Alexandros (Command#10) Successors Variant (Command#14) Replay: ============================================================== Author: Markus Stumptner (mst@VEXPERT.DBAI.TUWIEN.AC.AT) Last weekend, we started playing the 3-player version of the Successors variant (from Command #14) to Alexandros (from Command #10). Since I recall a number of people on this list liked Alexandros (actually, most people I know liked Alexandros), perhaps there's some interest in an account of the game. Since the Alexandros tactical board is pretty unsatisfactory, we played the battles using a draft of Charles Vasey's Field of Battle rules (not publicly available, I'm afraid). Anyway, here's what happened... Spring 321: Antigonus, based in Ionia, gains the initiative. He decides to deal with Antipater (who is a non-player character leading the Macedonian "home" fraction) first, and moves an army by naval movement into Macedonia, the rest follows through Thrace. Ptolemaios moves his army from Syria into Assyria, claiming that Assyria is a logical border province and necessary for his survival. Seleucus lets himself be appeased by Ptolemaios (also because his main force is in Babylonia and could prevent any further advances). He sends expeditions eastwards. Summer 321: Demetrius arrives in Macedonia with a large part of Antigonus' army and attacks Antipater. Battle of Pela, August? 321. =========================== The right Macedonian flank is mountains, the left hills. Macedonians: 7 units (2 cav, 1 Light Inf), Antigonids: 11 units (including 5 cav plus 1 artillery). Antipater has to set up first (decided by dieroll since he is as good as Demetrius). He only has 3 phalanx units, which limits his options. Demetrius reinforces the right wing of the Antigonid phalanx with artillery and Cretan archers, attempting a decisive softening up of the enemy's left wing before the clash. Antipater sends his phalanx forward to avoid long exposure to artillery fire, but still suffers high losses. On the Macedonian right wing, Antipater in personal command of the Thessalians charges the Hetairoi (commanded by Lysimachus, ironically Antipater's best friend). The Paiones are sent against the sole Persian light cav that accompanies the Hetairoi. In the melee against the Thessalians, the hetairoi unexpectedly lose two steps, and Lysimachus is wounded. Demetrius relieves Lysimachus, who is given the supposedly easier job of holding the phalanx against the Macedonians. Despite losses, the Macedonian light forces on the left wing chase away the Antigonid's light cavalry there, and the Hypaspists are routed after the Illyrians sneak around into their rear, but on the other wing Demetrius and the weakened Hetairoi finally rout the Thessalians with a desperate last effort and the Macedonians reach their rout level (4 units lost). One of the Macedonian phalanxes routs its opponent and causes the Antigonids to reach their panic level as well (6 as they have 11 units), but it is taken in the flank by the remains of the Hetairoi. The Illyrians, left alone on the other wing, note the battle is lost and rout away. Antipater is captured in the pursuit, and several units (including two phalanxes) join the Antigonid cause. Demetrius takes Roxanne and Alexander's family in custody. The Athenian fleet goes into the mutiny box. Overall, there is no doubt that the Antigonids had a much better starting position in the battle, but Lysimachos' bad luck with the Hetairoi meant that it ended a close thing. ========= Fall 321: Antipater, enchained in the dungeons of Pela, refuses to come over to the side of Antigonus, despite dire threats by Antigonus of what he's going to do to Alexander's captured relatives (at least that's what Seleucid and Ptolemaic propaganda says). (He will relent eventually, but too late to be of any aid to Antigonus before he exits the game.) Winter 321: Rhodos allies with the Antigonids and Demetrius moves there to establish a naval base, just as the Ptolemaians make their bid for naval superiority in the Mediterranean. The New fleet is built in Alexandria, and Leonnatus moves with three fleets (Egypt, Crete, New) into the Ionian. The Antigonids decide to leave Rhodos and its harbor defenses out of it (the Rhodian fleet has not been built yet), and defend solely with the Ionian fleet. The Ionians are destroyed. Rhodos shifts back to neutrality as a result of Seleucid diplomatic meddling (Seleucus is currently most concerned about Antigonus, whose army currently has about as many phalanx units as both others combined). Spring 320: The Antigonids are the first out of winter quarters. They refit the Athenian fleet, rebuild the Ionian Fleet, and raise a new fleet in the Black Sea. With Demetrius as its commander, the force eliminates the New Fleet and forces Leonnatus to fall back to the Cypriote Sea Zone. Leonnatus is wounded. Ptolemaios guarantees Seleucus that he will not block Seleucus' return trip to Babylonia if Seleucus should move against Antigonus. Summer 320: The reconvalescing Leonnatus is replaced by Eumenes in command of the Ptolemaic fleet. Antigonus offers Ptolemaios a peace treaty in exchange for Cyprus (which