Cynoscephalae - The Battle

Following on from the set-up post, here's how the refight actually played out, using To the Strongest rules in my second Phalanx versus Legion recreation. 

A Slow Start

Oddly enough, the game started off very historically.

The Roman right just couldn't get going. Activation roll after activation roll failed, and the wing shuffled forward at a snail's pace towards hills that were, for now, still empty. Over on the Macedonian left, Nicanor was having exactly the trouble he had historically: getting the phalanx files into any kind of order was proving a nightmare, with battalions still trickling up from the rear and trying to sort themselves into a coherent line.

Meanwhile, on the Macedonian left, the cavalry piled straight into a fast, bruising melee that would run on for two or three rounds, both sides trading blows without either gaining the upper hand.

On the other flank, things followed the history books rather nicely. Philip, commanding his right-wing phalanx and the Agema, pushed his men down the hill and straight at the Romans. The legions counter-attacked, and the two sides settled into a grinding, prolonged melee. Only one phalanx managed to punch its way through the Roman line — and promptly discovered the classic phalanx problem: try turning a formation that dense once it's committed. It wasn't going anywhere fast.

The Roman Left attacks Philip's Right Flank

Round Four – Flamininus Commits

By round four, Flamininus decided it was time to act. Like his historical counterpart, he could see the Macedonian line fragmenting, with gaps opening up, and rode over to his right wing in person to get the attack moving.

It didn't quite go his way at first — the Macedonian attack on that flank actually faltered, and the phalanx-versus-legion slugfest in the centre ground on with neither side able to land a decisive blow. Whatever advantage the phalanx got from fighting downhill, the Romans clawed back with their knack for rallying and rotating troops through the ranks. Say what you like about the legion, it's an awkward, stubborn thing to shift.

On the left, Flamininus pushed his own right wing forward. Nicanor, meanwhile, was learning the hard way just how difficult it is to get a phalanx into any kind of formation mid-battle. A line did eventually form, but it had drifted rightward, leaving the Macedonian centre thin and exposed, held only by the mercenaries and Thracians.

On the Macedonian Left, Nicanor finds it difficult 

to form the phalanx into a battle line

The Collapse

And then it all started to unravel for Philip.

First the Thessalian cavalry quit the field, tearing open a gap between the phalanx and the guard cavalry and leaving Philip dangerously exposed to being surrounded. On the left it got worse still — the phalanx, under constant pressure before it had even properly formed up, began to lose cohesion. The Thracians broke from the centre, and the mercenaries, reading the way the odds were shifting, decided discretion was the better part of valour and made themselves scarce.

With the Macedonian line in tatters, the Romans poured into the gaps, especially on the left. Nicanor's own phalanx broke, and he was surrounded. That was that — the battle was over.

The Legion have exploited the gaps in the 

Macedonian formation and has flanked the Phalanx. 

The Verdict

All in all, the game reproduced the historical outcome pretty faithfully. Philip found himself neatly surrounded, though he could have cut his losses and escaped with the guard cavalry, and on the right the phalanx could still have managed an organised, if costly, fighting retreat rather than the rout it suffered.

Great fun to play, though it does demand a bit of discipline in managing your cards and chits — it's easy to let activation priorities get away from you. The other lesson I've taken from this one is entirely cosmetic: my general bases need to be redone to make the commanders stand out more clearly on the table. Games should look good, after all.

Next up in Legion versus Phalanx, we head east to Asia Minor for the Battle of Magnesia.

London Chronicles – Gaslight, Rift-Tech, and Supeheroes

Welcome to the dawn of my new campaign environment - London in 1880.

For a while now, I’ve been tinkering with a setting that has refused to leave my head. It’s a world where the soot of the Industrial Revolution mixes with cosmic radiation, where ancient Egyptian mysticism is treated as a corporate asset, and where the line between machine and mankind is violently blurred. A world whet the normal barrier of existence is crumbling. 

Welcome to the world of the;

London, 1880.

The British Empire stands at the height of its power — and increasingly, astride the heavens themselves. But beneath the gaslight and grandeur lies a city transformed, where Victorian ingenuity, Egyptian mysteries, and otherworldly energies interweave in ways that challenge reality itself.

