STRATEGIKON of Athens - Akkadians at Roll Call

Having promised the list a report of the Akkadians in action, I thought I would run through how I came to be using them in the first place. Perhaps some of the thought processes will be useful to people new to DBM (or at least to competition play). I'll post the competition report at the weekend.

First thoughts

At the end of last year I had started getting a bit bored with using the Murabits. Painting up some of the Murabits spear had also given me an urge to do some painting, so I started thinking about what sort of 15mm army to buy. Having a fair number of armies already I wanted to pick one that would be different in style to my existing armies. It also needed to be fun to paint. At the time there was a lot of traffic on the DBM List bemoaning the effectiveness of Pike armies. A pike army would be quite different to the armies I had and, while the pikemen might be a bit dull to paint, there are often some interesting support troops.

Which army?

Having decided on the style of army, it was then a question of settling on an army list. What I was looking for was an army that would have a reasonable chance in 400 point competitions (even if that had to be a limited time period) and would not be too dull forwords. A lot has been said about the efficiency or otherwise of pike armies, which seem to me to boil down to:

the deep formation means high AP per frontage so the army tends to be narrow. This means you either have to narrow the table or come up with a plan to fight on a narrow frontage. This makes PkS a luxury.

The support troops are either weak or few in number. This places the onus on winning the battle with the Pk.

The mounted troops available are limited. Realistically, a mounted wing will get isolated and die quickly. Better just to use the mounted as a reserve/skirmishers.

Pike pursue most foot, making them vulnerable to double overlaps. Worse, when they die, they lose a whole file - losses mount quickly. Therefore commands have to be big to survive.

Sp or Bd are almost the equal of Pk and a lot cheaper. Useful to have your own Sp/Bd to stretch the line. Also means that you have to have as wide a Pk line as possible to grind through on a wide frontage.

The 100 pace movement means that the pike block takes too long to contact the enemy. This pretty much ruled out low aggression armies or non-regular command structures. Invading and charging forwards 400 paces in bound 1 will get the Pk into combat 3 bounds earlier. To do this each Pk block needs 4 march moves.

The medieval Pk armies I dismissed quite quickly. Swiss are too expensive. Low counties has low aggression. Scots are irregular. The other armies didn't't seem to have enough Pk. Hellenistics were a possibility. PkO three ranks deep are not too bad. However, most have too many bits and pieces as extras (mostly feeble mounted wings). But OTOH they get AxS - good value frontage and can secure a flank on terrain. Ptolemaic has Pk(I) but low aggression so got ruled out. The Alexandrians were tempting - high aggression and lots of Pk. The problem of all of these ends up being the other armies in period. Lots of Sp(O), Bd(O) and a fair chance of Wb(S). Also, a fair few armies have enough LH and flexibility to avoid the Pk - not good if you want to win the game. The bronze age Pk armies seemed a better prospect. The Pk(I) are reasonable value and not much worse than Pk(O). They do get shot up by bowmen but you get Pk(X) front ranks which count as (S) against Bw. The supporting infantry are generally rubbish but they are cheap and you get lots of Ps. Some armies get BdF which stretches the line nicely. Little mounted so at least they won't lose the game for you. Some of the supporting troops are colourful too - battle cars, tribal levies, etc. Also, most enemies in period are quite immobile, so there's a fair chance of getting Pk in. Eventually I settled on Akkadian. Aggression 4 and 4 regular dice available gave a good chance of rushing the Pk forwards. Ps supported Reg BdF are a big bonus. A small force of Kn(I) to use as a fire brigade. Loads of Ps and cheap filler available to bulk out the army.

Painting the Army

This took a looong time. I'm by no means the quickest of painters and wanted to do them properly. I got a bunch of figures from Chariot and spent a merry six months replacing pikes, stringing bows, putting on reins and then painting. As it was I didn't get the baggage fully finished or all the terrain on the bases but they looked reasonable.

Which Competition?

This at least was easy. The Old Testament competition at Roll call was the obvious choice.

