Conquest: Alexander and Hannibal

 Strength and Honour (S&H) is my favourite ruleset for big battles in the ancient world. One of my wargaming pals finds this ironic as he reminds me of the grief we gave him over a France 1940 game he organised in 3mm. In my defence, we spent most of the afternoon trying to identify the type of tank firing! Whereas the 2mm figures for S&H are mounted on large bases and labelled.

 The main rules mainly cover the Imperial Roman world. Mark has written a new supplement covering earlier conflicts, including Alexander, the Successors, and the Punic Wars. I dabbled at this with my Young Alexander in the Balkans campaign (published in Slingshot), but this allows me to extend the campaign to the Persians. I have always fancied a Persian army, and in 2mm, it is quickly completed. I also have a soft spot for the Carthaginians because they were my first wargame army, in 25mm using Warrior Miniatures. I will need some 2mm Romans in manipular legion formation, so another order is off to Martin at Warbases.

The supplement provides some new rules for the period extension and some tweaks based on feedback. There are 12 new army lists covering this earlier period and 20 scenarios. It all comes as a PDF download, which makes sense. I prefer a hard copy for rules, but a PDF is easy to use and a significant cost-saving, particularly for colour printing. I did the same with my new Cyprus 1974 guide for wargamers. I have printed off the new rules I will likely use, which are just a few pages.

Onto the tabletop for the midweek game last night. Alexander has crossed the Hellespont and faces a Royal Persian Army.

It went badly for the Persians from the outset, with both flanks driven in.

The centre held up better, with the mercenary hoplites doing a good job for the Persians. However, Homunculus Est! was called successfully with only a handful of setback cards in the Macedonian pile. I was a bit short of cavalry for this game, which may have helped the Persians, and some more archer units might have slowed up the Macedonian phalanx. We will have another go after Christmas.

When a giant cat arrived on the battlefield, Alexander was pleased to see it was a Moggie, not a Persian 😅.