Bronze automatons patrol the streets, powered by Rift energy first tapped by Charles Babbage. The Resurrected Labour — reanimated dead bound by rediscovered Egyptian rites — toil silently in the factories and docks. Airships drift above the Thames. And unbeknownst to most Londoners, their city sits at the crossing point of three ancient currents: the Abyssal force of creation, the Charnel energies that guard the border between life and death, and the elusive Enlightenment current said to grant glimpses of something transcendent.

Two revolutions have reshaped the city in a single generation — Meckmancy and Necromancy — and they are beginning, worryingly, to converge. Hybrid constructs blur the line between machine and corpse. Shamblers speak in tongues no one taught them. And ten years ago, Babbage’s own Nexus Engine tore open the sky above the Crystal Palace, killing hundreds and unleashing three days when the dead rose on their own and the spaces between buildings did not quite hold their shape.
The government called it a catastrophe. The Meckmancers called it a lesson. But in the shadows of the Cult of the Crawling Eye and the Daughters of Sekhmet, a different word is used: a warning.
This is London Chronicles — a world of steam, sorcery, and superheroes, where Victorian optimism has just discovered its limits. But who moves through this city, and what they’re willing to do about what’s coming, is a story still being written.

This is the world of the Hidden Society,  a group of special individuals who have pledged to protect the Queen, the Empire and mankind. 

Introducing: The Hidden Society

Protectors of the Empire. Guardians of London. Left to right:

Mr. Tonks
Charlotte Holmes — the Symbiotic Detective
The Augmented Man
The Voltaire
The city doesn’t know it needs them yet.

Next  -  some background on these characters - some invented, some adapted, and others stolen. Also ann introduction to the factions vying for London’s soul — and the first names you’ll need to know before Episode 1 begins.

Cynoscephalae 197BC Set - Up

The battle of Cynoscephalae was fought in Thessaly in 197 BC between a Roman-Aetolian army led by Titus Quinctius Flamininus and an Antigonid Macedonian army led by King Philip V. The battle was the decisive engagement of the Second Macedonian War. The Roman victory forced Macedon to relinquish its possessions south of Mount Olympus, including the so-called "Fetters of Greece" — the fortresses at Demetrias, Chalcis and Acrocorinth, which had given Macedon its grip on southern Greece.
This refight is the second instalment in my Legion versus Phalanx series. The first was Pydna, fought by Philip's son Perseus nearly three decades later — so I appear to be working backwards through time. For Pydna, I used Strength and Honour, my usual rules for the period, but for Cynoscephalae, I've turned to To the Strongest, which I've played many times before, mostly for the Crusader era. As with Pydna, I've adapted the historical scenario for solo play by leaning into the considerable uncertainty surrounding these ancient battles.

Legion versus Phalanx from Myth and Memory

The Battle

Cynoscephalae was an encounter battle. Both commanders were looking for a decisive engagement, but the fight itself began by accident. As so often in ancient battles, a clash between skirmishers and cavalry gradually drew in, first, the advance guards, then the main bodies of both armies.

Philip was quicker to reinforce his light troops and pushed his phalanx up onto the ridge crest, so the fighting initially took place on the Roman side of the high ground. Visibility had already been hampered by mist left over from the previous night's storm. When Philip's phalanx finally crested the ridge, he found the Roman army arrayed on the slopes below. Flamininus, watching the Macedonians push back his skirmish line, led his left wing forward in a counterattack, while his right wing — screened by elephants and light infantry — was ordered to hold its position.
This is the point at which my simulation begins: the two main battle lines facing off, with the skirmishing forces already pushed back into a supporting role. 

The Armies

As with most ancient battles, considerable uncertainty surrounds the narrative above. There is, however, broad modern agreement on the numbers involved, and most reconstructions still follow Hammond's classic account. Yet there remains sufficient uncertainty to vary the order of battle. Below is a basic order of battle used in my reconstruction. 

