Macedonian Bronze Shield Designs – The Balagan Collection

Macedonian Bronze Shield Designs - The Balagan Collection - Banner

Lately I’ve developed a bit of an obsession about Macedonian bronze shields (chalkaspides). The Antigonids and Seleucids both had units named after these brazen shields and given the prevalence of artistic evidence, I suspect they were universal during the Hellenistic period. In this post I show 24 bronze shield designs, The Balagan Collection of Macedonian Bronze Shield Designs.

Read more

Armed in the Macedonian fashion

Armed in the Macedonian fashion - Banner

I’ve been re-reading all my books and articles on the Macedonian Wars. These covers the campaigns of Alexander through the Wars of the Successors (Diadochi), and ultimately to the wars against Rome. Fuelled with all that historical goodness, I want to write a series of posts on the Hellenistic armies with troops fighting “armed in the Macedonian fashion”. I start with, what does “armed in the Macedonian fashion” actually mean?

Read more

DBA 3 – Improving the Simulation – Some Comments

Joe Collins has highlighted a number of problems with DBA 3.0 and suggested ways to address these problems. Collin’s was part of the group that developed DBA 3.0 so he is both a fan and on the inside team. I really like Collin’s attempt to tackle some big problems with DBA. It would be great if more people did this, starting with Phil Barker. Unfortunately, Collin’s particular suggestions mostly leave the problems unsolved. I do like his solution for Bow but even that needs more.

Read more

Pity Those Ancient Spanish in DBA – The Army Points Say It All

Big Base DBA Ancient Spanish - Infantry

I’ve always felt the 12 element army size of DBA doesn’t give balanced games. Some folks have come up with points systems to deal with this. I thought I’d tally the points total for a few armies to see how they compare under a couple of the points systems. I’ve focussed on the Macedonian and Punic Wars and not too surprisingly the Ancient Spanish are the poor relatives.

Read more

DBA II/19 Seleucid 320-83BC

I’ve got a Seleucid army for DBM but I don’t particularly like the DBA list (II/19). There are four variations (a to d) but the different DBA variants don’t align too well with the DBM lists. The first two variants (a and b) established the Seleucid empire. The latter two versions (c and d) fought the Romans in the Macedonian Wars. This post is part of my series on Troop Identities in DBA Army Lists.

Read more

DBA II/27 Pyrrhic 300BC-272BC

Pyrrhus, the King of Epiros, was the only Hellenistic general to defeat the Romans in battle. As far as I’m aware he is the only Hellenistic general to fight the Carthaginians. That means Pyrrhus is the point where the wars of Alexander successors met the Punic Wars. Pyrrhus campaigned in Epiros, Greece and Macedonia during 306-281 BC, in southern Italy against the Romans in 280-275 BC, against the Carthaginians in Sicily in 278-275 BC, against the Romans again in 275 BC, and back in Greece 275-272 BC. This post is part of my series on Troop Identities in DBA Army Lists.

Read more