Battle Of Ulai - Turn One

Looking at the battlefield from the south, with the Assyrians either side of East Wood, and most of the Elamites on Ulai Hill

Bird's-eye view from behind the Elamites

Looking from above East Wood

Teumman wins the dice-off (6-5) to see who goes first, but orders his men to stay in position.

I order a general advance, starting with the cavalry next to East Wood. However, move-variation (I roll a 1) means the unit only moves 15cm, instead of close-order cavalry's normal 20cm allowance, and this has the effect of keeping them just out of bowshot range of the Elamite army.

The red chariots advance 20cm, but, thanks to move-variation, the royal squadron only advances 15cm - perhaps there is unexpected rough ground near the wood.

The cavalry on the Assyrian far-right advance the full 20cm, but thanks to slightly outflanking the left wing of the Elamite position, this also leaves them out of bowshot range (this unit, which has royal-blue horse trappings, can shoot with half its bases).

On the Assyrian left, both units of professional infantry advance 8cm, but the two units of biblical infantry show commendable eagerness, if perhaps a little indiscipline, by rushing forward 10cm (in both cases I rolled a 6 for move-variation).

Situation at the end of turn one

Battle Of Ulai - Cheat-Sheet

HERE is a cheat-sheet for my adapted rules for fighting biblical-era battles with 10mm miniatures.

They are based on Neil Thomas's rules in Ancient & Medieval Wargaming, but you will need that book for specific points not covered here, eg the number of dice rolled in melees, and in general for how the rules operate on the tabletop.

Some of the modifications are a result of my studying the period, and of how I like a wargame to work, and some are adapted from Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame books.

Who Moves First?

Dice at the start of each turn, higher score moving first. Great general: +1; poor general: -1.

Generals

One elite unit is designated as the general's, receiving a +1 modifier when testing morale. If the unit is destroyed, all friends in line-of-sight immediately test their morale, and all other friendly units test their morale at the start of the next turn.

Movement

Open-order cavalry, light chariots: 24cm

Close-order cavalry, heavy chariots, camelry: 20cm

Open-order infantry, auxiliary infantry: 12cm

Close-order infantry: 8cm

Turning more than 30° from straight-ahead costs half the movement allowance, except for open-order troops, camelry and light chariots, who are not penalised.

Variation: when a unit tries to use at least 75% of its movement allowance, roll a die, a 6 meaning 25% is added to the distance covered, a 1 meaning 25% is deducted.

Missile Ranges

Foot bows and slings: 24cm

Mounted bows: 20cm

Javelins: 8cm

Archers as well as javelinmen can shoot at attackers who make contact after having started more than 8cm away (assuming the defending unit has not already fired during the turn).

Hits

5+ on a die scores a hit. If it is not saved, use the following table:

                             Elite Average Levy   

Lose base              1-2      1-3     1-4

Fall back 3cm         3+       4+      5+

A unit that cannot fall back, either straight or within 30° of straight back, eg it is blocked by impassable terrain, by enemy troops or by friendly troops not in open-order, loses a base. A unit that would leave the battlefield if it fell back, instead loses a base.

A unit in a melee whose opponent falls back may follow up and immediately force another round of hand-to-hand fighting, provided the player's unit suffered fewer hits than its falling-back opponent.

Morale

The general's unit receives a +1 modifier when testing morale.

If the unit is destroyed, every friendly unit in line-of-sight tests its morale immediately; every other friendly unit tests its morale at the start of the army's next turn.

Victory

An army losing more than half its units is defeated.

Turn Mechanics

Each unit moves, shoots, tests morale, etc, before the next unit does likewise.

Battle Length
Maximum 15 turns before nightfall usually ends fighting.

Difficult Terrain

Use the same combat table as for fighting in woods.

Cover

Troops behind cover get an extra die per base in the first round of hand-to-hand fighting.

Battle Of Ulai - Starting Positions

BOTH players will now draw a quick sketch-map of their initial dispositions on the battlefield, it being assumed that, although the Elamites have been outflanked, they had time to turn and face the Assyrians, who will enter the battlefield either side of East Wood (not an original name, but it avoids confusion).

