2nd Mantinea for Spartans and Successors

2nd Mantinea was the selection for the  Society of Ancients Battle Day this year. As possibly the largest hoplite battle ever fought, it sits squarely in the target area for Spartans and Successors. When I wrote the rules I put in 12 historic scenarios. 2nd Mantinea wasn't one of them. Well, I was keeping the number down to a round dozen, so some couldn't make the cut.

SOA member Nick Harbud played S&S at the last SOA conference I attended  and took a liking to them. He therefore put together a 2nd Mantinea scenario for the battle day, and has generously permitted me to post it here, following its publication in Slingshot.

This is Nick's map. The hills to left and right are classified as steep, so are only passable to Light Infantry (LI). For the first turn the Thebans have the initiative. Army breakpoints are six for the Thebans, and five for the Spartans. As you can see the Spartans are outnumbered 12:10. This is balanced by the Thebans mostly being poor quality. All the scenarios in the core rulebook have equal numbers of units a side, so the choice to have them imbalanced is new to the system (i.e. I have never played a game with uneven numbers of units), but seems to have worked well.

At the battle day the battle was fought twice. The Spartans won the first game, with the second being a hard fought draw that ran out of time. This is unusual for S&S, which usually gives a quick outcome, but apparently both armies passed army break tests repeatedly, so hanging on well past their best before date.

I'm really pleased, nay excited, that someone else has picked up S&S and written a scenario for it. The battle reports in Slingshot also seem to me to describe an exciting and plausible game.

And S&S got a mention on the cover of Slingshot, too.

If you aren't familiar with S&S, there's a tab at the top of the page that has more of a description.