Battle of Issus - Standard Triumph

[Dekelia]

Here is a version of the Battle of Issus for Normal Triumph.

Alexander Macedonians
1x Knights : Companions - General (Alexander)
1x Jav Cav: Paeonian/Scouts/Prodromoi
3x Light Foot: Thracian/Illyrian/Greek
1x Raiders: Hypaspists
6x Pk: Phalanx
1x Skirmishers: Cretan/Macedonian Archers
1x Bad Cav: Greek Cavalry
1x Jav Cav: Thessalian Cavalry (could also use as Elite Cav)
Total: 49 pts, break: 17

Persian
1x Jav Cav: General(Darius) - I use a chariot model for this
2x Elite Cav
2x Jav Cav
4x Light Foot: Kardakes
4x Heavy Foot: Greek Mercenaries
2x Skirmishers: Archers
1x Bad Cav: various levy
1x Rabble: skirmishers in the hills
Total: 55 pts, break 19

Battlefield and Historical Deployment
The battlefield has the Pinarus river bisecting it lengthwise in the middle. Play this as a standard "Stream". For this version I included the fording points for each section.
The battlefiels is bounded by foothills (Steep Hills) on one side (foot hills of the mountains) and the sea (Coastline) on the other. There is a gentle hill 3MU from the river on the Persian side. Note: You could play with this distance to change the battle a bit.

Deployment, Alexander deploys south of the river. Darius deploys ~4MU north of the river.

[Dekelia]

Here is one report of this scenario. Note: standard Triumph rules with no changes. Note: I played the Thessalians as Jav Cav but they have three models in these pictures. They are the ones with the purple capes.

Macedonians go first and got decent command points and started moving across the river. The plan was to hold the center, delay on the left, and win on the right. Tried to get fighting edge across to they could defend form the skirmishers and light foot. The Persians attacked the the phalanx with skirmishers and really disorganized their line (note: I made a mistake here - only the winning pike stand should have followed up and not the supporting stand because they don't support against the skirmishers. The Persians moved three of the cavalry stands in a column across the ford to get them to the other side of the river.

The Macedonians broke through with the Knights on the right and the Persians overwhelmed the left. Nobody really moved much in the center because the phalanx couldn't knock the hoplites off the hills and the hoplites didn't want to leave the hills. Both were trying to win on the flanks. The Persians kept sending skirmishers to at the Pike and eventually a skirmisher killed a pike unit.

Alexander probably got a bit to aggressive trying to hit a flank and didn't leave room for the Hypaspists to take advantage of the hole in the hoplite line. This ended up being their downfall as after a couple of combats, Alexander went down and the the Macedonian right collapsed shortly after.

Pictures from the fight:

Starting positions


Crossing the River


Alexander breaks through but the left flank is collapsing


End of battle - not this time Alexandar the All Right

[Lembit Tohver]

Great AAR. Your deployment and OOBs are very plausable as well. I will look into playing your version sometime in the not to distant future with my gaming buddy. My only adjustment would be that the Macedonians have 50 Pts and by my calculations should have a Breakpoint of 17.

[Dekelia]

Great AAR. Your deployment and OOBs are very plausable as well. I will look into playing your version sometime in the not to distant future with my gaming buddy. My only adjustment would be that the Macedonians have 50 Pts and by my calculations should have a Breakpoint of 17.

I'm still getting 49 but I could be not doing something correctly. I also assume you always round down, for breakpoint but that might not be correct either. I'm not sure.

I thought about removing the light foot / Rabble on the flank. It doesn't really do anything but look cool. I could maybe change it to a skirmisher which would give them a purpose at lease since if they do kill the light foot, they'd have the potential to cause some problems.

[Rod]

Actually you round up for break point, sort of because you can't kill a .3333 of a stand.

So if you have a 49 point force it must lose more than 16 points to break it (16.333333333). So if the enemy has destroyed exactly 16 points for example, they need to destroy one more stand of anything even rabble. Because you must meet or exceed the breakpoint.

[Rod]

Keep in mind that is the standard tournament style rules, and we use a similar mechanism for the tournament GT version for determining the demoralization of a command. In the larger game not all forces are necessarily 48 points, some can be smaller or larger.

We find that usually that 1/3 break point feels about right, for your own scenarios you can try anything you like of course

[Dekelia]

Thanks! I edited the original post with the correct break points. I must have missed that detail.

[Lembit Tohver]

My error for total points. I mistakenly counted Bad Cav as 4 Pts.