Timeline of Graeco-Macedonian Military Innovation

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My original title for this post was “Iphicrates, peltasts, thureophoroi, phalangites, and shielded cavalry”. Iphicrates was a leader of mercenary peltasts and is attributed with creating, or at least inspiring, both the Greek thureophoroi and the Macedonian phalangite. I keep reading bits and pieces about this but they are like a pieces of jigsaw puzzle scattered over the table. Reading about thureophoroi lead me to reading about other troops: Illyrians; the Thracians with their rhomphaia; Thracian cavalry shields (using them before the Greeks); and Macedonian cavalry shields. I thought a timeline for military innovation across the Macedonian Wars would help to position the various bits in relation to each other.

The timeline covers the period up to the general adoption of the Macedonian phalanx including the encounters between Pyrrhus’s phalanx and the Roman legions. Obviously it covers explicit mentions of Iphicrates, peltasts, mercenaries, thureophoroi, phalangites, and shielded cavalry, but it also covers Macedon’s neighbours Greece, Epirus, Illyria and Thrace. The Greeks, Epirotes and Illyrians all invaded Italy at one time or another so the timeline also has to cover elements of Italian history as well. This is not a complete timeline, just an attempt to map out the pieces of the puzzle.

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2025 Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian

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Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian - Banner

I wasn’t a happy chappy when I wrote my reflections on 2024. I did lots of stuff, but only played six games, and didn’t achieve many of my annual goals. It was a wargaming disaster. So what is on the megalomaniac agenda for 2025? Do I tone back my ambitions or try to make up for lost ground? Megalomaniac, right, so it has to be “make up for lost ground”. Same goals as last year, plus a few. As usual I present this as a brain dump of my active projects, i.e. those all projects that are more or less “in progress”. The list is then split into three parts: likely in 2025, unlikely, and background activity.

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Homemade Decals for my Macedonian Bronze Shields – Four Options

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Macedonian Bronze Shields - Four Decal Options - Banner

I’m planning on getting 465 Macedonian Phalangites, or more accurately men Armed in the Macedonian Fashion. And I want each unit of 15 figures to have a distinct shield design. So I’ve set out to make my own shield decals. In my preferred 15mm scale of figures, the decals have to fit shields that are about 8mm across. I’ve explored four options: (1) shrink my Macedonian Bronze Shield Designs – The Balagan Collection down to 8mm; (2) highlight in bronze; (3) highlight in black; (4) simplify in black. Which one to go for?

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Brushes for painting 15mm wargaming figures

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Rosemary and Co - Series 33 Kolinsky Sable Pointed Rounds - Banner

About 3 or 4 months ago I started painting figures again. Specially the Patriots – Venezuelans and Colombians – for the War in the North during the South American Wars of Liberation. It has been years since I painted a whole army myself and looking at my brushes I realised I needed to upgrade. The best brushes are made from red sable, e.g. kolinsky sable, so I went looking and found Rosemary & Co.

Note: I’m painting 15mm wargaming figures using the Black Undercoat Method of painting.

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Valour, Discipline and Training

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I like the idea of using contemporary language within rules but I have two competing sets of terms: Napoleon’s “Valour and Discipline” and South American “Training and Discipline”. What to do? For Bolivar’s Very Bad Day should I replace the “Resolve” attribute of Tilly’s Very Bad Day with two attributes, one reflecting bravery and the other training? And what should I call them?

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Revised guidance for terrain set up in Crossfire

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Terrain Coverage when setting up a Crossfire table - Banner

I got into a discussion with George Breese on Crossfire maps on the Crossfire WII forum. We were talking about the attributes of a good table. George uses a guideline that “tables should be 1/3 to 1/2 terrain”. This echoes a guideline from the Crossfire rule book the table should have at least 1/3 coverage. And that got me wondering whether my maps obey a 1/3 to 1/2 terrain coverage guideline? The answer is no, but I’m not sure it is a problem.

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Twilight of the Britons – A Battle Report 3

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Britons-308 English Warleader - Banner

I have some newly painted dark age heroes along with tons of new armoured infantry, plus an update to the rules, so it was time to play Twilight of the Britons again. Chris and Adam were willing to give it a go.

Summary: Good game and very dark age in flavour. Chris overestimated the ability of his dark age warriors to manoeuvre and got into a bit of a tangle. Adam’s Briton cavalry crushed the English flank guard and hit the Great Fyrd at the rear of English line causing the English shield wall to collapse.

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Tucuman – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Battle Report

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Tucuman-338 Centre - Patriots encircle Royalists - Banner

Adam and I play tested Bolivar’s Very Bad Day using my Tucuman Scenario. We wanted a small game to test my variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day for the South American Wars of Liberation.

Summary: Good little game with the Patriots strong in cavalry and the Royalists strong in infantry. My Patriot cavalry stripped off the weak Royalist cavalry and encircled the Royalist infantry columns. Then we had a hard grind with repeated cavalry charges against the staunch Royalist infantry. Eventually Adam accepted he couldn’t win and conceded.

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Using geometry to find implicit crests on a hill

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Hills-215 Geometry and implicit crests - Banner

While I was ranting about Why I think hills are horrible in wargames rules, I found two rules had a clever solution for dealing with line of sight on hills using geometry. I’d already thought of a similar approach, also using geometry. I call the two approaches “Parallel crest” and “Perpendicular crest”. Both solutions are clever. Which one is better?

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Why I think hills are horrible in wargames rules

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Hills-102 Questions about hills in wargaming rules - Banner

Sometimes I get obsessed by tiny little aspects of the hobby and just have to write about it. In detail. A lot of detail, after endless hours of research. This time I’m picking on hills. You see hills were a thing in the South American Wars of Liberation – my current favourite period. A lot the battles featured at least one big hill e.g. Battle of Maipo. This hilly tendency could be extreme e.g. the Battle of Vargas Swamp was fought predominately on the slopes of a single giant hill and half the table top is covered in hills. Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day, is going to have to cope with a lot of hills.

Unfortunately, hills are horrible in wargames rules. I’ve not seen any set of wargaming rules that cope with them really well, sadly, not even my own Tilly’s Very Bad Day. Certainly not my beloved Crossfire where hills are tiny mesas. I could have left it there, but I felt an obsessive urge to prove my claim of “horrible” so I got out a bunch of my wargaming rules, read the section on hills, and used a standard set of questions to test how well the rules handled hills. Here is what I found. It is horrible but there glimmers of genius.

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Twilight of the Britons – Update to Version 1.1

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Twilight of the Britons - Banner

I have updated Twilight of the Britons – Fast play rules for the English Invasion of Britain to version 1.1. As a reminder this is Vincent Tsao and my version of Twilight of the Sun King for the dark ages in Britain. I have a hankering to play another Arthurian game so thought I’d get the rules into shape for that. Some of the changes are to make it easier for Vincent to use the rules for the Fall of Rome but this is still not my focus.

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