Boeotian Machinations: Delium 424 BC

[MengJiao]

  Supposedly this is the first battle in history with a multilayered sneaky strategy.  This seems unlikely to me .  Mister Pagondas simply seems to have had
one ploy and one lucky guess up his sleeve.  The ploy: use a double-sized phalanx to smash through and roll up the enemy.  the Lucky guess: send some cavalry over to help the side with the normal-sized phalanxes when it gets massacred.

   On a side note:  Socrates was in this battle and according to Plato, Alcibiades (on horseback, as an aristocratic youth) saw Socrates stalking "like a pelican" grimmly along in the Athenian rout.  Socrates' strategy (as a lowly infantryman) was to look like the nastier of choices for chasing.  The Thebans chased down other Athenians and left nasty old Socrates and his friend Laches alone.  Of course Alcibiades had no trouble routing to safety since he had a horse.

   But, before things went wrong, the battlefield looked like this:

[MengJiao]

  Supposedly this is the first battle in history with a multilayered sneaky strategy.  This seems unlikely to me .  Mister Pagondas simply seems to have had
one ploy and one lucky guess up his sleeve.  The ploy: use a double-sized phalanx to smash through and roll up the enemy.  the Lucky guess: send some cavalry over to help the side with the normal-sized phalanxes when it gets massacred.

   On a side note:  Socrates was in this battle and according to Plato, Alcibiades (on horseback, as an aristocratic youth) saw Socrates stalking "like a pelican" grimmly along in the Athenian rout.  Socrates' strategy (as a lowly infantryman) was to look like the nastier of choices for chasing.  The Thebans chased down other Athenians and left nasty old Socrates and his friend Laches alone.  Of course Alcibiades had no trouble routing to safety since he had a horse.

  So for this battle the Boeotian/Theban plan is to roll up the Athenians from the Athenian Left and I'm keeping to that plan until routs hit 50%.  Meanwhile the Athenian plan is to do roughly the same thing, but with a less concentrated blow: more of a pivot than a punch.

  So we are halfway to turn 2, maybe 20 minutes into the battle.  There has been heavy fighting for the skirmishers and Light cavalry.  As per the scenario rules, the Athenian hoplites can't move until they see a Theban hoplite advancing (advance being a technical term in the rules in fact).  The Thebans took a "normal" move as the rules put it, and now they have made their hoplite advance -- the first time I did it they were at 50% cohesion loss, but a check of the rules revealed they didn't quite have the movement points to throw themselves into confusion.  So I pulled them back and re-ran the move: the wise walked or went around the rugged bit of Delium's sacred turf and the foolhardy trotted up -- but not so fast as to run downhill in dangerous disorder.

   Anyway the Athenians (including, Socrates, Laches and Alcibiades) are watching in surprise as the Thebans roll into view and waver into some loss of cohesion on the rough ground.  I'd say sitting still would be a good move, but the Athenian plan calls for a hoplite advance (and what hoplite plan doesn't?) and until routs hit 50% that's what they will do.

[bayonetbrant]

I wrote a paper on Alcibiades in college - how that dude hasn't become the subject of an epic miniseries on HBO is beyond me.  He was f'n' nuts but soooooo awesome.

[MengJiao]

I wrote a paper on Alcibiades in college - how that dude hasn't become the subject of an epic miniseries on HBO is beyond me.  He was f'n' nuts but soooooo awesome.

Yikes!  I didn't know much about him and I just read the Wikipedia on him.  Nuts, but awesome seems to cover it, though maybe the nutty but awesome Athenian Empire had something to do with his messy plans.

  I noted that:  W. C. Fields portrays a talking dog named Alcibiades in Poppy (1936 film).

[MengJiao]

   Anyway the Athenians (including, Socrates, Laches and Alcibiades) are watching in surprise as the Thebans roll into view and waver into some loss of cohesion on the rough ground.  I'd say sitting still would be a good move, but the Athenian plan calls for a hoplite advance (and what hoplite plan doesn't?) and until routs hit 50% that's what they will do.

  So the Athenians advance.  The phalanx on the far left rolls a wonderful running advance and routs some skirmishers with only minor cohesion loss.  The next formation walks and stays very steady, but elsewhere to the farther and farther right everybody starts running and gets thrown into some unfortunate confusion at the slope.

  At this point the Thebans are a little worse off, especially if they come down the slope and fall into more disorder before the Athenians come up.  That's going to be crucial chit-pull:

[Bison]

Is this based on the same system as SPQR?

[MengJiao]

Is this based on the same system as SPQR?

  It is, but it is much streamlined (no unit size, no line commands, no "finished" flips, and -- instead -- chit-pulls for command activation).
  The size calculations for shock are done as relative superiority and there are other areas of streamlining such as on the leader counters there are at most only 3 factors instead of 5 (You fight your one-to-one battles with your charisma or capability instead of having a mano-a-mano factor).  It's a much tighter system
and for the first time in the 25 years of the GBOH/SPQR system, I find it works for me solitaire.

[MengJiao]

   Anyway the Athenians (including, Socrates, Laches and Alcibiades) are watching in surprise as the Thebans roll into view and waver into some loss of cohesion on the rough ground.  I'd say sitting still would be a good move, but the Athenian plan calls for a hoplite advance (and what hoplite plan doesn't?) and until routs hit 50% that's what they will do.

  So the Athenians advance.  The phalanx on the far left rolls a wonderful running advance and routs some skirmishers with only minor cohesion loss.  The next formation walks and stays very steady, but elsewhere to the farther and farther right everybody starts running and gets thrown into some unfortunate confusion at the slope.

  At this point the Thebans are a little worse off, especially if they come down the slope and fall into more disorder before the Athenians come up.  That's going to be crucial chit-pull:

  Things went well-chit-wise for the Thebans: the Athenians won the initiative in Turn 3 and were obligated to carry out the plan: the left smashed itself into the supersecret Theban double-powered phalanx and routed, but everywhere else the Athenians steadily routed the Thebans -- the running, the presence of Hippocrates, and the flanking ploy combined to put the Thebans over the total rout line very fast.

   Kind of odd.  I was expecting the sneaky Theban plan to work out somehow.