is currently ungarrisoned but still in Ptolemaian hands). Ptolemaios refuses, offering the demilitarization of the Cypriotic sea zone in exchange for control over Cyprus and Crete (which is also ungarrisoned), a claim backed by little real power that is duly ignored by Antigonus as he continues his naval offensive. Lysimachos fights a costly battle against Eumenes, destroying the Egypt Fleet in exchange for the Athenian fleet. Eumenes retreats to the Syrian sea zone. In the east, Seleucus extends his control, but the Indians have taken over several provinces already. Fall 320: Antigonus takes command of his fleet in his own hands and attacks. In exchange for the loss of the Black Sea Fleet, this is the end of the Cretan fleet and Ptolemaic naval power, but Eumenes survives and rejoins Ptolemaios on solid ground in Syria. The Ionian fleet takes up station in the Syrian sea zone. Winter 320: Ptolemaios spends most of his military budget on rebuilding the Egypt and New fleets. His main fortresses (Alexandria and Gaza) are stripped of their garrisons to man the fleets. As the rebuilt Ptolemaic fleet sorties, Antigonus' pleasure cruise in the Med comes to a sudden end, as certain defeat (and stranding on a hostile shore) stare him in the face. He strikes a deal that guarantees a Ptolemaic Cyprus for the next year, in exchange for free passage back to Ionia for his fleet. Ptolemaios agrees, assuming that Antigonus will have other problems at that time (he has received assurances from Seleucus for an upcoming offensive). Rhodes again joins alliance with Antigonus (guess they reckon they'll be next on Ptolemaios' schedule). The Black Sea fleet under Demetrius ferries Antigonid troops to Crete. Spring 319: Seleucus asks Ptolemaios to be allowed to move to Assyria, ostensibly to keep from suffering attrition in depleted Babylonia. The request is granted, and he leaves the province under Ptolemaios' control. Is this the start of the offensive? Ptolemaios stays in Egypt to avoid attrition in Syria, garrisons Cyprus, and moves his 2 fleets to the Cyprus sea zone. Antigonus, sensing something is afoot, moves his army to Phrygia. Summer 319: Seleucus moves his army into Cappadocia, owned by Antigonus. (This means war. :-) Fall: The Scythians invade Europe! Just what Antigonus needs. Seleucus moves to Phrygia, having made it through the mountains before winter falls. He besieges Gordion, but the defenses just hold (one wall marker survived). The Scythians move to Thrace (which is empty since Antigonus, seeing the writing on the wall, moved its garrison to reinforce his main army in Ionia). Winter 319: Most of Asia Minor is depleted, but attrition is mercifully low on all sides. Antigonus moves first to relieve the siege of Gordion. Interestingly, both commanders express extreme misgivings about their chances in the upcoming battle. Battle of Gordion, September? 319 ================================ The battle is fought on a plain near Gordion. Antigonus: Rout level 10 (20 units), 9 cavalry and light inf, 11 in the phalanx. Seleucus: Rout level 16 (32 units), 20 cavalry and light inf, 8 in the phalanx (incl. 1 archer) Again, the "more skilled" side is determined by dieroll, as both sides have the same leader quality. The Seleucids win the roll and set up second. Seleucus commands the Parthian cavalry on the left wing (opposing Demetrius, again at the head of the Hetairoi), with Craterus at his side, commanding the Bactrians. Craterus faces the overlapping end of the very large Antigonid phalanx: the Hypaspists and Spartans with Antigonus himself in command. On the other side of the battlefield, the Persian Companions escorted by lots of light cav face off a bunch of units including the Antigonid artillery. Predictably, Antigonus sends the phalanx in, realizing he has no chance to keep his flanks from being turned if the battle takes too long. Seleucus attempts to employ his massive cavalry superiority on the wings while his phalanx hangs back. On turn 2, he unleashes his scythe chariots. Unexpectedly, one of the Greek hoplite units fails it morale test and is eliminated. Antigonus, nonplussed, stops his advance for a turn, giving Seleucus vital breathing space. On turn 4, the Hetairoi are routed and Demetrius is wounded. This opens the way for both Antigonid flanks to be overwhelmed on the next turn, and Seleucus takes the enemy phalanx in the rear. Only the professionalism of the Hypaspists makes it possible to continue the advance. On turn 6, Antigonus' phalanx finally makes contact, but it is already disordered enough to lose the overlap bonus and achieves no quick decision while Antigonus and Lysimachos are wounded as well. Antigonus, whose army has now reached its panic limit, prays for night or the Prussians to arrive, and gets night. A roll of "6" ends the battle at the earliest possible moment. Seleucus has lost a lot of Persian cavalry, but has enough left for an energetic pursuit that eliminates all seven of Antigonus' routed units (in addition to 3 killed during the battle), making that side effectively the loser of the battle. Seleucid numerical superiority prevailed in the end, but probably