Battle of Ilipa 206 BC

I always try to do a big ancient refight at the end/start of the year, and this time I went for Scipio's almost forgotten victory. I mean, everyone knows about Zama, but Ilipa doesn't always come to mind when you think of Scipio's battles. In many ways this was Scipio's masterpiece. It is a cleverly constructed victory that uses a Cannae-esque approach without the cynical destruction of your own army centre that mark's Hannibal's great victory.

I had a degree of agonising over the forces and the rule mods required. The two sources either say that Scipio was outnumbered 70,000 to 50,000 (Polybius) or at evens 50,000 to 50,000 (Livy). Sabin goes with Polybius' numbers and his model makes that work. Having played the game I'm more inclined to Livy's headcount. If Hasdrubal had such a preponderance in numbers why did he not attack on one of the earlier days?

Neil's army list for the Carthaginians isn't very good. In any event, for this game I fiddled about a fair bit to try and balance it all up to take into account all of the factors in the battle. Hasdrubal's warband allies lacked a bit of fizz in this battle, and his African Vets didn't really perform. I ended up with forces that looked like this:

Troops	Type	Armour	Qual	Number	Comment
African Infantry	Heavy	Light	Ave	6	Hoplites 3-6 hit until base loss
Allies	Auxiliary	Light	Ave	16
Skirmishers	Light	Light	Levy	2	Javelins
Spanish cavalry	Heavy	Light	Ave	1
Numidian cavalry	Light	Light	Ave	1	Javelins
Elephant		Extra Heavy		1

That's 27 units with a break level of 7.

The Romans looked like this:

Troops	Type	Armour	Qual	Number	Comment
Hastati/Principes	Heavy	Medium	Elite	8	Manipular support rule
Triarii	Heavy	Heavy	Elite	2	Manipular support rule
Velites	Light	Light	Ave	2	Javelins
Skirmishers	Light	Light	Levy	1	Javelins
Allies	Auxiliary	Light	Ave	4
Equites	Heavy	Medium	Elite	3

That's 20 units with a break level of 5.

I used my standard elephant rule, which almost neuters them (they're not the rampaging battle winner of Neil's original rules), and also allowed General re-rolls. Scipio was allowed selective re-rolls, the others were all or nothing.

For this game, played strangely enough on a Monday for the Monday Night Group, we had four players, Will, Chris K, Richard and Phil.

I set the figures up at the position after Scipio has started his flank advance. The Roman players were given a free redeploy with the legions on the wings, but declined to take it. They relied instead on bulldozing through, making use of the manipular support rules that improve the "to hit" and morale rolls.

Will had the Roman left wing, trusting Richard with the responsibility of being Scipio.

Chris took the Carthaginian right. He didn't fancy the look of facing off against Scipio, so I ran that side until Phil arrived.

I had elephants. Trouble was they were faced with Velites, and I didn't have enough room to get them round and into the heavy infantry.

Chris ordered a full on attack. I suspect we might have been better off refusing the flanks.

The cavalry melee on the Roman right got going fairly early on. It took forever to resolve.

The elephant was suffering at the hands of the Velites.

Scipio's cavalry was making good progress. I had initiated a move to turn the second line of infantry to face that flank to keep them off. Phil continued with it.

The elephants broke and fled, doing little damage. In the actual battle they caused equal damage to both sides and were not decisive, so not a problem really.

Phil & Chris try to work out how to keep Scipio at bay, whilst Richard & Will sit back and relax.

Will's legionaries are crashing into the Carthaginian right, but as they drive through they are enveloped by the Spanish, and start to take heavy casualties. Phil reckoned you needed about a 6:1 ratio to take on a Roman legion, but with flanks exposed 3:1 was more than enough.

The right wing is taking longer to develop. The legions face an easier task as the troops that would be surrounding them have been delegated to stop Scipio's cavalry from turning the flank entirely.

Richard is bringing up his Triarii to stop a break through in the centre from becoming overly problematic.

