So with the Thebans on a 10 game loosing streak, I'd decided to retire them for a bit, but not before one last huzzah at 400ap against Bruce Ferguson's wonderful Seleucid army.
Wanting to go out on a win I'd planned for the game yesterday, making sure that my commands were well organised. I also ensured that I could always throw Ps(S) in front of elephants or Expendables or anything else the spear didn't want to face (most things). I decided to buy a flank attack with the cavalry and again refused a flank, relying on rough ground to slow Bruce's far wing down and hoping for an early arrival of my cavalry. I'd also changed my dice once again.
Bruce brought 12 Wb(S) and two elephants in one command which ended up facing the whole Greek army, who deployed their Ps(S) and (O) up front to slow down and soften up the nightmare troops.
Things started poorly for the Greeks, quickly loosing half of their psiloi any only killing one base of psiloi (O) in return. Unfortunately I'd forgotten to repulse my psiloi, and were just recoiling them which broke up the Warband slightly more than it would have been otherwise.
Thankfully, the flank attack arrived on the third bound piling additional pressure on the warband and elephants who were closing in on the spear faster than expected. It also forced Bruce to turn the companions to face them. The psiloi also brought down one of the elephants shortly afterward giving the Greeks some hope.
Overall though things still looked good for the Seleucids who had suffered few losses and had quickly got rid of the Greek light troops. The companions also killed a base of Greek cavalry in the initial engagements and Bruce had two light horse circling round toward the baggage.
And then the Sacred band charged... three columns of galatians had broken through the psiloi but had exposed flanks and the superior and supported spearmen crushed their front ranks (I accidentally added the back rank, but it wouldn't have mattered) and managed to survive the counter attack unscathed! Concurrently the Greek cavalry managed to hard-flank the companions bringing them down and breaking the Seleucid's largest command!
Things just got better for the Greeks as they killed the Seleucid c-in-c, got the pips to hit one of the catraphacts in the flank and rear with a cavalry general, hit the companion general in the front, flank and rear with the sacred band, and hard-flanked the agyraspids.
But as always seems to happen, the Greek army failed to put in the killing blow. The cataraphacts survived, turned around and promptly killed the cavalry general, breaking the command and disheartening half of the hoplites. The companion general pushed back the surrounding spear and then killed the sacred band in front of them, survived the next bound of flanking and accounted for the citizens behind the sacred band, and the agyraspids survived, killed the hoplites in front of them, survived a second hard flank and spent the psiloi behind them.
On the far flank the disheartened hoplites made a good showing against the hypaspids but collapsed to the blade and pikemen. Giving the seleucids a moderately comfortable victory, and ensuring the Greeks didn't go out with style.
The more I think about it, the more this was an excellent game of DBMM. I feel that I played my best game personally, but Bruce had answers and as usual I couldn't get the kills I needed. Sadly, I got quite disheartened during the game as it just felt pretty hopeless with the initial collapse of the psiloi and then my inability to win hard flanks at the end of the game. But thank you to Bruce for being a good opponent, and sorry that you had to put up with me sulking.
The initial deployments - both armies largely avoided the rough and difficult terrain on the far side of the table
Greek nightmares - WB(S) and El!
Bruce's early maneuvering, while the Ps rush forward to hold up the Seleucids
The psiloi begin to get pushed back, and will soon start dying
a close up of the psiloi(O) who definitely got the better of the greek psiloi!
the game at the bottom of bound 3, the psiloi are disintegrating but the cavalry are posing a serious threat
The sacred band lead the counter-charge against the warband, while the remaining psiloi work the flanks
The warband disintegrate, and the companion general makes contact with the sacred band
The broken warband and the victorious sacred band
The greek cavalry general about to hit the knight X in the rear... it went poorly
the few remaining cavalry on both sides - the knight X have just turned around
These spear went impetuously into the Aux(S), it went better than expected, but didn't really achieve much!
not a great photo, but the companion general surrounded on all sides by greeks. He'd live to see out the battle (unlike most of those spear!)
A wider picture of the battle, the Greek lines are getting very thin but they have hard flanks on enough elements to win the game... if they rolled high enough!
aaaand it goes well for the Seleucids - lots of dead spear, no dead pike or companions
Vincent Cholewa
Well played both and hard luck Josh. It sounds like you had the game if the surrounded general had lost 🎲 Josh Barton
It certainly would have helped! but oh well, back to medieval armies for me :p
Kelly Gay I'm really not sure it's you Josh, Spear armies are tough to win with anyway. And many greek armies seem to lack any auto kills options so its always a slog no matter how you play. I would love to play a greek army, but I can't bring myself to do it!! K Josh Barton thank you Kelly Gay :) I certainly have better luck with my English 100YW army. I certainly agree that the lack of quick kills is a major problem but when I started the army I'd imagined that spear would win out in a endurance game, but that was wrong! It's just a pity because I really like the look and idea behind the Greek army. I might look at reworking it into a Syracusian army at some point. That might work better but that'll be in the future!
