Tuesday 30 July 2024

Strength and Honour Battle of Chaeronea (86 BC) Mithridatic v Roman

A first outing for a newly painted 2mm Mithridatic army against Pete's Romans in the 'Battle of Chaeronea' scenario from the Strength and Honour rules (with a couple of small changes to the Mithridatic list as I'd not finished painting everything yet!).

The Mithridatic force is more numerous but lower quality. The plan is to overwhelm the Roman wings while the centre delays the powerful Legions:


The first action sees the the Mithridatic scythed chariots quickly defeated by Roman cavalry as is traditional for scythed chariots in most wargame rules:

However, the chariots have done a job in that they allowed the Mithridatic cavalry and Cataphracts to gang up on the exposed Roman cavalry:

In the centre the Phalanx attempts to crush a Legion that has advanced further than it's support:

On the left the cavalry and cataphracts disappointingly only manage to drive the Roman cavalry across the front of their lines: 

On the right however the Mithridatic cavalry have combined well to make serious inroads into the Romans facing them:

The Mithridatics call for a VP count (you don't know how close the enemy or even your own army is to breaking as you pick up 'setback' and 'disaster' cards and only reveal them on a challenge!). The Romans narrowly fall to defeat with the Mithridatics close to their own break point:

The 2mm armies really give you an impression of a battle taking place even though they are so small. They are also surprisingly heavy, especially the phalanx and cataphracts. The rules are unusual in that firstly you seem to lose very few actual units (I lost one I think, Pete lost maybe three) with most of the damage being inflicted by setbacks. 

One positive though is that they can easily represent other armies/troop types with just a change of label!