only because Antigonus' reaction to the chariots meant that the clash of the phalanxes occurred too late. The Seleucid elephants were alse released belatedly and had no effect on the outcome. ================== Antigonus perforce agrees to Seleucus' relatively mild peace terms: Armenia is ceded to Seleucus, Crete and Cilicia to Ptolemaios, who offers to keep both demilitarized except for a small garrison in Cilicia. Antigonus loses three units to mutinies (public parades of Roxanne and Alexander's family pledging their trust in his statesmanship keep unrest low). Ptolemaios strikes a deal with Antigonus where the latter "leases" Cappadocia to him (he thereby reaches the magical limit of eight provinces that guarantees double levies due to "king" status) in exchange for 4 resource points. Spring 318: Seleucus starts the march back to Babylon after losing some units to supply attrition. Ptolemaios grants him passage. Outlook: Seleucus is the single superpower in the game now, but this is sure to result in an end to the bickering between the other two. Arguably, he was able to field a competitive army due the very expensive naval arms race the others engaged in. Everybody is now waiting for the next barbarian invasion - if it comes from Chorasmia, this will mean an opportunity to invade while Seleucus is busy defending his huge, currently ungarrisoned empire in the east. Summer 318: Antigonus squashes the Scythians who have entered Thrace. Seleucus moves back in the direction of Babylon. Fall 318: Seleucus, having decided that this a perfect opportunity to take out Ptolemaios despite their nonaggression pact, takes over Syria and besieges Gaza. The city holds out. Winter 318: Ptolemaios and Antigonus get to move first. Seleucus is amused to see Ptolemaios move out into Syria to meet him. Ptolemaios does not attack, but of course he will be attacked in Seleucus' turn. Immediately afterwards, Seleucus is not amused when having it brought home to him that Antigonus is capable of ferrying a significant amount of troops to Syria for a joint attack with Ptolemaios. However, his cavalry superiority means he gets a chance to avoid combat, and he manages to do so with a dieroll of '2'. He retreats into Assyria (which up to this point was still Ptolemaic territory), effectively ending the chances of the other two to meet him on even terms. To make matters worse, he is able to bring up the new units he has been building up in Babylon for the last year or so, plus his new recruits for this turn. In addition, Ptolemaios will not be able to recruit again in spring, since Assyria is no longer his province. Spring 317: Antigonus and Ptolemaios again go first, which at least gives them a small chance against Seleucus. They follow him into Syria. Seleucus does not try to avoid the battle. ============================================================= March 317: Battle of Opis Antigonus: 16 units, Ptolemaios: 17 units, Seleucus: 39 units. Seleucus has massive cavalry superiority, as the other two have about half a dozen cavalry units between them (mostly light Persian cavalry) and very few light troops. They have an enormous number of medium and heavy infantry, however these are actually too much to put in the battleline. The only thing they can do is stay in reserve to prevent cavalry from taking the phalanx in the rear, but they will not be able to prevent the phalanx being chewed up by flank attacks. There have five leaders against three Seleucian ones, which might help. Despite well-chosen terrain (a river on the left, and hills on the right), Seleucus overwhelms the flanks of the Allies by the third turn. (Demetrius and the Hetairoi routed on the first turn in which they faced Seleucus and the Bactrian cavalry, which did not help one bit.) Allied dierolling was generally atrocious, in contrast to the effective fire of Seleucus' skirmishers. By turn five, the Allied phalanx managed to stagger forward to make contact with the enemy, but its flanks were already attacked by cavalry, giving the Seleucids a significant overlap advantage. A gap opened in the weakened phalanx right away, and the Allies reached their panic limit. At that point, we ended the game, as it was obvious that (1) Seleucus would manage a decisive victory in the battle, with most of the enemy units destroyed by his pursuing cavalry after the battle, and (2) even if some remnants escaped, Seleucus, who had neither moved nor recruited yet in the turn, would get to replace a fair part of his losses before wading in to smash the rest of the other's armies. Apparently, Seleucus was chosen by the gods to keep the empire together. Analysis: The naval race did Antigonus and Ptolemaios in (although the large naval transport capability was what gave them a chance in the end), in addition to the fact that Seleucus never had to deal with barbarian invasions and never suffered from the decision to keep all his forces in the west. The final nail in the coffin was the overemphasis on phalanxes as opposed to a more well-balanced army. The supply system makes it a bit easy to assemble and maintain large armies - we did not quite reach the countermix