The title for this post sounds like a nasty stomach upset! Yesterday evening we played Achaemenid Persian against a conjectural list of Lydians in Tactica II. The figures for the Lydians weren't quite right, but occasionally we manage to try out slightly less well known opponents for the main armies. I chose the Lydian list and deployment:
The skirmishers on both flanks were bowmen, the ones in the middle had javelins. The leftmost heavy cavalry contingent was composed of the famous elite Lydian lancers; the right wing was a mixture of medium and light cavalry. The centre was composed of medium infantry in the form of Lydian spearmen and Egyptian marines, together with some heavily armoured, but poor morale Ionian hoplites. The deployment map was made using
Battle Chronicler, as suggested by "BravoX" in a post on
The Miniatures Page. I played the Lydian army on my own, while Gordon and Mark played the Persians. I don't have a detailed note of their army or deployment, but from my perspective it seemed as though my centre left infantry hung over towards their cavalry wing, and their centre left infantry was partly deployed opposite my right cavalry wing. My plan was simple: attack as soon as possible before all that Persian archery decimated my army. It worked, but only just. My main left wing attack was successful, ploughing through waves of Persian cavalry. I lost one unit of lancers in the process. The centre left infantry attack was also successful, but the centre right fared badly. One unit of Lydians was routed by the Immortals, and the Militia grade Ionians next to it caved in on morale. My right wing cavalry chased off after Persian light horse, and some managed to get themselves caught by big blocks of Persian levy. The crisis in this battle came when my centre left infantry destroyed some Sparabara and the Immortals failed their morale role. The Persian commander joined in to try to shore them up, but to no avail. I won by four figures as the Immortals and their general went down fighting. I think if the Persians had taken some camels to help negate some of my cavalry, I would have lost, as happened historically. I really enjoyed this game, and not just because it was so close. It's good to play a real polyglot sometimes; in 25mm, it certainly looked good.
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There's a good mix of figure types: two archers and three lancers, on two kinds of armoured horses and two unarmoured. I have 48 of them in total.
These are the first in an attempt to revitalise my older figures, which have grown rather dilapidated.
There's the usual assortment of broken spears, paint damage and so on, but there is also a problem that has appeared over a number of years. I don't know if anyone has come across it, but basically it's to do with the use of enamel paints and enamel varnish. Over time, these have dulled down very considerably, and a full repaint is needed.
In practice, it turned out not to be as bad as I had expected. The dull paint takes an acrylic highlight beautifully, giving the overall effect of a a layered paint job.
The artist's varmish really finishes it all off, bringing out the colours very nicely indeed. I also replaced all of the lances with Xyston 15mm pikes. These are 5cm long, which is just about right for 25mm lances. They can also be cut down for shorter spears or javelins.
As with Gripping Beast figures, the horse trappings took a lot of effort!
I tried out some basic designs on the tunics to give them some variation and colour; the result looks fine on the tabletop.