Author: Toby

Last post for Zama

Rather late follow up for the previous post since the battle was months ago, but a photo journal of the course of the actual battle can be seen in the article on the Pinner Wargames website. I would repeat it all here but that would be a colossal waste of disk space for all the pictures.

IT Crowd

Went to see the new series of the IT Crowd being recorded on Friday night, courtesy of an old schoolfriend who used to work with the guy who provides a lot of the props for it. I have never seen a more geek-oriented audience, which I guess is hardly surprising. The most amusing part though was a couple of guys sitting behind us who seemed to regard it less as a sit-com and more as a sort of workplace Changing Rooms – they were running through all the posters on the walls and deciding which ones they wanted to add to their office.

Memory

It’s fascinating, going back through old blog entries, what utter bollocks I was saying only a year or two ago. Which obviously implies, by the principle of universality, that what I am saying now will become utter bollocks as well.

And I found a misplaced apostrophe in an early post – the horror, the horror!

Zama update

24 hastati are now painted and are gluing to their bases. The shields for the Italian ones are done but not the Roman ones as I am waiting for some transfers. Must buy some superglue tomorrow for the swords. I have now retired to the pub to celebrate being ahead of schedule.

Zama Part 2 – the terrain

I’m not doing the terrain (hurrah) but I am providing the Roman army, so it would be good if my bases vaguely matched the terrain. In aid of that, here are 3 very large pictures of some sample hastati and principes. The colour is as balanced as I can make it – it was taken with a flash – and the cloth is a Games Workshop green cloth for reference.

The figures are all Gripping Beast, and very nice they are too. The painting is all mine, and it shows :). Except that is for the shields; they are transfers from Little Big Men.

Click on the photos for a full size version.

The Calais Railway Gun

K5 railway gun
The K5 railway Gun

A picture from the summer here, that I found when looking for something else in my photo archive. Its the WW2 German K5 railway gun at a museum on Cap Gris Nez near Calais. I dragged the family there when we were early for our ferry.
The K5 is seriously impressive just for its sheer scale – the guns at the entrance of the Imperial War Museum are on a similar scale but aren’t mounted, so lack the impact.
For those who want technical details, its a 283mm calibre gun (~11″) that fired shells weighting 255 kg up to 50 kilometres.

Planning for Zama (Part 1)

David Mather and I at the Pinner Wargames Club have agreed to provide the armies for the DBMM refight of Zama at the upcoming Society of Ancients Battle Day in April, so now is the time to start thinking about how many figures we are going to need for that.

I am providing the Roman army, and the main sources for the battle are Polybius, Livy and Plutarch (mainly the first two). Livy seems to mainly cover it in books 28 and 29. In book 28 Publius Cornelius Scipio is sent to Sicily with 7,000 volunteers. Here he has two legions (V and VI) which seem to be the disgraced remnants of the survivors of Cannae, back in 216 BC, over a decade earlier. In book 29:24 he is described as bringing each legion up to a strength of 6,200 infantry and 300 cavalry, and also bringing their socii contingents up to strength as well (presumably the same strength but with more cavalry as usual). He then in section 25 comes up with 3 different values for the size of the army, none of which match this (there are either 10,000, 16,000 or 32,000 infantry – 4 x 6,200 is 24,800).

Now if we look at Polybius’ account of the structure of the legion, he says that it should contain 4,200 infantry (or 5,000 at times of emergency) (III:20). Add to this the same number of socii, and then double it for two legions and you would get 16,800, or 20,000). On the other hand, these aren’t normal legions, so they probably weren’t formed using the text-book system.

He then tells us that there are 600 triarii, 1,200 principes, 1,200 hastati and the rest are velites (by subtraction another 1,200). He also says that the ratios remain the same if the size increases, except that there are still always only 600 triarii.

The two most important classes are the hastati and the principes, both by now identically armed but the principes being men in the prime of life (the hastati being younger). Each legion should contain 10 maniples of principes and 10 of hastati, each with 2 centurions (and therefore by implication 2 centuries although he doesn’t use that word). Polybius also says in his description of the layout of the camp that there are only half the number of triarii (the oldest men) as there are principes or hastati (he at least is consistent).

Thus each maniple should be 120 men, making them much smaller than the maniples in Caesar’s time. If we take Livy’s numbers of 6,200 per legion, and assume that there are still only 600 triarii, that leaves 5,600 for the other ranks, which is inconveniently indivisible by 3. Lets therefore err downwards and assume 1,800 each of principes, hastati and velites, giving us 6,000 men per legion. That would then give us maniples of 180 men, now actually slightly larger than in Caesar’s time.

How does this all fit into DBMM?

Well the standard figure scale is 200 – 250 men per element. We’re going to double this (because we can’t afford that many figures). So lets assume 400 men per element. This would give us 1.5 elements of triarii, 4.5 of principes, 4.5 of hastati and 4.5 of velites per legion. I don’t like this because I want to have shield patterns per legion, so lets play fast and loose with the element scale (since the original numbers are pretty dodgy). This could then give us 2 elements of Sp(S) triarii, 4 elements of Bd(O) hastati, 4 elements of Bd(O) principes and 4 elements of Ps(S) velites per legion, which is a pleasing ratio of elements. It also doesn’t do too much damage to the original sources being somewhere in the middle of the mess.

Next – ground scale and how that fits in.