Hoplimania 2a: RULES - "Tearless Hoplite Battles"

"The arbitration team has arrived to discuss our territorial boundaries..."

by the obviously talented Karl Kapinsky, from here: https://age-of-discovery.blogspot.com/

Tearless Hoplite Battles was published in Slingshot 251 by Mike Tittensor, a game designer lurking in his mountain stronghold somewhere in central Europe, who is rumored to be a direct descendant of Vlad the Endgamer... but rumor abounds. I heard about them from that analyzer of wargames, Dale Hurtt [CLICK], who always seems to have something intelligent to say about game designs - so of course I set out to find the rules immediately.

I was able to track Mike down with the help of a few former Neil Thomas operatives recently returned from his stronghold in Nottingham woods - it's amazing what a few pints will do to loosen the tongue! Despite being busy with other gaming tasks and analyzing pork cuisine in the Czech Republic, Mike graciously found time to have a clandestine courier drop them off into my inbox.

A quick read and I knew I wanted to give them a go. They use a grid, are very period specific to the era of the Greek hoplite, 7th-5th centuries BC, and have mechanics to restrict players options to traditional hoplite warfare. They are also fraught with narrative and feel and flavor. And I like having historical limitations and flavor!  

EDIT: Mike himself sent a winged-footed courier [in what appeared to be a ballet outfit] bearing a message that said:

"The rules are designed to reflect how to get a long line of potters, bakers, masons and wine merchants to advance in a straight line through the dusty plains of Greece when your C3 infrastructure consists of a bloke with a loud voice and a kid with some pan pipes. 

Men love war…but they love talking about it over a crater of wine a lot more. This is a set of rules for those battles."

So...let's get out onto the plains of Greece!

The game is logically arranged by phases: 

Setup

Approach

Battle [repeated], and, 

Victory!

The Battle Phase is the repeating Game Turn in which the hoplites maneuver and fight.

I didn't have a 40mm grid ready to go for my partially completed DBA hoplite armies, so used an unmarked grid, which worked fine. With 7 hoplite units a side and some spaces on the flanks, there were 13 columns by 15 rows for the grid. 

I then: 

• determined the hoplites quality and bravery, 
• set up the battle line, 
• chose a tactic [offense or defense], and finally, 
• determined any attempt by a phalanx to overlap the other. 

As the two phalanxes were the same size, and it was the first play, I kept them straight on at each other - simple! Not having any specific forces, I will just call them Corinthians [top] and Thebans [bottom].

I then began the Approach with missile attacks. Lights are abstracted into missile attacks that occur once a turn so players can concentrate on the hoplites. Still, I had some bases, so I tossed them out there to mark what columns the lights would attack - I randomly rolled these since I had no idea what to do!  I ended up disordering two Corinthian Veteran hoplite Units and the same two on the Thebans [red pipe cleaners]. 

Note that the Veterans on both sides are on the right, the position of honor. Both sides had two Veterans on the right, three Average next, and on their left two Novice hoplite units.

Next, the actual approach was made. These are rolled with a d6 and modified, and then the Unit moves forward that many spaces. This gives a large spread of outcomes, so the hoplite phalanx is quite scattered as can be seen below.

Part of the design's challenge is for players to order their lines as best as possible before contact. This is complicated by mandatory forward movement combined with limited ability to add or slow movement.

The cards provide buffs and bonus opportunities. In this case, the Corinthians played the Queen of Diamonds which allowed them to advance a lagging veteran hoplite. The Thebans played the Jack and Queen of Hearts, allowing them to advance one unit and re-roll the bravery of another.

Finally, the battle phase occurred, with all Units advancing one space, then some missile shooting resulting in another Disordered Corinthian [white six].

Finally both sides attempted to rally one unit that was in disorder, and rolling 1's they failed.

For Turn 2, the Battle phase brought no one into melee, but I succeeded in rallying one Corinthian from Disorder, and reigning in one Disordered Veteran Theban Unit.

Clearly, the Thebans have managed to get their phalanx in better order, with two main blocks and one well ahead and one lagging behind.

Turn 3 saw the two sides get into strike range, so the success of two Units removing their Disorder was welcomed. 

Turn 4 saw two opposing units both about to enter the same space - as movement is simultaneous, they had to dice off...

...and the Thebans took the space first.

In this specific instance, it resulted in the Corinthian halting a space early and getting supported by three other units - the alternative was to advance alone, so this was optimal outcome for the Corinthians!

Additionally, the Corinthians placed a card that pushed back a Theban in Disorder. 

Overall, the Corinthians have managed their left better than the Thebans their right.

Combat was then fought out, with the Thebans breaking one Corinthian and advancing, despite being overlapped on one side. Another Theban to the left pushed back it's opponent, Shaken. 

Combat is a simple d6 roll-off with a few modifiers, and comparing the totals for four results: tie, win by 1, 2-3, or 4. A tie is a push with a chance at being disorganized, a 4 breaks the loser who is removed, and the intermediate results are push backs with morale issues.

The Thebans finish a strong turn by playing a card that disordered a Corinthian. 

Having lost a Unit, the Corinthians rolled a 3 to stay in the field easily.

Turn 5, the Thebans continued to kick Corinthian butt, resulting in another unit breaking and another unit shaken.

The Corinthians need to bolster their courage with some wine from the Peleponnese. Liquid courage is better than none at all...

Turn 5 concludes with both sides removing a Disorder on one Unit, and the Corinthians rolling a '4' to remain in the field.

Turn 6, the Corinthians lose another unit, but finally broke a Theban. Both rally off a Disorder and then the Thebans roll a '6' to easily stay on the field - all praise to the bravery from Bacchus!

Finally, on Turn 7, the Thebans break a fifth Corinthian while their other Novice Unit was also broken. Fantastically, both sides fail their army break point!  The Thebans had to roll a '1' [success!] and the Corinthians needed a high roll to stick around but rolled a '2'.  In any event, on Points, the result was a minor Victory for the Thebans - failing army morale cost them a Major victory they richly deserved!

What a buncha fun!

The cards presented additional possibilities that can matter but don't dominate the game. I was pretty busy with the rules so forgot to play three of them.

The disordered advance of the phalanxes during this period was pretty exciting, and not orderly or boring at all. This is the somewhat wilder period of hoplite warfare, when disciplined, professional phalanxes were less common than those that charged forward wildly, somewhat disorganized. This was definitely accomplished by the rules, witness the pic for turn 1 with the widely spread hoplite Units, and Turn 4 which has a lot of yellow disordered markers.

The aesthetic of the square grid spaces resulted in the Units appearing more spread out on the table than they were in movement speed. I didn't like the wide spread, and could see using rectangular spaces just for the sake of visual appeal.

Overall, I really liked this free set for its flavorful ambiance and highly structured approach that was evocative of the limits of hoplite phalanxes. While there were some issues with mechanics, there were none that stopped the flow of the game or that impacted the game enough to change an outcome. 

The bottom line is that altho the Corinthians managed to be more orderly at impact The Thebans edged them out in the combat dice rolls.

Will be playing again, soon, but simply MUST make a QRS or condensed set of the rules so I don't have to page around so much. The good news is I'm looking forward to another Tearless Hoplite Battle!