I will have to split my Assyrian army 50:50, but it will be my choice which units start on which side of the wood.

Looking from the edge of East Wood to the Elamite position, where King Teumman has concentrated as many men as possible on the high ground

Bird's-eye view from above the Elamites of the Assyrians either side of East Wood

Close-up of the Assyrian right-flank - all mounted troops, including cavalry with archery capability (unit furthest from the wood), ie half of the unit's bases can shoot each turn, even if moving

Close-up of the Assyrian left-flank, with the two units of professional infantry on the left of the image

The battlefield at dawn (actually, the difference between this and other images in this series is that this photo was taken in natural light, rather than with blinds closed and the electric light on)

Battle Of Ulai - Picking Sides

MY opponent, 'Reg', gets to choose which army to command, and he has bravely - foolhardily? - picked the Elamites, sinking his persona into that of King Teumman, and I will refer to him as such from now on.

Next, we select our forces from the army lists.

I get to choose from the following Assyrian list.

CHARIOTS heavy chariots, elite 1-2 units
CAVALRY close-order, light protection, average 1-2 units
PROFESSIONAL INFANTRY professional, close-order, heavy protection, average 2-4 units
SPEARMEN biblical infantry, medium protection, average 2-4 units
ARCHERS open-order infantry, light protection, levy 0-2 units

Bearing in mind that all of the Elamite troops will be bow-armed, I have decided I want as many fast-moving units as is allowed, so I can close with the enemy in the shortest time possible.

Accordingly I have gone for all four available mounted units, and they will be supported by two units of professional infantry (remember, these can shoot with half their bases each turn, even if moving) and two units of spearmen.

My Assyrians (left-to-right): two units of spearmen, cavalry, two chariot squadrons, more cavalry, two units of professional infantry

The blue chariot squadron is the one that includes King Ashurbanipal.

My opponent has a much more limited list to choose from, but he has varied from the setup I posted here by dispensing with close-order archers, so his army consists of a squadron of medium chariots and nine units of open-order bowmen.

Battle Of Ulai - Setting Up

HOW the battlefield looked is largely conjecture, but I have included all the significant elements, although whether each is in its correct place is impossible to determine.

Looking from the south, with the River Ulai curving around high ground in the centre of the battlefield

In the foreground is a large deciduous wood, with a smaller wood in the centre-east and a marsh and a copse in the north.

There is some uneven ground east of the hill, but this will only have the effect of slowing chariots and cavalry, reducing their movement allowance by 50%. Infantry will not be affected, and the ground will have no effect on shooting or melees.

Looking from the northwest gives a better view of the swampy ground and adjacent copse

The Assyrians were marching from the west, with an army much more suited to hand-to-hand fighting than were the Elamites, so King Teumman used the Ulai as a barrier to protect his forces, made up mostly of open-order troops, skilled in archery, but without shields or armour.

How the Elamite army may have looked as it awaited the Assyrians coming from the west, assuming the army had chariots, and the Royal Guard of close-order archers, with the rest of the force made up of open-order bowmen

As I explained earlier, King Ashurbanipal and the Assyrians bypassed the main Elamite position, and came at them from the other side of the battlefield, forcing the Elamites to turn and fight with their backs to the river.

That is hardly a position any army would want to be in, as the Ulai here is unfordable - one of the reasons Teumman thought it would make a good barrier to protect his men. So any troops forced into it will count as drowned, and their bases removed from the table.

Battle Of Ulai

THE Battle of Ulai, in about 653 BC (the exact date is not certain, and even the name is not agreed on   - some prefer Til-Tuba) pitted Assyrians under Ashurbanipal against Elamites under Teumman.

What we know of the battle comes almost exclusively from carvings in Nineveh commissioned by King Ashurbanipal to celebrate his crushing victory.

According to these, Teumman had usurped the Elamite throne from the previous king's sons, who fled to Assyria for protection.

However, it was common at the time for Mesopotamian rulers to claim they were acting on behalf of the gods, who were outraged at another ruler's conduct.

Accusing Teumman of being a usurper was standard practice, along with allegations of raiding and oath breaking.

