Magnesia Played by Email

Nick's Romans

v.

PeterC's Seleucids

The Romans are significantly outnumbered, but generally ahve better quality troops, better morale & better command & control.

The Romans deployed first with their Heavy Cavalry on the right, legionaries in the centre, Perumene Allies on the left & elephants in rear.

The Seuecids placed Cavalry on the left to match the Roman Cavalry on that flank with elephants in front.  Next to those were the 4 phalanx units echeloned forward to the right with the Aregaraspids in the lead.  On their right were more elphants & two warbads, then peltasts and Medium Cavalry on the far right.  A reserve of their best cavalry was placed behind the warbands.

The Romans ordered the Legions to wheel left, for the Pergumenes to move forward a little to make room & the cavalry & velites to hold the left.

The Seleucids charged forward with the whole front line.  The 1st pic is just before the front lines come into contact.   On the Seleucid left their cavalry followed up the pigs at a discrete distance and when the pigs were replused took over the attack. The phalanx advanced slowly.  The grotties locked up & slogged it out in the centre.  The medium cavalry and peltasts moved around the Pergume flank.

The second Roman line halted facing half the phalanxes while the front line continued to the left helping out the Pergumenes to hold the flank.  Pic 2 is the Roman right.  Pic 3 is the Roman left.  The phalanx is closing in outflanking the Roman infantry, but itself in danger on its right.

Pic 4 is the climax of the battle.  The Roman cavalry won, rallied and has forced the end phalanx to form hedgehog.  The Argaraspids on the other end have been charged frontally by 2 maniples.  The next one is pinned in front by 1 maniple with another ready to charge it in flank.  The third phalanx is trying to manoeuvre around the Roman flank.  The Argaraspids broke.  The phalanx threatened in flank won & luckily pursued rather than rallied & avoided the flank attack.  But their good luck was their mate's misfortune, the 3rd phalanx copped the flank attack instead and was routed.  With 2 phalanxes routed, one pinned down by cavalry & other making whoopie in the Pergumene baggage train, this was high water mark for the Romans.  But they couldn't do any better than that.  A fresh cataphract from reserve drove off the Roman cavalry to free the last phalanx.  Repeated cavalry charges on the Roman left reduced most of the units there to shaken status causing the Romans to fail their Army Morale Test.

The experiment with PBEM was judged a success & we intend to do some more.  I ran the game like a solo game except I had general orders from the players.  The players were send regular sit reps & pics & sent new orders as the battle progressed.  It took a few email exchages to get it all set up, but once it got going we did the main fight in a night.