Macedonia

16,000 Phalangites - five units on the left and four on the right flank. 
There's a question over the phalanx's quality. Philip is reported to have conducted a wide-ranging recruitment drive ahead of the war, so it's plausible that some phalanx battalions on the Macedonian left were raw. One option is to field additional phalanx units while downgrading some to raw status. 
2,000 Agema — elite phalangites, often (misleadingly) described as peltasts; deployed on the right wing
2,000 Thracians — on the left wing, perhaps closer to the centre. They may have fought as light infantry, a warband, or thureophoroi, a loose infantry type named for the large oval shield (*thureos*) they carried, which allowed them to skirmish. I have classified the Thracians as thureophoroi.
2,000 Illyrians (Tralles) — javelin-armed light infantry
1,500 mercenaries — either light infantry or thureophoroi; I've used them as thureophoro in this refight and placed them next to the Thracians.
2,000 cavalry — good-quality Macedonian and Thessalian heavy horse. One unit is likely to have been a veteran guard unit.

Rome

4 legions — the sources are slightly confused on terminology, but the best reading is two Roman and two allied legions, divided evenly between the two wings. There's no certainty over the quality of the legions. Rome's overseas campaigns meant its citizens were spending longer under arms and growing steadily more professional, and Flamininus brought with him veterans who had served under Scipio in Africa. Much of the Roman infantry can therefore reasonably be treated as veteran, though this remains debatable.
6,000 Aetolian infantry — probably thureophoroi of uneven quality
1,200 Athamanian infantry — probably javelin-armed light troops of uneven quality.
800 Cretan archers — good quality
2,000 Roman and Italian heavy cavalry, on the left wing
400 Aetolian cavalry — they fought well in the battle, which suggests veteran heavy cavalry, though Aetolia is more usually associated with light horse. 
Elephants — an unknown number, but sufficient to cover all or part of the Roman right flank.

Command

The sources say very little about the command structure of either army. Both Philip and Flamininus were senior generals in the classic mould, detached from any single unit and free to move across the battlefield. There's no mention of a second Roman commander beyond the unnamed tribune who led the flanking charge that decided the battle. However, there must have been a senior officer on the Roman right, but that wing showed remarkably little initiative until Flamininus rode over in person and set it in motion. So the Roman army can be played with either one c general and a hero, the tribune, or a second command with an attached general can be added.
On the Macedonian side, Philip was supported by Nicanor, who was tasked with bringing the Macedonian left up from camp to the ridge. At least one more Macedonian officer likely went unmentioned in the sources, so I've added an extra commander of my own, attached to the mercenary unit.

What If?

Between the uncertain troop types and the patchy command structure, there's plenty of room for "what if" thinking. A few other points are worth considering, too.
The mist left by the previous night's storm had hindered visibility during the morning skirmishing and arguably helped trigger the battle in the first place, but it had cleared by the time the two main armies came face to face. What if it hadn't?
The sources are silent on how the overnight rain affected the ground. Where the slopes were slippery, one option is to increase activation costs for the first couple of turns. It's also unclear just how broken the terrain was: Hammond stressed the steepness of the ridge, while a more recent study (Morton) argues the ground was uneven and full of blind spots rather than genuinely rough or broken. A reasonable compromise is to scatter some rough going on both sides of the ridge, across the ground Nicanor has to cross to bring up the Macedonian left.
To reflect these uncertainties, a roll can be made on a 'What If' table before the battle commences.

The possibility of a variation can be determined with a simple d6 roll; a 1-2 means a variable is operative.
Then roll 1d10 for the variable in play. 0 = roll twice. Then throw 1d6 to see if the variable is active. If dice exceed the range, no change is made to the basic setup.

	Variable	D6	Result
1	Morning mist	1–2	Mist lingers for two full turns; all shooting halved, command activation costs +1
2	Ground conditions	1–2	Slopes are slick from the storm; +1 activation cost for both sides, turns 1–2 only
3	Macedonian left-wing phalanx quality	1–2	Two battalions raw; add one extra small phalanx unit to represent the wider levy, also raw
4	Thracian infantry (Macedonian left)	1–2	Deploy as a warband
5	Roman/Allied legion quality	1–2	Left-wing veteran (Scipio's African veterans), right-wing trained
6	Aetolian cavalry	1–2	Light cavalry, but treat as elite for this battle only
7	Roman right-wing command	1–3	Uninspired subordinate; -1 to activation rolls until Flamininus personally joins the wing
8	Extra Macedonian officer	1–4	Present, attached to the mercenary unit as described
9	Elephant numbers	1–3	Full screen — cover the whole Roman right flank

Next

Part Two will cover my refight of the battle using To the Strongest.