Wargaming Gaugamela

Our decision to game this battle in 6mm was driven by several considerations:

• We came to the event late with a game and would have struggled to paint up several thousand 28mm figures in time

• Our ranks were split between those who wanted 28mm and those who wanted 15mm or smaller

• Warmaster was elected to be our rule set – 10mm or less seemed a good idea

• Baccus 6mm were very supportive of our plans

So with the game in mind we sat back and looked at the numbers involved. It is believed that this was a big bash, as in as many as 50,000 Macedonian foot and cavalry facing off against 150,000 to 200,000 Persian foot and cavalry. No matter how you slice this one up it is BIG.

In many ways the battle breaks into several decisive chunks that you can play and if you have the room and budget and figures to do it then this period in 28mm looks stunning. That said, 6mm is a wonderful way of getting lots of figures and units on the tabletop.

By way of a quick recap Warmaster works simply with units represented by elements on a tabletop, with three being the common way of showing a unit at full strength. After a bit of digging around we more or less settled on the following Orders of Battle for Warmaster:

Macedonians

1 x Agema Cavalry

1 x Thessalian Cavalry

2 x Companion Cavalry

3 x Cavalry

2 x Light Cavalry

1 x Archers

3 x Skirmishers

5 x Macedonian Phalanx

3 x Hypaspists

4 x Agema Pezhetairoi

8 x Pezhetairoi

10 x League Hoplites

34 x Infantry Units

9 x Cavalry Units

Persians

6 x Noble Cavalry

3 x Skirmish Cavalry

11 x Cavalry

10 x Light Cavalry

3 x Skirmishers

9 x Levy Archers

15 x Levy

2 x Hoplites

1 x Melophoroi

4 x Archers

4 x Chariots

3 x Elephant

30 x Cavalry Units

34 x Infantry Units

Now these numbers are being play tested and will undoubtedly change by the April 3rd Battle Day but they should give you an idea of size and scale. Our Phalanx’s will consist of 72 plus figures to a unit so the five Macedonian units are made up of 360 figures which gives you an idea of just how many small pieces of metal need to be painted for this game.

To give you an idea of scale if you tried to play this game in 28mm using the Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) rules then the Alexander the Great book produced by Games Workshop Historical recommends 772 foot and 177 horse for the Macedonians and 708 foot and 660 horse and 14 chariots for the Persians.

Now this would look stunning, probably need Wembley to play it and cost many a man the price of a divorce if they tried to own it. I mean, forgetting the metal costs, if you generously said £5 average for the cavalry figures then we are talking £4,200 and the foot would come in at £4,440 if we used a £3 per figure calculation. Add in a few extra bits and pieces and we’re not talking much change out of £10k.

Now the world of 6mm is a totally different option. This project will come in under £1,500 all in to completely model the terrain, buy and paint all figures and then pay for corrective eye surgery for the painters who will be banging out 4,000 or so figures.

In Conclusion

We’ll be rolling out more reports on the development of this 6mm game and very shortly we’ll deliver our addendum rules for Warmaster that allows you to play the Persians and Macedonians. Plus we’ll have a full featured article reporting on the SOA Battle Day in which we’ll look at the various 28 and 25mm games that will be taking place using a wide variety of rules, including DBA and Vis Bellica.