Sassanids vs Romans

Opponents:
Middle Imperial Romans and Sassanid Persians, drawn from the lists found in Extra IMPETVS 2 - The Roman Empire section.

Allied contingents:
Armenians for the Romans and Arabs for the Persians

Rules:
IMPETVS, Version 1, along with Advanced Impetvs, Version 1.7 (September 2015)

Modifications:
Changed the activation procedure from rolling a fair number of dice to the simpler process of drawing cards to determine which command would move first, then second, then third, etc. Possible change in command ability were determined after the card draw.

Scale:
10mm, so used the dimensions provided for 25/28 and 20mm, but reduced by half. Instead of employing the metric side of a standard ruler, I used the ⅔ scale rulers secured, years ago, from Litko.

Points:
Sassanids had 797 divided across 3 commands. There were 200 points of Arabs with them. The Romans had 863 points across 3 commands. The Armenians accounted for 281 of this total.

Terrain:
Adapted from the “Go Meek Into The Desert - 260 AD” battle report found on pages 138-143 of the Hail Caesar rulebook. Instead of the circular tower, I positioned a small built-up area to represent an oasis or village. The various palm trees were replaced with three patches of broken ground, representing rocks and scrub. There were a few hills (all gentle) on the table as well.

Deployment:
The Persians deployed along the bottom long-edge, with cavalry on their right, infantry and elephants in the centre. Their Arab allies were on the left. The Romans deployed along the opposite long-edge, with their cavalry on their left, infantry in the centre, and the Armenians on the right.

How It Played:
The Armenian horse archers devastated the Arab light cavalry over on the Roman right. The Arab nobles and their camel unit tried to put up more of a fight, but were soon routed by more arrows and a sharp melee. The Arab contingent did not collapse until the Armenian nobles barreled into a unit of archers and then pursued into a supporting unit of foot.

Earlier, over on the Persian right, their cavalry made short work of the Roman horse. Hundreds of arrows landed on and among the equites and lighter horse. When urged forward to contact, the weakened Roman cavalry were no match. Their unit of cataphracts did manage to do some damage up to the point when it was targeted by a few units and blanketed with volleys of arrows.

In the centre, the Roman auxiliaries and archers moved forward to engage the Persians. Here too, flights of arrows and the surprising performance of the Sassanid bowmen in a series of melees ruined the Roman line. Due to pressure from the enemy cavalry, the heavy infantry of the legion had to divide their formations to guard the exposed flank. As per usual, Persian arrows were followed by melees and the Romans found themselves very near to their breakpoint. The legate conceded.

Comments:
I was somewhat surprised with how quickly the Roman cavalry departed the table top. Even though the Sassanid horse still had some distance to cover, I wondered if there should have been some impact of the Romans in the centre . . . something more tangible than the likely expletive deleted voiced by the Roman player-general. It was interesting to see the Arab contingent go away next. (Light cavalry with javelins really do not do very well against light horse with bows, at least in this battle.) To some degree, the field rotated so that the Persian centre became its new left, and the cavalry stayed the right, while the Roman centre became its left. To be certain, mistakes were made. (It has been some time since I played IMPETVS.) However, I do not think that any one error or combination of these threw the contest. The Persians just seemed to have a really good day of it with respect to their archery - both mounted and foot.