The Battle of Guagamala

The good folks at wargames journal .com have recently discovered 6mm and moved into the scale in a BIG way! The following article and images has been reproduced from the magazine and is presented here with their kind permission.

These are not people who do things by half measures.....

The Battle of Gaugamela (Arbela) 331BC
By Paul Heywood, Wargames Journal

Introduction
This battle was Alexander's third great battle on his ‘battle-tour’ of the eastern lands. As far as this battle is concerned the terrain conditions were equal for both sides so no-one can claim that strategic use of hills and woods played any part in Alexander's victory.

You can assume that before a battle a very detailed planning process took place, we’ll have to hypothesise because no source has described it, but it is fair to say that the records that are in place do point to a very professional amount of reconnaissance being performed by Alexander’s troops – something he utilised extensively throughout all of his campaign.

Alexander knew exactly the capabilities of his opponent.

The Battle of Gaugamela was a decisive clash between the young Alexander and King Darius III of Persia and was to prove to be the undoing of the mighty Persian Empire.

Fighting the Persians
Persia was a large and powerful country that at its height of dominance stretched from the Greek borders to the Valleys of the Indus. On paper it was a mighty opponent. The way the Persian’s structured its forces was to split itself into Provinces (called Satrapies) and each of these had its own army.

The ‘grand’ army for want of a better term was the one commanded by the Persian Ruler, Darius III, and in the case of invasion could be rallied to join the provincial forces. The heart of the Persian force was its cavalry. The aristocracy of the country formed these core units and in combat they were exceptional.

This cavalry used a hit and run rather than a head-one technique. Persian infantry tended to be ‘light’ infantry and it used plenty of Greek mercenaries. The Persian’s also had an excellent navy – another project for the Wargames Journal crew to dabble with.

In the spring of the 331BD Alexander was ready for his invasion. He left control of Greece in the hands of his faithful commander Antipater, to guard the country with 15,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry.

Alexander is said to have had 30,000 men and 5,100 cavalry, which he led through Thrace and towards Hellespont. However, he expected to pick up many more troops as he made his way towards Persia, swelling his ranks into a formidable fighting force.

The First Battle
When Alexander crossed the Hellespont in April 334BC he had a superbly drilled army under his command. After the crossing he himself headed to the ancient site of Troy and made sacrifices in honour of the Greek heroes of old.

Ahead of him lay a Persian Army encamped at Zelia and it was this army that would move to assault Alexander as he crossed the Troad, a territory intersected by rivers that flowed to the Sea of Marmara. One of these rivers – the Granicus – was to be the site for the beginning of Alexander’s Persian campaign in an area known as the Asian Gates. The Persian army was swelled with Greek mercenaries numbering around 20,000 and these troops were well used to fighting Macedonians.

One of the key troop types in the Macedonian Army was the companion cavalry, an elite fighting force that fought in close order and was used with devastating effect by Alexander. The allied Thessalian cavalry and lancers were very complimentary to the companion cavalry and used as ‘shock’ troops.

But the infantry might of the army was the incredibly well drilled Phalanx. Massive in size, scary to behold these units moved surprisingly well considering their complexity. But the genius lay with the fact that each unit could operate incredibly well on its own, but together as a combined force, under excellent leadership, acted as a slick machine.

At Granicus the Persian leaders elected to place their cavalry at the front of the army near the river and the infantry behind. The logic was as the Macedonians crossed the river they could perform a downhill charge into the disorganised troops, smashing them and winning the day.

But what happened next was somewhat amazing, and in the realms of such battles an incredibly quick. The Macedonian’s mounted an attack using Lancers, Companion Cavalry and Hypaspists against the Persian centre-left.

As the combat heated up Alexander chose to cross the river on the right flank, taking his Royal Squadron and other cavalry with him. Whilst this was happening the rest of Alexander’s crossed the river and the Persian cavalry could not cope with the formed Phalanx.

With cavalry upon them the Persian cavalry fled the battlefield. The infantry did not fair so well. An estimated 1,000 Persian cavalry died that day, but a terrible 10,000 infantry died at the hands of the Macedonians.

Victory on the Granicus left Anatolia open to Alexander and his army. But this defeat was a minor one for the Persians, but a great morale boost for Alexander’s men. Hundreds of miles to the east lay Darius and his royal army, the Persian navy and much more.

Alexander’s campaign had just started and it was set to last many years, with the great man notching up countless victories using guile and wit.

A few of the hundred of phalangites needed for this game.	Some command elements needed for both sides.