Order Of Battle.

This took a lot of thought to get right. The biggest problem was that with all the painting, I didn't manage to get the army on the table even before submitting the army list. Getting the troop types right was fairly straightforward. Four commands was a must to get the army charging forward on bound 1. The date had to be about 2200 b.c. to get the decent options. The maximum 6 BdF had to be used with Ps supports. The 3 Reg Kn(I) went straight in too. Lots of the Ps are compulsory. In effect the only thing that needed deciding was how many Pk(I) and Pk(X), whether to take a block of Ax(I) or Bw(I) and how to take the generals.

The first piece of the jigsaw to sort out was command sizes. The pike needed to be in no more than two commands, one of which had to be the CiC (that way they can still rush forward on a first roll of 4,3,1,1. Three pike commands need 4,4,3,1 or better). To be survivable the Pike commands need to be big. The most likely deployment is in three ranks (X at the front) so they'll die three at a time. Therefore the optimum size is a multiple of 9 plus half an EE. 18.5 is too small (a couple of 6-1s and you're almost dead) and 36.5 is too big. So it has to be 27.5 or just over. That pretty much ensured that the other commands needed to be one of decent size and a pip dump (this turned out as 24.5 and 3.5).

Having done the command sizes it was time to work on the command composition. This required me to think in more detail about battlefield roles. The business end of the army was looking like a 18 to 20 element wide front of Pk and supported BdF. I reasoned that Kn based armies would not be too much of a problem given the high factors of the pike and no follow ups. Indeed, the BdF would be useful in that they give a Kn army a chance of breaking through - otherwise they might just play defensively for a draw. The main threat in period would be armies with a lot of BdF or Sp, especially if there were Bw as well.

With a narrow fighting frontage, terrain choices were simple. Invade down a river if possible, if not, narrow the table in any way possible. The worst terrain to fight on would be an open plain. What I really needed was a 20 element wide slot between bad going. Defending wouldn't be too bad - BUA and big enclosure to narrow down one side of the table and a couple of steep hills which might fetch up in the right place.

After a horrible practice game against NKE (wherein I played like a donkey) I finally worked out a deployment for those occasions when the army had to stretch to 35 elements wide but it was far from comfortable. Being a bit worried by width, I tinkered around with fortifying the camp and using that to secure a flank but just couldn't get it to be anything other than a defensive tactic. In the end I settled on a standard deployment that had three deep pike block commands either side of a supported BdF command of 24.5 EE, and the pip dump starting at the back by the camp. That would look weak enough that Bd and Sp opponents might fancy their chances against it.

However, while any one point looked relatively weak (5(I) pursuing or 5(F)), it was stronger than it looked. The BdF command could lose virtually all the Bd and supporting Ps before breaking. The Pk commands could reshuffle to form some 4 deep Pk(I) strongpoints. The many Ps could contain a breakthrough while reserves arrived. When holes did appear, I had 5 regular Kn, including 2 generals to plug them, and 4 pip dice to get them to the right point.

I couldn't see much use for Bw so minimised them and took some Ax(I) filler instead. The Kn(I) were allocated to a reserve role. To prevent Pip problems this meant putting them as part of the CiC's Pk command. The two allowed LH and the numerous PsO were split between the Pk commands to give something on the flanks or to drive off skirmishers. The Bd command got the Ax(I) and Ps(I). I made the Pk command generals Cv(I) as I didn't want them to fight but used Kn(I) generals for Bd command and pip dump.

The Final OB was as follows:

Reg Cv(I) CIC, 6 Pk(X), 12 Pk(I), 8 Ps(O), 1 LH(I), 3 Kn(I), 1 Cv (I). 28EE, 32 elements.

Reg Kn(I) Sub, 6 BdF, 6 Ps(O) (support), 9 Ax(I), 1 Bw(I), 9 Ps(I). 24.5 EE, 32 elements.

In the next report I'll run through how the games went at the comp. I came out of it feeling that, in the right competition, Pk are OK.