (6)
2 x Bow Levi (BL)(4)
Deploy on hill:
2 x Horde (HO)(4)
2 x Heavy Infantry (Hop) Merc Hoplites (6) w/Memnon
Total 53 Pts

Player who first suffers 18 Pts of figures immediately loses.

Historical Deployment

[Dekelia]

I've been playing around with Alexander scenarios as well lately. This is a good take on this and is nice an playable, definitely a plus.

I've been getting a lot of my information for the OOB from the Osprey "Alexander the Great: His Armies and Campaigns"

I have a couple thoughts, and take these for what they are worth, I'm certainly no expert and am still fairly new to Triumph.

I would swap a Bad Cav for a Jav Cav. From what I could tell, the biggest left flank cav was Thessalian and the Greek Cav was less.
- one note, I've been playing around with using Elite Cav for Thessalian - I know they quite fit, but Jav Cav don't seem to work for what the Thessalians were supposedly good at - fighting other cavalry.

It feels like the Persians need more Cav. I assume the Bad Cav represents the right wing, the Elite Cav the center and the Jav Cav the left wing. I might add one more Bad Cav of Jav Cav to the right (Jav Cav as the Medians) and maybe one Elite in the center.

Seems like Memnon needs more troops including a couple light infantry. If you set this up for play balance, I totally understand. I've been trying to figure out how Alexander will be able to handle this with the river there.

In any case, good to see someone else is exploring this. I have a Issus at Grand scale that I think works pretty well that I'll post soon as well as some general thoughts on tweeks/cards to make Alexander's army work more like he used it.

Kevin

P.S. Do you do anything special about the river or just use normal Triumph river rules?

P.P.S. I apparently didn't look close enough at your diagram based on some of my comments above. I see now how you intended the cavalry

[Lembit Tohver]

P.S. Do you do anything special about the river or just use normal Triumph river rules?

See rule 1 of Terrain.

Glad that you are working on this as well. I really like playing Historical scenarios vs Tournament style games. I look forward to seeing your scenarios.

[Dekelia]

P.S. Do you do anything special about the river or just use normal Triumph river rules?

See rule 1 of Terrain.

Glad that you are working on this as well. I really like playing Historical scenarios vs Tournament style games. I look forward to seeing your scenarios.

So that is just the normal river rules, correct? How wide are you making you river. I'm playing Issus with a river about 1.5 MU. I found that Pike and Horse have a really hard time (i.e. near impossible) if there are any light troops defending the river. Pike against skirmishers, for example are +1 vs +2 (pike don't get support vs skirmishers). That seems to be ok, but mostly because I've played with historical deployment and allow Alexander to go first starting about 2MU from the river. They usually lose a Pike stand or two and the line gets messed up in the crossing which is pretty historical.

[Lembit Tohver]

So that is just the normal river rules, correct?

If you mean stream rules, Yes. Rivers can be impassable and thus I feel it is necessary to detail what the river's conditions are.

How wide are you making you river. I'm playing Issus with a river about 1.5 MU. I found that Pike and Horse have a really hard time (i.e. near impossible) if there are any light troops defending the river. Pike against skirmishers, for example are +1 vs +2 (pike don't get support vs skirmishers). That seems to be ok, but mostly because I've played with historical deployment and allow Alexander to go first starting about 2MU from the river. They usually lose a Pike stand or two and the line gets messed up in the crossing which is pretty historical.

I make my streams 2MU wide. This makes it hard as you describe, but keep in mind that you need 2 fords along the section of stream where there will be no difficult terrain hinderance. Yes, quite historical. When deploying the forces, I would allow them to deploy right adjacent or within 1MU of the river.

[Dekelia]

I make my streams 2MU wide. This makes it hard as you describe, but keep in mind that you need 2 fords along the section of stream where there will be no difficult terrain hinderance. Yes, quite historical. When deploying the forces, I would allow them to deploy right adjacent or within 1MU of the river.

I can't decide for Issus if there should be fords. On my second run through, I made the mouth of the river one big ford - open terrain 8MU from the coast so the Persian right flank had some free space to get across but it is a bit cramped. That seemed true to my understanding of that battle and made it play out better.

I've thought about adding a ford or two on the Macedonian right flank because it does seem like they got their cavalry across fairly easy. I think the middle shouldn't have fords because that should be a tough fight across.

For Granacius that does make a lot of sense now that I'm thinking about it.