Will's legion is becoming increasingly beleaguered. His cavalry, despite having a general with re-roll capability, can't get the upper hand, as Chris' troops swarm all over him. The eagle eyed of you will have spotted some Assyrians in there making up the numbers, and some Thracians too.

The African heavy infantry in the centre finally makes contact, and the Romans lose a general. The Romans really need this fight to be delayed a bit longer, and probably should have held them back a bit.

Will's cavalry finally starts to get the upper hand, but Chris has found a spare unit to go and help his chaps out.

Richard is close to a breakthrough with Scipio. Phil is performing one of his famous rearguard actions, keeping his troops in being and a threat for as long as he can.

The light troops are finally out of the way, and the Africans are lining themselves up for a breakthrough (those troops ahead of them, are auxilia, not heavy infantry).

Chris' spare foot join the cavalry melee.

Will is finally fighting his way out of the pocket, but he has taken grievous casualties.

The battle is reaching its crisis point. Will ponders his next move. Chris nurses his tea and wonders who ate all the panettone.

Over on Scipio's wing Hasdrubal is cleverly tying up the two units of Equites whilst also keeping himself out of trouble.

Chris is throwing everything he has at Will to hold him up, whilst the centre is resolved.

The centre is resolving in the favour of the Carthaginians.

Richard has finally won the infantry battle on his wing, and is looking to break out and roll up the rest of Hasdrubal's forces.

It's all looking a bit thin on the ground, now, Phil by this point is convinced he can't win. He may have been trying for an umpire sympathy vote.

The cavalry under Scipio is still taking forever to turn in on the right flank. The Roman left is all over, pretty much, with nearly everyone dead.

The victorious African troops in the centre start to expand outwards. Phil is advocating forming a box to just hold on. Richard has sent in his Triarii to deliver the coup de grace.

Richard is running out of opponents, but he still can't get his cavalry free.

Contrary to expectations the Triarii crumble in the face of the ferocious onslaught of the Africans.

Another General dead! The Roman left wing was the graveyard of commanders as the third one bites the dust.

Finally Scipio's cavalry is free to sweep down on the Carthaginian flank. Is it too late?

What happened to those Triarii? Best troops on the board evaporate in a puff of failed morale rolls.

So it is 6pm, time to call the game over. Cathage is down to 8 units, just, and Rome, 5. So, as night falls it's a draw. Which is really a win for the Carthaginians

There was a suggestion, more than once or twice, that I'd stacked the game too heavily in the favour of the Romans. In the end that turned out not to be the case. I think the game probably turned on two decisions: the Romans should have deployed the legions wide to avoid being flanked, and held back the centre to draw the Africans on further.

As ever with these big games there's always something you could do to improve the set up. I don't normally get a chance to have a trial game to see if the balance is right. When I did the work on Parataikene in 2018 I had at least four goes at it, and changed a whole load of stuff from game to game.

What did I learn from this? Well, I'm inclined to the numbers being more evenly balanced than Polybius says, and accepted by Phil Sabin in "Lost Battles". Sabin's model is a bit more forgiving in the micro areas of troops finding flanks and exploiting them, so the way Will got overwhelmed can't happen in LB.

AMW is not a sophisticated set of rules. In keeping them down to about two pages of A4 there's a lot Neil doesn't say about how the game is supposed to be played. I spent a lot of time in "To Ur is Human" explaining how things that Neil just ignores work. How units wheel and manoeuvre is never explained properly. Over 10 years ago I wrote a detailed analysis of the geometry involved in what Neil appeared to say for Slingshot. Neil made nice noises about the analysis and never said I was wrong, although he never said I was right either. Phil has played a game with him, and tells me I'm completely out of line and that Neil pivots units on their centre and also lines units up in the style of DBA. I've tried that, and it makes somethings easier but it does look wrong in some ways as well.

Any how, I'm happy with how I play the game, and I think I'll stick with it. As we're using so many more units one or two little problems are bound to occur and in the great scheme of things don't really make a whole lot of difference.

Perhaps it would just be easier to put it all on squares? And allow light troops to interpenetrate? And some other things? But the it stops being AMW, so I probably won't.