Battle Report Sparta v Athens: Morale & Missiles

[harlandski]

As suggested by other members of the forum, here is my Chainmail battle report. It was the first time either my friend or I had played, so we kept things super simple, choosing a Hellenic rather than medieval setting. We also played on Roll20 in part due to the lack of a sufficiently large permanently childproof playing surface or enough suitable miniatures. My friend played Sparta (red, starting on the left). I played Athens (blue, starting on the right).

I should say my main reason for playing is to begin to thoroughly understand the Chainmail rules in order to be able to use them to play OD&D.

The line up

100-point* sides of Sparta and Athens made up of:
20 peltasts (LF, move as longbowmen, javelins 6") @ 1 pt each
20 hoplites (elite HF, spears as pikes) @ 2 pts each
10 hippeis (MH) @ 4 pts each

Victory conditions: Last man standing.

As can be seen from the screenshot, Sparta and Athens had a completely different layout of units from the beginning**.



The long march

We set the board size to the minimum table size recommended by the book (4' x 8'), and put our troops at opposite ends. We deliberately didn't include terrain features, again in the interests of simplicity. This meant that it took a looong time to get to each other, and Sparta's troops were fatigued*** by the time melee was joined. This made less difference than Athens had hoped due to the intervention of Fate (the dice). Although Athens managed to drive away some of Sparta's hippeis, Sparta's peltasts stopped Athen's horse getting behind the lines of troops where they could have done some real damage.



The victory of patience over aggression

From this point on, agressive Athens gradually lost to patient Sparta in almost every exchange, the notable exception being when Athens managed to drive a group of peltasts away in retreat. The biggest surprise for us rules-wise was the attrition due to morale. We used all three systems of morale (excessive casualites, post-melee and to resist a charge), and the results were quite devastating. In terms of troop types, it seems that the peltasts, even with their short-range missile, were quite a force to be reckoned with, and it was these two factors (missile and morale) which meant that Athen's foolhardy hoplites did not even make it to melee with Sparta's, being worn down by missile fire before failing their casualties morale roll. Sparta was conclusively victorious!

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* In retrospect, the cost for peltasts was probably too cheap, considering the fact they had a longer move plus ranged weapons. So too the hoplites probably considering their ability to melee in a double line.
** In retrospect my units were far too spread out to be useful. Also I think that I broke the rules at two points by splitting and reuniting units of peltasts without penalty.
*** We used coloured dots to track fatigue - brown for move, green for charge, purple for melee, though by the end my opponent and I were both keen on replacing the fatigue table in the book with a point-based fatigue system. The most mathematically correct would be 1 point for move, 1 2/3 for melee and 2 for charge, though perhaps the most workable would just be 1 for move, 2 for charge or melee.

[Deleted]

Hope you had fun.

Personally, I would gently incline one not to use CHAINMAIL for ancient battles. Ancient cavalry did not use stirrups or, more importantly, high backed saddles, so an ancient cavalry attack is NOWHERE NEAR as effective as a charge of medieval cavalry. This affects both melee and morale.

Further, most ancient bows were drawn to the center of the chest rather than to below the chin, so they were both less powerful and less accurate.

However, if you decided these were two imaginary medieval city states instead, go nuts.

Did you use man to man or 1:20?

[harlandski]

Mar 5, 2017 16:13:04 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

Hope you had fun.

Personally, I would gently incline one not to use CHAINMAIL for ancient battles. Ancient cavalry did not use stirrups or, more importantly, high backed saddles, so an ancient cavalry attack is NOWHERE NEAR as effective as a charge of medieval cavalry. This affects both melee and morale.

Further, most ancient bows were drawn to the center of the chest rather than to below the chin, so they were both less powerful and less accurate.

However, if you decided these were two imaginary medieval city states instead, go nuts.

Did you use man to man or 1:20?

Yes, it was great fun, and encouraged us to go on using Chainmail, independently of its link to OD&D.

Point taken on ancient cavalry. We were just trying to keep things simple for our first game, and the rules seemed abstracted enough to allow this, but you're right we didn't count for the differences you mention. As for missile, we had the peltasts armed with javelins, which are just about covered in Chainmail, and our historical fact-checking just about confirmed the 6" range rule.

We used 1:20. Next we want to test-drive the man-to-man system, then see how the fantasy supplement works, and finally return to 1:20 with a wide range of medieval troop types and artillery.

Well, the final step is to then apply all of the knowledge gained from these experiments to see how Chainmail combat could work in OD&D!