For a battle that we know nothing about, some stuff is at last starting to come out of the woodwork about Chalons ( a lot of it on the SoA forum page http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=217.0).
Firstly there is Jordanes, who tells us who was fighting on each side and about this enigmatic ridge. His numbers are obviously incredible though, and that’s a problem when you are trying to wargame a battle using rules that have a troop ratio.
Second is a panegyric of Sidonius that tells us that Aetius came north with no milites, only auxiliaries. Some interpret that as no legions, just auxilia; others more broadly as being no regular Roman troops, just mercenaries or household.
Thirdly, we have the record that the Vandals (and some Alans) when they crossed into Africa under Gaeseric were counted and numbered 80,000 people in total, so we could guess than only 16-20,000 of those would be men capable of fighting. This is accepted as a reasonable figure for a Germanic host of the Volkswanderung period.
Fourth, Duncan Head has mentioned a argument of Lindner that Hungary at the time of Attila couldn’t have supported the horses for more than 15,000 Hunnic cavalry.
Second House
Not the sort by the seaside, and but the one in Westminster. Why are we talking about a second elected chamber that is just going to end up with party placement and professional politicians like the lower house? After 15 years you are really going to have forgotten what real life is like.
Why not go back to a much older idea and have 200 members chosen for 6 months or a year by lottery? No arguments then about over or under representation. And a short period is long enough for then to remember who they are and not become assimilated into the system.
SoA Battle Day 2013 – Chalons
The battle for next year’s Battle Day (13th April 2013) has been announced as Chalons (451AD) – the classic Huns vs Romans battle if it wasn’t that the Hunnic army was probably mainly Ostrogothic and the Roman army we certainly mainly Visigothic.
And probably is the big word here. We know that there were lots of Goths involved. And that there was a ridge that was key to the battle. We don’t know where the ridge was, relative to the Goths, or indeed where the Goths were, relative to the ridge. We do know that the battle started late in the day and went on into the night and that there was a fair bit of bed swapping going on – a Visigothic prince tried to kip down in the Hunnic camp but was kicked out, and Aetius spent the night in the Visigothic camp (he wasn’t kicked out).
The good thing is that I have just started on a Late Imperial Roman army; the bad thing is that there were very few Romans in the battle, although some of the local contingents sound like they might have been former garrisons that have become semi-independent principalities, so there might be a bunch of Bd(I) and Ax(O) pseudocomitatenses.
All this means that I need to paint more Gothic cavalry and infantry, which is good because I wanted to do that anyway. So far I think that I will try and use a mixture of Khurasan, Legio Heroica and Old Glory for the cavalry and Legio Heroica (when they come out), Buaeda and Old Glory for the infantry. The Romans are all Legio Heroica who are nicely sculpted, if rather static and chunky. But there is a lot of head variation and they have open hands, which I like. For regulars they look formed and drilled without being uniform.
Battle Reports from RollCall
The army I took was Marian Roman and the list was (queue somebody spotting its illegal or something like that):
Command 1:
Lucius Licinius Lucullus as a Brilliant Reg Cv(O) C-in-C, 8 Reg Bd(S), 2 Irr Ax(S), 3 Irr Ps(S), 1 Reg Ps(O), 1 Irr El(I) = 29 ME
Command 2:
Appius Claudius Pulcher as a Reg Cv(O) SG, 6 Reg Bd(S), 4 Irr Ax(S) = 24 ME
Command 3:
Gaius Sornatius Barber as a Reg Cv(O) SG, 6 Reg Ax(S), 2 Reg Ps(S), 2 Reg Ps(O) = 16 ME
Baggage Command:
6 Reg Bge(O), 10 TF = 12 ME
For a grand total of 81 ME. Although I was probably the smallest army there at only 52 elements including the baggage, I think I had more ME than most of my opponents because of the Bd(S). OTOH, that means that they can be lost pretty quickly.