limits, but as one player put it, "all the interesting units" were already taken. Although it is helpful to plan your movements carefully (as it should be), in the end one usually has to accept moving through a depleted province, and then it gets really luck-dependent. Of course, even with three players, the number of fractions is still ahistorically low (although placing Antipater passively in Macedonia is a good idea), but I guess more diadochoi players would mean that some players have an awfully small power base. We did start another game right away, but I haven't had time to write it up yet. So far, we've had one major battle, this time Antigonus and Ptolemaios (who experimented with a peaceful Mediterranean this time) were much more successful though Seleucus is already making a strong comeback, one battle against Antipater's Macedonians and two battles by Seleucus against the Indians. Lots of action... Oh yes, it is mentioned somewhere that all scenarios start in 323, but since the setup of the 3-player game definitely deals with the state after Triparadeisus, we decided to start in 321 both times. ====================================================================== To Dan Raspler and the others who asked. I pretty much agree with the weaknesses pointed out, in particular the fact that the tactical board just plain does not work and inevitably results in an interminable slugfest with almost no chance for the Persian player. Hoping for Alexander's death is indeed almost the only chance (in fact, I recall that the designer once mentioned that as a sound strategy :-(, unless the Alexander player has allowed his army to be caught piecemeal. We found the supply rules nice, but too soft in that they allow an advance into poor provinces without a lot of planning. Historically, Alexander needed about a year of campaigning in Anatolia before he felt safe enough to invade Syria. In our games, Syria was usually reached within two turns after the Granicus. Reading Engels' book on Alexander's logistics reinforced our impression. On looking back (it's been several years since we played Alexandros), I noted that we did interpret the movement sequence differently, in that we did not allow a player a free "escape" move if he already started in a province with the other player - he had to manage evasion from combat. This meant that the Persians had to keep one province between themselves and Alexander if they did not want to run the risk of being caught too soon. I do not recall if we instituted this as a house rule, simply interpreted the rules that way, or found it as an erratum. I recommend it in any case. (Interestingly, I dug out an old copy of Perfidious Albion and Charles Vasey also played it this way, although a second reviewer in the same issue did not - perhaps there was some time lag between the time the two reviews were written.) NOTE: The Successors variant has a completely different movement sequence, so this problem simply does not apply. There is no single combat phase, but each player can attack in his turn, unless the player attacked can evade (which requires cavalry superiority, at least as good a leader, and a dieroll). Anyway, back to Alexandros: Unless the Persian manages to win a battle, the game proceeds in historical, but ultimately fairly disappointing manner, especially since the eastern campaigns (despite taking a lot of time) are a pushover once the Persian capitals are out of the way. This is why we effectively stopped playing Alexandros until we recently decided to give the Successors variant a try. Regardless of what tactical system one uses, the fact that the unit mix on the different sides is not as crassly different as in Alexandros means that chances in the battles are more even (unless your recruit yourself into a corner). I don't know about the 2-player Successors variant - we didn't quite trust it, but perhaps we'll try it if the 3-player game works out nicely. As for the tactical board, it needs to be replaced. Markowitz himself recommended using the Spartacus tactical system instead (which is still not my cup of tea). There also was an issue of the Canadian Wargamers' Journal that contained a table on how to map the units to the units of Men at Arms from S&T 137 (which seems to work OK if one uses Keith Schlesinger's morale rules, but I have very limited experience with this). Unfortunately, that means you don't get to use the beautiful Alexandros counters in the battles, but it may still the best option if you have to work with commercially available wargames. The Field of Battle rules that we use were intended specifically for use with Alexandros (although a miniatures version also existed) and work very well, but unfortunately Vasey seems to have given up completely on the idea of publishing them. Those who liked the Alexandros system might want to get a copy of Casus Belli #11, which contains the game Bellum Gallicum with a very similar system (unfortunately also with the same tactical board). The counters are also very nice. The Belisarius game from Vae Victis #5 looks remotely similar. I've played neither of these yet, so no comments. Markus