Wednesday 22 March 2017

Magnesia 190 b.C.

The last battle, Antiochus III meets the roman army in the battle that'll decide the fate of Anatolia.
As per the narrative campaign rules the seleucids have one unit less after deploying decided by their player. The armies are basic impetus: polybyian roman vs Alexander imperial (it fitted Oriol's collection better than any of the proper seleucid ones).
 The seleucid player begins moving all the mounted untis forwards, it's becoming a vice of him to move in two lines
 The romans advance in a more even line
 Lucius ornelius Scipcio leads from the fornt, however it is his brother the Africanus who actually commands the army from the shadows...
 The seleucid skirmishers also advance and kill one unit of velites
 The king's light infary charges and pushes back the roman nobles
 The legions advnace in echeleon towards the weak enemy left flank
 Combats erupt along the line
 The elefant charges, however Scipcio's own legion holds them long enough for a second one to charge and make it reel in terror.
 Another legion kills the seleucid peltasts
 The mauled nobles finally cut to pieces the light horse
 The roman left holds as best as it can against the seleucid elite (hipaspists and cavalry agema)
 While the elefant charges, pushing back a legion with some loss
 The roman left is practically destroyed but still helds and even pushes back the hetairoi
 With all impetus lost, the elefants are ground to a halt and destroyed

 The romans in the right keep on advancing, killing now some cretans

 No pasarán!

 Legion and hispaspists fight it out to a draw, but more romans are coming to tip the balance
 Pasaron...
 But in the end the hipaspists are caught in the flank and routed, giving victory to Rome
The battle went pretty much like the historical one, the romans destroyed the seleucid left and then wheeled to trap the units in the center, assuring the rout of the king's army. The only difference being that their left held much better against the agema than the actual flank (purelly due to lucky rolls).

So with his army routed Antiochus III asks for peace abandoning all Asia west of the Taurus mountains, lands that will be given by the romans to their allies in the region, Rhodes and Pergamon. The outcome will have far worse consequences than these for the seleucids, since it will send out a message of weakness that will be heard by both jews and parthians, and mean the end of the dynasty as a relevant empire, and damn them to a decadent agony until being erased form the pages of history by Pompey on the next century.

1 comment:

  1. Very nice report and the 1/72 Basic Impetus armies look great!

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