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.

Society of Ancients Conference 2025

I recently attended the 2025  Society of Ancients Conference. Unlike COW it is a quite structured mixture of lectures and gaming sessions, and I greatly enjoy the variety. 

This year was a change of venue, away from Madingly near Cambridge and off to Missenden Abbey. As I missed COW this year, it was great to be back at Missenden especially as the venue is closing later this year. 

Richard welcomed most of us on Friday evening although the conference proper opens on Saturday morning. Phil and Sue Barker sent their regards to us all, but aren't really up to attending these days. 

The entire SOA membership of the Isle of Man (two) was in attendance! 

The WD contingent repaired to the bar for some light gaming on Friday evening. First up was The Never Ending Odessey. 

This involves laying a series of cards illustrated with classic Greek images on them to spin an epic yarn. Each player take it in turns to add to the tale, with dialogue based on the images on the card. It is a bit like the kids game where you write a sentence and pass it on, but more heroic.

The epic is complete when all 20 cards are laid. There is a "frustration" version where you can preview the next card and spin the yarn to make the next players life difficult. 

That was rather good fun, and suits any number of players. We played it twice. 

We also played Dionysia, well, two of us did and the others watched as it is very much a two player game. 

This game is essentially a pattern matching game with 18 cards. The idea is to construct a Greek play of three acts each with three cards. The cards are marked with two of dagger, skull and cup symbols in various combinations. 

The completed plays. They are scored by totalling up the sequences of symbols (eg dagger, dagger, cup) across cards as specified on the cards themselves, and there are bonus points for eg having the most skulls in a single Act. 

In this particular game the final scores were 19 and 15 respectively.

Saturday morning was the usual scramble to sign up for games. 

First off, Duncan Head presented a very interesting talk on the Battle of Cunaxa, which also happens to be the theme of the SOA battle day. 

I hadn't appreciated that it was an unusual battle in that some of the accounts were by people who were actually there (like Xenophon) rather than being written hundreds of years later! So we can be fairly confident about eg what colour tunics each side wore, at least some of the contingents.

After that there was a gaming session with five games running in parallel.

There was another outing for Kim Salkelds 'Aegaeon', a game of galley fleet actions. 

I played this at the conference last year, and I was interested to see how the system had evolved, both in terms of mechanics and props. 

I think unfortunately the session suffered a bit from scale. Last year we had two players and six squadrons per side but this year there three players and 12 squadrons per side, and it hadn't really reached a conclusion when time ran out. There was a good washup at the end though, which largely focused on the incremental movement system and how it meshed with the order system. 

I had a bit of a float around to look at other things going on. 

Battle of Issus with To the Strongest. This was a pretty big game. 

Saxons vs Romano-British with Dux Brittannarium. 

This seemed to be pretty standard TfL fare, and I got confused between this and Dux Bellorium because of the similarity in titles! 

Along with Aegaeon, I went to a fascinating worksop session run by Matt Bennett about how to game the march of Xenephons 10, 000 to the sea after the Battle of Cunaxa. It was really interesting looking at the terrain and considering the challenges the hoplites would have faced, and it was a very free wheeling and open discussion about how to approach gaming it. 

Meanwhile Issus ground on. Parmenion bites the dust here, but really as far as I could see not much had happened and a lot of the players were just sitting there chatting with nothing to do. It reminded me why I really don't like TtS, but perhaps it is a decent two player game? 

Battle of Kadesh with Hail Caeser in 10mm. This looked pretty good and seemed to be rattling along at a fair old pace. 

After lunch Ian Piper gave a very interesting talk about the Syracusian tyrant Agathocles, and the battle of White Tunis in 310 BC. 

An outline of Ians interpretation of the battle, which he planned on running the following day. Agathocles was certainly an interesting character who essentially mounted a successful authoritarian populist coup, and featured heavily in Machiavellis "The Prince". I'm sure stuff like that would never happen today. 

I was running Alexander the Brief in the afternoon, and got set up before lunch. I'd taken the full WD Display Team (North) kit it make it look a bit more professional, and I'm going to be running it at Partisan anyway so needed the stuff. I also had the demo copies of the rules to show to people, kindly provided by the author. 

I set up the Persians for the Battle of the Granicus with Alexander marching up to deploy. Eagle eyed readers will note that I've forgotten the custom battle board, but fortunately I did at least have the old army blanket I was going to use as a base layer. 

Martin Smith at Gaugamela. I had a reasonable turnout for this game, and although the first iteration took a while what with the explanations, three players took it in turns to play each of the three battles. After that the players did all three individually, which took fifteen to twenty minutes a time. 

Things go badly for Darius. 

Very badly in this case as the Persian left flank collapsed and Alexander overran the Immortals! 

In the end we managed five iterations (or fifteen battles), with a wide range of outcomes. Top score goes to Martin with three wins and one unit lost almost a record.  I'm afraid bottom of the pile was Paul with  two wins and seven units lost. Team John B managed three wins but achieved a staggering ten units lost! The worst ever.  I completely forgot to give out any Nuggets to the players as it was quite hard work marshalling all the players, but at least least it means there are plenty left over for Partisan. 

We also had a good chat in the session about the "Dominion" series in general, and I was very grateful to Steven for giving me some demo copies of both the Ancient and Pike and Shot sets for people to look at. I also brought along my own copy of the Marlburian set for people to look at. 

There were more parallel gaming sessions after Ians talk. Final stand of the Sassanian Empire (Sassanids and Arabs) and Introduction to Midgard (Romans and Britons). 

Battle of the River Parrett (Vikings and Saxons) and Runners and Riders (Bronze Age chariots). Apologies if I've mixed some of these up. 

Before dinner John Curry also ran a quick game of Phil Sabins 'Empire', covering the rise and fall of Carthage (and Rome, Persian etc). I'd read the game in "Simulating War", but it all seemed a bit modifier heavy. Seeing it actually played however, it rattled along very well and covered hundreds of years of warfare in an hour or so. It ended with Carthage marginally ahead on points (19) to Rome's (15) and Persia and Macedonia nowhere. 

Before dinner on Saturday, Harry Sidebottom gave a very interesting talk about Gladiators, which addressed what we actually know about them rather than the Hollywood presentation. 

He ran through the general sequence of 24 hours in a Gladitorial contest, and essentially presented highlights from his newly published book. (Available from all good booksellers). 

After dinner, John C broke out Tony Baths flats for another outing. 

It was great to see these old figures again, dated by modern standards but wargaming classics. I was fortunate enough to play with them a few years ago at COW. 

On Sunday morning Dr Matt Bennett gave a talk about the Battle of Hastings/Senlac Hill. 

It covered the now generally agreed location of the battle and a quite detailed terrain analysis as the area was in 1066.

Which in turn affected the deployment of the armies and course of the battle. This in turn is helped by interpretations of some parts of the Bayeux Tapestry (or Canterbury Embroidery as Matt called it, it being neither a tapestry nor made in Bayeux). Harold never had an arrow in the eye. Who knew? 

I spent most of Sunday morning playing John Bs "Laodika's War" which covered the Seleucid succession crisis of 246 BC. It was one of John's huge multi player operational Ancients games, similar to the Octavian/Mark Anthony games I've played a couple of times already. 

A spot of bother around Antioch! I was Prince Seleukos, rightful heir to the Seleucid Empire and successor to Alexander the Great. I'll do a separate write up for this one. 

We finished up after Sunday lunch with a conference wash up session.

There were some more games in afternoon, but I had a long drive and set off early. That was a great conference, very enjoyable and I hope to attend again next year whichever venue it ends up in.