Queen Laodika 's War

On the Sunday morning at the  Society of Ancients Conference back in September, I signed up for John Bs 'Laodikas War'. This was one of Johns big Ancient operational games and covered the Seleucid succession crisis of 246 BC, something about which I know absolutely nothing, although various characters involved do pop up in Shakespeare plays.

This was a pretty big game, able to accommodate anything up to 20 players although in this case there were maybe a dozen of us. I was cast as Prince Seleukos, the rightful heir to the Seleucid throne and the God King, Alexander the Great.

Apparently my father had quite complex personal life, and although me and my younger brother Prince Herax 'The Hawk' (played by Richard) are the rightful heirs by his first wife Laodike, he went and married King Ptolemy's sister, Eurydike (boo!) who went and produced another son, Prince Antiochos (boo!).

Although it is obvious that the first born is the rightful heir, Queen Eurydike has the odd idea that Prince Antiochus is heir. Something her brother, King Ptolemy, is keen on too for some reason.

The playing area was a couple of modern maps of the eastern Mediterranean, marked out into historic towns and joined by road or sea transport routes. The little plastic pieces indicate faction ownership. The Seleucids are green, Antigonids red and the Ptolomies (boo!) are blue. There are also various smaller states such as Sparta, Pergamon, Pontus etc.

The Antigonids control most of Greece and have regular dust ups with the Ptolemys in the Cyclades. The Ptolemys control Egypt and the coast through Israel and Syria and the southern coast of Turkey. The Seleucids have Iran/Iraq and much of Anatolia and we have regular scraps with Ptolemys in the vicinity of Syria. 

View from the east. Babylon, Antioch and and Ephesus are our major power bases with elements of the standing army in each (those big piles of green cards). There were four of us on the Seleucid team, myself, Herax, the Governer of Persia and and General Adromachos whose daughter is my wife. Eurydike and Antiochus (boo) were in Antioch, while myself and Herax were in Ephesus. Ptolemy had a suspiciously large stack of stuff near Issus (the blue cards).

My aim was to assert my authority over the Seleucid Empire, remove Eurydike and Antiochus from the picture and boost the Treasury reserve to 100 Talents.

You get income in the winter phase based on towns and ports controlled and peasants tilling the fields instead of fighting. Plenty of mercenaries are available to hire, but cost lots of money although they fight much better than peasant levies. Otherwise there are three campaign turns a year outside winter. 

There was a certain amount of horse trading with other powers, in particular we came to a mutually beneficial understanding with the Antigonids. Pontus was very helpful indeed but Pergamon just went around being a pita. With so many players, there was plenty of scope for skullduggery and I did notice that Herax disappeared from the room for a suspiciously long period of time along with one of the Ptolemys. 

Mercenaries were raised by a bidding process which was very entertaining and also a good way of depleting your rivals treasuries through cunning bidding. We determined fairly early  on to march on Antioch to deal with any potential insurrection and raised a moderate force of mercenaries (ten contingents) to accompany the standing army. I had an eye on our treasury reserves.

Meanwhile it all kicked off in Greece as the Antigonds began clearing the rest of the peninsular. There is a battle in progress on the left of the map, each card is a unit with a to hit number (from 7+ to 10 on a D10) and  strength points (from 1 for levies etc to 4 for elite phalanx). They fight one or two rounds and the loser retreats or can opt to fall back into a town or city and be besieged. 

The Ptolemys curried the favour of the gods with oratory and stole a march on us. Xanthippus took our fleet in port (!) while Ptolemy himself led the main army to Antioch. Queen Eurudike tried to raise a local revolt with very mixed success, only one unit defecting to her, the rest melted away into the countryside. The Ptolemys also landed an expeditionary force near Ephesus, which presented a threat.

Prince Herax demonstrated his youthful, aggressive nature by leading a small detachment (three units) against the Ptolemys, and beat them, despite being outnumbered 2:!! The enemy fell back into the town and Herax laid on a siege.

You can see the Ptolemys have left a large force to guard Alexandria, even though we don't have navy. This would cause them problems in the future.  

Meanwhile I led the main army to Antioch, where I was joined by loyal King Pontus. 

A good job too as the Ptolemaic army was quite strong. Our guys at the bottom, theirs top right. We fought an indecisive action as winter was setting in and fell back from Antioch as a winter siege would be horribly costly in terms of attrition. The Ptolemys meanwhile established Prince Antiochus as a puppet king, although to no great popular acclaim. I did notice the Governer of Persia in a long conversation with Ptolemy though. I need to watch that one.

Still heavy fighting in Greece. The Antigonids taking on Sparta, the Spartans are on the left, heavily outnumbered but very tough fighters.

In the final turn of the year, we adopted an indirect approach. Herax went on an 'end run' along the Anatolian coast mopping up the Ptolemaic towns while leaving the small enemy expeditionary force besieged. I led the main army against Xanthippus who was guarding our captured fleet.

In the ensuing battle (above) it turned out he was heavily outnumbered. We destroyed his army, although not before he'd burned our ships, and we captured Xanthippus himself.

This manouvre also left Antioch isolated and completely surrounded by Seleuicid areas. By now the somewhat shifty Governor of Persia had finally joined up with my army.

Over the winter the extra territory we'd captured, coupled with Xanthippus' ransom (Ptolemy seemed very keen to have him back) boosted the treasury very nicely. We kept on the best mercenaries and purchased some more, and I still had over 100 Talents in the treasury.

Prince Herax marched to join us in spring and we launched a massive attack on the Ptolemaic forces at Antioch. It turned out we had quite a bit more stuff than them, possibly because half their army was sitting in Alexandria.

The Gods favoured us big time. Those two D10s are my Silver Shield phalanx rolling 10,10 for its combat roll. Prince Herax led from the front which gave his entire wing a combat bonus at considerable personal risk and even Pontus gave a good account of himself. The combination of numbers and good fortune absolutely hammered the Ptolemaic army, and they retreated from Antioch back into Syria.

We called it at that point. The Antigonids had captured much of Greece and the Cyclades although Sparta still held out. King Pergamon had launched a mini offensive in western Anatolia and was threatening Ephesus, but tbh we could just have turned around and crushed him like a bug now the Ptolemys were finished.

John B doing the washup. 

As you have probably gathered, my faction of the Seleucids had done rather well. It transpired that the Governer of Persia had struck a tentative deal with Ptolemy but could see very well which way the wind was blowing and stuck with me instead. Historically he led a revolt which split the Iranian part of the empire off. Herax had proved to be loyal if rather impetuous, historically he tried to establish his own power base around Ephesus but was eventually killed fighting with some Gallic mercenaries. Ever the thrill seeker.

In real life Eurydice and Antiochus tried to raise a revolt in Antioch but were siezed by the crowd and torn to pieces, which didn't stop the Seleucids and Ptolemys having a good old scrap. This period marked the high point of Ptolemaic power, and the Successors in general. After this, Rome became a serious player.

John observed that it was one of the more battle heavy outings of this game, but we only had three hours and it seemed to be a quick way to a resolution. The game worked extremely well, and as with Johns other large multi player games, there are so many moving parts you just have to try and focus on what is most important.  

The general situation in Anatolia at the end. Apologies if I've missed out anything important, as the Duke of Wellington observed "One might as well try and describe a ball as a battle" and this big multi player game certainly captured a lot of that confusion and fog of war.