[David Kuijt]

If you mean stream rules, Yes. Rivers can be impassable and thus I feel it is necessary to detail what the river's conditions are.

Right -- trying to fight across a river with moving water deeper than maybe 24", against armed resistance, would be a nightmare. I've forded creeks no deeper than that in the Rockies, and it was really difficult to keep my footing -- if someone was trying to kill me on the other side, no way I'm going over there. And that's a single person (a skirmish game view). A whole formation, trying to fight in formation and arrive in formation? Oy.

So yes, historically, lots of rivers would be impassable to formed bodies of troops. Note what happened at the Hydaspes -- the river was too tough, so Alexander did some slight of hand to get the bulk of his army across elsewhere, where there was no armed opposition at the river.

There was a really well-documented battle at Fornovo, 1495 AD, where the river started out manageable and it started to rise, and eventually shut off the battle. That was a very wide riverbed and a shallow river. Makes it clear that the threshold for "can't cross in large groups any more" was really not very deep at all, if you think about it.

[Dekelia]

So I tried out this battle with a couple minor changes.

Macedonian: Switched a Bad Cav for an Elite Cav on the Macedonian left to represent the Thessalians. The light cav on the right represent the Paeonian Cavalry.

Persian: Swapped a Bad Cav for an Elite Cav and put all of the elite in the center. Each wing had a Bad Cav and a Jav Cav. This change was in part because of what stands I have available. I'm using Rabble stands to represent the Bow Levy because I haven't painted mine yet but I left them as Levy Bow because that is more accurate and I wanted to try them. I also don't have any horde so I used 4 Heavy Foot for the Greek mercenaries which I think is historically reasonable.

In addition, I'm using my Distributed Command rule for the Macedonians to try it out (Parmenion with Thessalians - 8" command, Alexander - 12" command). I modified the setup just slightly. I put the Persian cavalry in three even groups with with Elite in the center and Bad Cav/Jav Cav on wings. I switched the placement of the lighter infantry in reserve to improve C&C - didn't want the Bow Levy in the center.

Board at the start:


The Macedonians had a major advantage in command points for most of the game - I kept rolling 5 & 6 for them and only once or twice rolled a 1 or 2. They got a 6 on the first turn and were able to move most of the center the right across the river. Alexander went around to the ford on the far right. The Macedonians mostly swept their right flank. The Persian right pushed forward and mostly held the Macedonians on that side on the other side of the river. They didn't have enough command points to really take advantage until late.

Late game, the Persians started to do better. They had a lucky roll and fought off flanking Hypaspists with their Elite cav end ended up doubling them the next turn. Also in their turn they and swung their light infantry from their right to flank the pike phalanx. The Macedonians also got out of it with a super lucky roll (6-1) and fought them off. In the end the Macedonian Phalanx overwhelmed the greek infantry and finished the job.

Final Score: Macedonians killed 18, Persians killed 10.

The Distributed Command rule felt good for Alexander the Great but is probably too powerful in general. Even with the general only having a 12" nothing was really every out of command except the Greeks who got left behind. It gives a very wide command range - just not deep. I'm not sure if that is enough of a trade-off. Definitely an advantage.

The river wasn't as big of a problem as I expected for Macedon, though that is only because they started next to it and rolled a 6 the first turn. Really, it's biggest issue is the command points required to get across since they can't move as a group across terrain. I think that is good.

Some pictures from the fight:

Alexander trying to break through


Mid-game center is a bit of a mess but the Macedonians are pushing.


Persians reformed, and about to turn the Macedonian flank. Bow Levy holding off the Companions...for now.


End of game. Persian dead in top left, Macedonian in top right. The Persian cav managed to hold their flank but left a hole for the phalanx to close the door. Their early losses were too much to overcome.

[Lembit Tohver]

Looks like it was a fun game. Thanks for posting the report. It would have been likely a tougher fight if the Macedonians had rolled even average rolls.

[Dekelia]

Looks like it was a fun game. Thanks for posting the report. It would have been likely a tougher fight if the Macedonians had rolled even average rolls.

For sure. I think it is a good scenario.

I'll probably play again as is to see how it goes and then try some deployment variants. It could have gone very bad for Macedonia because the phalanx moved up to fast and left their protective left flank behind. It would be interesting how difficult it would be to get across the river in a reasonable formation without the very high command rolls.