Home made gaming Miniatures for years to come 8-)

                                                       "Man up and go to the Craft store"

The revised Battle of Chaeronea, 338 BC

Our version of the The Battle of Chaeronea . Due to the victory by Sparta in our last game (a reversal of history), the Spartans under the command of the venerable General Phragkiskos faced the Macedonians led by the legendary father and son duo of Philip II and Alexander.

                     Early dawn, the Spartans (top) and the Macedonians (bottom) assemble.

                          Alexander advances on the left, while Philip II advances on the right wing.

After inflicting early casualties to the Spartans, Alexander is wounded and his troops captured. Philip continues his assault on the right wing.

        Philip II deploys his sarissa against the Spartan spears and threatens the Spartan flank.

The Macedonian sarissa proves superior to the Spartan spears and Philip's horse turn the Spartan flank, capturing the Spartan force and freeing Alexander.

As it was in history, Greece as a political and military power was finished to be supplanted by the Macedonians who now looked to the east and the ancient superpower that was Persia. Sparta proved, in our battles, to be the superior City State of Greece, but it was no match to the superior technology the Macedonian possessed with its 20 foot pike/spear. 

Our rules held up, but still need some tweaking. We may revisit these battles using DBA rules and the new Triumph! ruleset for comparison.  

  

                   

Battle of Leuctra

Battle of Leuctra  , July 6 371 BC.

                                                               Spartans take the field

                                                      Theban cavalry prepares to advance

Outside Leuctra, a crucial defeat of the Theban cavalry by the Spartan cavalry well supported by Hordes and Spears

     With the death of their general Epaminondas ,the Thebans, outflanked and outfought prepare to flee to the safety of Thebes

Unlike the historical battle, Sparta continues as the top City State of Greece awaiting the next opponent to challenge it.  

Needlepoint Armies

The blog is back.  Working on a set of basic rules that covers several periods of warfare. Wednesday night, we began with play testing a hoplite subset of the Ancient rules. Our combatants:

The Spartans

The Athenians

These 4 mm "miniatures" were made with Needlepoint mesh, punched card stock and craft wire. The battle was the Battle of Mantinea in 418 B.C. 

 The forces engage when the Spartans (top) exit the woods.

Initial play test resulted in a historically accurate re-creation of the battle. The Athenian general Laches was slain early in the fight and the battle turned into a major route of the Athenians. However, the rules while accurate were not fun to play. After a rules review, some changes in the rules were made. And the battle re-fought.  

This time it was an extremely close battle in which the Athenians won a narrow victory and we agreed the hour long rematch was fun and played much better. A few more tweaks and we may have a set of hoplite and ancient rules for the future.  

3 mm Cavalry

Lost 2 days while experimenting with different ways to make cavalry for my hair roller armies. I was looking for a quick way to assemble large number of mounted troops. No luck. So I Returned to using a modified Van Pelt cut. I am using #10 plastic mesh used for Needlepoint. As my hair roller infantry is only 3mm high I opted to use the smallest mesh I could find. I choose to leave them as strips to make them quicker and easier to paint. Will cut them 5 deep on a 30mm deep base.  Still not sure how many units on a base for the different cavalry types, as I prefer a more massed looked.