Battle of Thermos

The other night the Ilkley Old Schoolers decamped to chez Tims for an Ancients game.  The game was based upon he Donald Featherstones classic battle- Trimsos - from his book Wargame. We used form the book rules as written with only one minor change.  Before a player moved the opposition pulled a tile from a bag. These were numbered 2 to 5 and the tile was placed on the table with the back to the moving player so they did not know how many moves they had.. When the moving  player had moved a number of units equal to the number on the tile his move was over.  As the moving player was unaware of how moves he had this added a nice level of uncertainty over the proceeding and worked well in the game.   

The set up - A green cloth and MDF hills. Persian and Greek figures are all from Tims collection

Greek pikemen - we treated these as heavy armoured and spear armed in the rules. 

Persians - In all the Persians had 3 chariots rather then the elephants from the original. We treated each infantry base as having 4 figures regardless of the number of figures on it  

Greek Pike advancing. An awesome sight

The persians throw thier chariots at the Greek Pike but to no avail  -the pike held firm and the chariots were easily beaten 

The game was played with 3 players on the Persians side and 2 on the Greeks.  The moving system described above worked very well as neither side never had enough move to do everything. As a result the fighting flared up across the table rather then have on almighty advance.