Sunday 25 September 2011

Asculum OOB

I've just started to get my mind around the Asculum game that various chums and I propose to run next year (probably at Partizan, in May).

Asculum 279BC was a classic Successor vs. Roman battle, which conveniently includes lots of pikes, legionaries, elephants and anti-elephant secret weapons.  Plus it ties in nicely with the spiffing range of miniatures that Aventine are producing...  Rule set likely to be Hail Caesar.

Below are the very broad brushstrokes of the OOB, based on the Pen and Sword "Pyrrhus of Epirus" book, scaled to 1/100. 
Romans
    Figures 
Allied Legionaries20000200
Roman Legionaries20000200
Other allies30000300
Cavalry 800080
Anti elephant carts
8



Pyrrhics

Macedonian and Epirot pikemen20000200
Greeks16000160
Samnites34000340
Cavalry800080
Elephants198





1576   

My first thoughts are that, as it stands, it is very do-able as we have enough Romans (although not the leves), from Zama, and enough pikemen.  We are probably only short of the Southern Italian and Samnite infantry, and cavalry.

My concern is that it doesn't give enough scope to use quite a lot of the figures that we already have painted; Craig and Aventine Keith, between them, already have a lot more pikes than we would need (let alone mine).  

I'm somewhat tempted to up the ante by doubling up to 1:50 scale (keeping the number of nellies and carts fixed), even if it means that we have to use Carthaginians, perhaps, to represent some of the allies.  I'll have to see how it goes; whether I can, perhaps, produce a Roman legion, or two, m'self...

7 comments:

Paul´s Bods said...

Go on, be a devil, go for the 1:50 ratio ;-D
Cheers
paul

Craig said...

You really know how to pile on the pressure dont you? I think the Samnites are probably the biggy mainly because they don't exist yet!

Regards,
Craig

BigRedBat said...

Hi Craig, I can't recall, are Keith/Adam doing Samnites? Crusader do them, but I'm not a fan (although I have 48 painted up at Bruttians
http://bigredbat.blogspot.com/search/label/Bruttians ). IIRC Redoubt have a range.

I suppose the thing to do would be to work out how many minis we would need to paint up, and whether we had the will to paint them! And the time.

I still don't have any complete Roman Legions, really should raise a couple.

Anonymous said...

If anyone can produce the odd legion, your the man Simon.

Hope to see it at Partizan.

BigRedBat said...

They might be very odd legions, Paul; I've picked up some poorly painted Renegade and Aventines on eBay, that I hope I could tart up to a useable level. Wouldn't be "all that", nothing like Craig and Keith's boys.

Cyrus said...

Asculum 1:50 sounds fantastic and you can never have too many legions.

Craig said...

Hi Simon,

Keith has said they plan to do them...

Regards,
Craig