Wargaming Gaugamela
Our decision to game this battle in 6mm was driven by several considerations:

The game was to be shown at the Society of Ancients battle day. As we came to the event late with a game we would have struggled to paint up several thousand 28mm figures in time. A smaller scale was needed
Our ranks were split between those who wanted 28mm and those who wanted 15mm or smaller
Warmaster was elected to be our rule set – 10mm or less seemed a good idea
Baccus 6mm were very supportive of our plans
Mark from Rather Nice Painting is a superb 6mm painter and guaranteed that the project would be completed on time

So with the game in mind we sat back and looked at the numbers involved. It is believed that this was a big bash, as in as many as 50,000 Macedonian foot and cavalry facing off against 150,000 to 200,000 Persian foot and cavalry. No matter how you slice this one up it is BIG.

In many ways the battle breaks into several decisive chunks that you can play and if you have the room and budget and figures to do it then this period in 28mm looks stunning. That said 6mm is a wonderful way of getting lots of figures and units on the tabletop.

By way of a quick recap Warmaster works simply with units represented by elements on a tabletop, with three being the common way of showing a unit at full strength. After a bit of digging around we more or less settled on the following Orders of Battle for Warmaster:

Macedonians
1 x Agema Cavalry
1 x Thessalian Cavalry
4 x Companion Cavalry
3 x Cavalry
2 x Light Cavalry
3 x Archers
3 x Skirmishers
5 x Macedonian Phalanx
3 x Hypaspists – not in Phalanx formation
4 x Agema Pezhetairoi
8 x Pezhetairoi
10 x League Hoplites

34 x Infantry
9 x Cavalry

Persians
6 x Noble Cavalry
3 x Skirmish Cavalry with bows
11 x Cavalry
10 x Light Cavalry
3 x Skirmishers
9 x Levy Foot Archers
15 x Levy
6 x Greek Hoplites
1 x Melophoroi
4 x Archers
8 x Chariots
3 x Elephant

30 x Cavalry
34 x Infantry
8 x Chariots
4 x Elephants

Now these numbers expanded up and down during play testing but the above numbers should give you an idea of size and scale. Our Phalanx’s will consist of 72 plus figures to a unit so the five Macedonian units are made up of 360 figures which gives you an idea of just how many small pieces of metal need to be painted for this game.

To give you an idea of scale if you tried to play this game in 28mm using the Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) rules then the Alexander the Great book produced by Games Workshop Historical recommends 772 foot and 177 horse for the Macedonians and 708 foot and 660 horse and 14 chariots for the Persians.

Now this would look stunning, probably need Wembley to play it and cost many a man the price of a divorce if they tried to own it. I mean, forgetting the metal costs, if you generously said £5 average for the cavalry figures then we are talking £4,200 and the foot would come in at £4,440 if we used a £3 per figure calculation. Add in a few extra bits and pieces and we’re not talking much change out of £10k.

Now the world of 6mm is a totally different option. This project will come in under £1,750 all in to completely model the terrain, buy and paint all figures and then pay for corrective eye surgery for the painters who will be banging out 6,500 or so figures.

Playing the Game
Several of the people who played this game were about to use 6mm figures for the very first time. Some of them were total 28mm scale bigots and it was very amusing to see what happened during the setup and gaming.

Before I go on I’d like to point out that we didn’t make it to the SOA Battle Day due to an accident on the day of travel, so we ended up playing the game a few days later at the Wargames Journal offices.
The game was a huge success and looked great, played great and allowed us to have a great time. Now the three greats is a good thing for any game to collect.

Getting 6,500 pieces onto a gaming table makes for an exciting time and it took a 12 foot by 6 foot table to make it all work. The wonderful part of this game is that even using this many units (over 100 Warmaster units, 47 of which are cavalry and chariots) we still had flanks to play! Amazing to see 15 units of cavalry charge off on a flank (something like 200 or so figures) and slam into the enemy, smash them and keep going.

Next up will be to get out 6mm Ancient Indians painted and then we’ll be able to do all of the major battles in Alexander’s campaign. The elephants and chariots will make this one an interesting affair to play.

More amusing is to see the thick of 2,000 figures on the table that make up the Macedonian Phalanxes deploy. This is an awesome site that just has to be seen to be appreciated.

A sweeping view of the battle	Persian Chariots - fiddly to assemble, but great fun to play with!
Persian Cavalry advance towards the Macedonian Centre	Greek Cavalry

In Conclusion
If you want to see more of this game then come and look at the Wargames Journal webzine (www.wargamesjournal.com) and watch out for future large scale 6mm games.

We’re planning a 10-15,000 piece game based on the exploits of Scipio and Hannibal at The Battle of Zama…..Gettysburg is on route…..Waterloo…..and much, much more.

We’d like to thank Pete from Baccus for his support and look forward to working with him on future projects. Mark from Rather Nice Painting was an inspiration with his brush and the staff writers of Wargames Journal made for great opponents.

The SOA were kind enough to invite to the event, we’re very sorry we couldn’t make it. The good news is that they’re been kind enough to invite us to another event and asked us to roll the game out – so hopefully it’ll be out and about soon.