The army is a refinement of the one I took to Warfare last year. The main changes were to make the commands more asymmetric to allow one to have the low PIPs (which involved concentrating the Bd(S), to drop the Cv(O) (that just got themselves into trouble), to add the El(I) to try and counter the nasty wedged Kn(F) and to have space to put some real elements to defend the camp.
The strategy was that we would normally try and deploy on just one side of the table and turn a flank, hoping that we could destroy that before the other flank of the enemy could wheel across and engage. Against a mobile steppe enemy we would just hunker down and rely on the toughness of the Bd(S) and Ax(S) rather than advance and risk the flanks as they just evaded away. Lucullus’ command would normally go in the centre as the main fighting command, and get the middle die. One flank command would then be the hinge and would deploy with its auxilia in the camp, giving them a factor of 6 behind the TF and making them very difficult to winkle out. The other flank would then get the high die and push forward as far and fast as possible, using the Auxilia to deploy in the flank zone and push through any terrain on the side of the table. If I defended then a BUA could help push the hinge point as far forward as possible.
Continue reading “Battle Reports from RollCall”
Good run out for the Marians
Impressive run out for the Marians at the weekend – two wins and two winning draws. I think I have finally cracked the right about of berserk aggression to cope with an army that is so tough yet so small. You need to be very cavalier about casualties on the hinge command as well. Full battle reports to follow (need to copy them from the Yahoo group).
New Zvezda tanks
Bouht some of the new 1/100th Zvezda tanks to see if they would do as a cheap source of tanks for Flames of War. The Panzer III is pretty much exactly the same scale as the Battlefront one, so I assume the Panzer II is similarly accurate. The detail is very fine and they assemble easily. The the only downside is that they are slightly soft plastic, and not the completely hard plastic of Games Workshop figures, and but once assembled their flex isn’t that noticeable. The only question is how well they will take the paint.
Last Preparations
Taking the Marians to competition again. Slight revamp since Warfare in the light of the games that I played there. Whether it will be enough to cope with the wall of wedged Kn(F) that looks to be there I don’t know. Anyway last preparations in progress. Redoing the earth on the banks of the ramparts for the camp – need to paint them tonight and ink some light infantry.
Battle Day preparations continue
Feeling pretty rotten today with a stomach bug, but enough energy this afternoon to do the second hill for the Plataia battlefield. This is one of the low 4 foot long ridges for the centre of the battlefield. Also got the wirecutter running, but actually not as useful as I had thought it would be. Not a very long wire and a tendency to stretch and snap. Tried making my own longer one with only partial success.
Still, that means I have done two of the five hills, which is pretty good going.
Snowballing
You know how it is when you start on a simple job, but then realise that while you are ding that, you might as well do this, because you have now done the prep work and it will only take another 5 minutes.
So I decided to put up the under-cupboard light in the kitchen that I bought at Ikea last week. Then I thought that actually it would be neater if it connected to the junction box behind the cupboard, but that meant taking the cupboard off the wall. Having emptied the cupboard and taken it down, I realised how much more convenient that cupboard would be with 3 rather than 2 shelves. So i found a suitable piece of wood in the garage and cut it to size. So far only 30 minutes. Wiring everything up, drilling new holes for pegs for the shelf in the cupboard, getting the shelf to fit, getting the cupboard back on the wall and then refilling it – another 2 hours.
Still I have had time for some painting as well:
Ikea Twilight Zone
I seem to be in a strange position with the Ikea website. For reasons that I can’t fathom, it is geo-locating me in China, so I am seeing all the prices in Yuan. In addition, I can only see stock levels in Beijing, Shanghai etc, rather than Wembley which is easier for me to get to. I’ve deleted all my Ikea cookies, but that hasn’t fixed the problem. And what distinguishes the Ikea website from what we could call well-written websites is that there is no manual over-ride for their geo-location. They are so confident in it that they don’t bother to give you an option to set it yourself.