Alastair Donald Spear in DBMM. When DBMM was being written I tried to get Phil Barker to change his views on the Bd/Sp interaction but he was adamant that Bd should beat Sp*. This has led to the quick kill against Sp and they don’t have an equivalent. Now, given the maths, SpO in deep formation often knock over BdO single deep lines. The Sp may lose a few elements but they will usually get them. However, BdS will always get SpS or SpO. It may not happen immediately, it may take 4 or so bounds, but at one point the Bd throw higher and wipe out the Sp - usually happens in a bound too. Sometimes BdO do it too, but not as often. Same with WbS, and it’s a shame Bruce used them against your Hoplite army. That was not fair play. Worse, WbS sweep away both ranks of Sp adding the double whammy of losing 2-4 ME depending on whether the Sp are S or not. Sure, you’ll get a few with your SpS Superior +2 but it’s never enough, and he’s only losing 1/2 an ME.
It’s the biggest poot in DBMM, and why I bought my WOTR army. My Spartan army is an interesting fight against the Thebans or other Hoplite armies, but just a victim if my opponent has a lot of Bd, particularly S. My advice is to have friendly games with them, and emphasise the FRIENDLY bit by negotiating opposing armies with no BdS or WbS. The rules just aren’t up to being fair to Sp with some of the interactions. Spear armed troops were the most common foot soldier in ancient times, and there was a reason for it - spear was a damn good weapon.
Al the Spartan
*. I tried to convince Phil Baker that blade and spear were, in fact, very similar in battlefield performance. The best examples I could find were the interactions between the Romans and Carthaginians in the Punic wars, where the spear from Carthage had a very even outcome against the blade from Rome. It was a even 50:50 result if you analysed out the various battles where the Roman blade ran into the Carthaginian spear. However, this ricocheted off the forehead of Phil Barker who could not get past his prejudice that a blade element was superior to a spear element, quoting some bizarre view that a blade element fencing in front of spears would be more efficient. This is irrelevant, as a few blade experts, if they were that, pouncing around in front of a spear formation, would still be overwhelmed by the 7 to 8 closely formed spearman facing them and stabbing them simultaneously, or knocking them over in the othismos. Josh Barton That's a very interesting point about blade and spear. It also makes me wonder why (if Phil was right) the Roman legions morphed into Sp instead of the overall better blade. As it is the only two match that spear seem to efficiently win are Bw and Aux in the open, as you noted they do okay against Bd(O), Pk and lighter Kn but it's hardly a reliable win!
Warband are hell, I frequently joke about how much I hate them given some of the stuffings I've received by warband armies. On a more serious note I cannot for the life of me see why they kill foot two ranks deep and knight and elephant do not. It seems especially bad given how cheap warband are :( I'm okay with Bruce bringing them, the Galacians were historical enemies of the Greeks (then again I think most of the Gauls and Germans should be Aux anyway).
I was mulling over how to make spear better last night and I wondered if maybe making their 2nd rank bonus applying on both bounds against everything that Pike get it against, and then an additional bonus for a 3rd rank on the enemies' bound. It would make them more durable in depth and keep them distinguished from pike by being more defensive. I dunno there are probably all sorts of problems that would emerge though! 
Alastair Donald The Galatians came up too, and if I recall they were eventually heavily defeated by the Greeks. I think they won one battle where they heavily outnumbered the Greeks that were there and just overwhelmed them with numbers. Phil got some idea in his head that warband sweeps things away. It was frustrating dealing with him in these matters as he was focussed on the differences between these troop types, when there probably wasn’t that much in it. If you take the van Wees examples he thought hoplites were like warbands anyway - hence the impetuous irregular rating for most citizen hoplites. Certainly there was some difference between the citizen hoplites and the Spartans who were characterised as advancing at a slow, measured pace to the sound of flutes. The depth of Hoplite formations has always been debated, and what effect they got from it. Descriptions of Spartan formations span from one rank (yep, one rank) up to 16 deep. Then there’s the famous 50 rank deep theban one, although how that works with a front rank of Sacred Band has never been explained to me. I’d thy lead it (and they are described as doing so) then they have to die for the depth of the formation to take effect. The problem was no one was game testing hoplites/spear except for me. You could tell the others in the rewriting group had their own prejudices and were happy to see the spear effectiveness curtailed. That doesn’t mean they didn’t support spear against, say, sparabara, but were not keen on seeing them do well/survive against Bd or Wb. Josh Barton I'd love to have been a fly on the wall for some of the game design. It certainly sounds like an interesting process.
I can understand the desire to differentiate between troop types, even if exaggerates the real life differences it's good for game play (unless one cheap troop type sweeps everything else away!)
As for depth of spear, you know more than me, so please corrent me if I'm wrong but I thought the second rank of spear represented the weight of the back ranks pushing the front ranks forward. As for the earlier types of hoplites, I got more of an Irr Aux(S) vibe from van Wees' discussion of the Illiad, with formations tightening and loosening as needed, and fighting both at range and up close. But then again from what I remember that's how most of the Germans and Gauls (so yep probably including the galatians!) were depicted as fighting, which again brings us back to your point about the troops being quite similar!
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