Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Raphia Project Part 5

Work has kept me rather busy the past few months leaving little time for painting or blogging.   This coming weekend I will be running several games at the Pacificon Gaming Exposition.  One will be Raphia using Scutarii.

I calculated the point totals for both armies and arrived at the following:

Unit Type Attack  Defense Morale Cost Ptolemy Selecucid
Guard Cavalry 5 5 11 11 11 44
Settler Cavalry 4 5 10 10 50 80
Mercenary Cavalry 3 5 11 10 40 0
Guard/Mercenary Phalanx 3 6 11 9 234 270
Macedonian/Settler Phalanx 3 6 10 8 448 320
Egyptian Phalanx 3 6 9 7 280 0
Arab/Asiatic Infantry 3 5 9 5 0 200
Thracians/Galatians 3 5 11 7 84 28
Indian Elephants 4 6 10 13 0 325
African Elephants 3 6 10 12 216 0
1363 1267

Ptolemy's armie has an eight percentage points advantage over the Seleucid army.  There have been some historians who have argued that the 20,000 Egyptians should be part of the 25,000 man part of the phalanx.   Phil Sabin has shown in his Lost Battles Book that they should be seperate.   The above totals also indicates the same.   If they were removed from the order of battle, the Arabs and Asiatic infantry would have to be reduced to an attack value of 2 and morale of 8 for an 80 point reduction.   In addition the Seleucid settler phalanx would also have to have its attack and morale reduced for another 80 or possibly 120 points.  This would leave the Seleucid army with a very fragile infantry center.

Including the Egyptians gives both armies infantry centers with an equal frontage of 49 units/bases. 
On Ptolemy's side the Settler and Egyptian Phalanx is 32 ranks deep, the other phalanx units are 16 ranks deep, and the Thracians and Galatians are 8 ranks deep.   On the Selucid side the Settler Phalanx is 32 ranks deep, the Argyraspids, mercenaries, Arabs, and Asiatics are 16 ranks deep, while the Thracians and other peltasts are 8 ranks deep. For 40mm bases the armies will fit on a 10 foot wide table, 60mm would need a 14 to 15 foot wide table, and 80mm would need about 18 to 20 feet.