Antiochus the Great took the throne of the Seleucid Empire in 223 BC. By this time, the most distant eastern provinces had broken from the empire under their own Hellenistic rulers. The rest of the empire was busy battling Ptolemaic Egypt and other foes to stop them. However, once Antiochus the Great came to power he shifted his focus and travelled eastward to re-claim the lost provinces.
The Anabasis of Antiochus would last 10 years and be largely successful. He and his forces would battle the break-away provinces and bring them back into nominal obedience. Antiochus even crossed into India on his journey similar to his ancestor Seleucus.
This is a good time for wargamers since there is very little details remaining about Antiochus adventure, the armies involved, or even what the troops looked like. Therefore, there is a lot of scope for playing out whole ancient campaigns in the East.
Forces
This period is a fertile place for wargaming as it is ill documented. Very few sources remain and there is scope for a series of battles and even a campaign to take place in this region and time period. Today's battle will represent one of the lost battles fought on this 10 year campaign to the east. Our forces will be drawn from the Seleucid List and the Minor State/Lesser Satrapy list.
We know little specifics about the Seleucid army that went East and even less about the Greco-Bactrian and other provinces armies that opposed them. We can assume that they were based on a Hellenistic model as that was their heritage. This gives us free reign to choose the units we want to use!
Seleucids
1 Bronze Shields
1 Theurophoroi
2 Light Infantry
1 Heavy Cavalry- Commander
Greco-Bactrians
2 White Shields
1 Elephant - Commander
2 Skirmishers
1 Light Cavalry
The Greco-Bactrians have a 1 point advantage and a 1 unit advantage.
Mission
We rolled up a mission from the main rulebook as normal. We determined we would be playing a Control the Battlefield scenario during Bad Weather as a complication.
In a Control the Battlefield game, both sides are trying to touch terrain to "control" it and score points. The army controlling the most terrain at the end of the game wins! This will force our units to split up in order to be holding the terrain. The Greco-Bactrian advantage in units may play a big role.
The complication of Bad Weather will slow us all down 1 MU and improve our armor against shooting attacks by 1. It is raining pretty heavily as we move into the area.
Set-up
We also randomly rolled up terrain per the rules. The Seleucid side is 1-3 while the Greco-Roman side is on the opposite side and is 4-6. We are playing on a 72MU x 48 MU board with 1 MU equal to 1 inch.
Spring- Difficult
Swamp- Difficult
No terrain
Swamp- Difficult
Grove of Trees- Difficult
Walls- Obstacle
This will be a difficult board to get across thanks to all the difficult terrain. The heavy rains must be making the area into a swampy mess!
We follow the normal rules for deployment and take turns placing units with the Greco-Bactrians placing first. Each unit can deploy up to 6 MU in from their deployment edge.
After set-up, we have the following units. Seleucids have the Light Infantry in the right to head into the swamps and spring area. The edge of the terrain has the Theurophoroi then the Bronze Shields and Heavy Cavalry anchor the left. The Greco-Bactrians have the Skirmishers ready for the Swamps, the White shields bracketing the Elephant in the center, and then the light cavalry on the right as a screen.
You can read the results and details of the battle on the Blood and Spectacles blog:
http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2021/12/battle-report-wars-of-republic-anabasis.html