Whatever the truth, Ashurbanipal set aside a whole campaigning season, probably in 653 BC, to subdue Elam.

We have no idea of the numbers involved in the battle, which is typical of conflicts in this period - a good reason for using Neil Thomas's biblical rules in Ancient & Medieval Wargaming, where every army consists of eight units.

What we do know is the Assyrians were well-equipped, and I will be using my amended A&MW list for our refight.

My reasons for changing Thomas's list are explained here, the result being:

CHARIOTS Heavy chariots, elite 1-2 units
CAVALRY Close-order, light protection, average 1-2 units
PROFESSIONAL INFANTRY Professional close-order, heavy protection, average 2-4 units
SPEARMEN Biblical infantry, medium protection, average 2-4 units
ARCHERS Open-order infantry, light protection, levy 0-2 units

The general - in this case, King Ashurbanipal - will be with one of the chariot units (I'm assuming the player commanding the Assyrians will choose to take both possible chariot units, and in any case will have to take one).

The Elamite army was of a very different order, still emphasising open-order archery and fundamentally not much changed from the Battle of Siddim more than a thousand years earlier.

My list for Elam - Thomas did not include one in A&MW - is as follows:

CHARIOTS bow-armed MEDIUM chariots, elite 0-1 unit
ROYAL GUARD close-order archers, light protection, elite 0-1 unit
ARCHERS open-order, light protection, average 5-8 units
JAVELINMEN open-order infantry, light protection, levy 0-2 units

Note that I have had a slight rethink on my previous classification of Elamite chariots as light. While it is true they were used as a shooting platform, in line with Elam's cultural reliance on archery, the actual chariots were not light, in that they had neither great speed nor manoeuvrability. Accordingly I am giving them a new classification of medium, which means they move at the speed of heavy chariots, and suffer a 50% movement loss if veering more than 30° from straight-ahead. They have the shooting characteristics of light chariotry, meaning they can move and fire in the same turn. In melees they count as light, but they have the saving-throw of heavy chariots.

For this battle, whoever commands the Elamite army must select the unit of chariots - King Teumman is depicted in the Assyrian reliefs as going into battle in a chariot.

Despite his own mobility, he must have had few illusions that his army could stand up to the Assyrians in the open.

Accordingly, Teumman determined to obstruct their progress by forming up on the east bank of the River Ulai.

This is probably to be identified with the modern Karkheh, a broad river flowing in southwest Iran, although there are other candidates, and anyway the river will have certainly changed its course over the centuries since the battle.

Ashurbanipal bypassed the Elamites, thanks to specialist troops who established a bridgehead by fording the river with aid of gourds as flotation devices.

It seems the Assyrians built a temporary bridge or bridges, and may have found a shallower part of the river, where mounted troops, at least, could cross without serious fear of drowning.

At any rate, Ashurbanipal succeeded in outflanking the Elamites, who were obliged to turn and fight with their backs to the river.

The exact spot is unknown, but the terrain included swampy ground and wooded areas, and the Elamites were apparently able to situate the centre of their line on raised ground.

I will be staging the refight with my regular wargaming opponent ('Reg') who, as the guest, will get to choose which army to command.

It might be thought the battle should be something of a walkover for the Assyrians who, with their superior protection, will be heavily favoured in hand-to-hand fighting.

However, the Assyrian commander will have to decide whether his army advances at infantry pace, exposing it to a greater volume of Elamite archery, or whether the mounted units should rush ahead, which could make their flanks vulnerable once engaged in melees.

Spanish Practices

IN contrast to The Naturalist On The River Amazons, I shot through Captain Cuellar's Adventures In Connaught And Ulster, A.D. 1588 in less than a day.

Francisco de Cuéllar was a captain in the Spanish Armada, shipwrecked off the northwest Irish coast as the vessel he was on limped home the long way to Spain following the Armada's defeat.

He was doubly fortunate to be alive as he had earlier been ordered off his own ship, and sentenced to death, by a furious admiral for supposed disobedience during the Armada's aborted invasion of England.

Cuéllar tells how, after being shipwrecked, he had to dodge English garrison troops, and local "savages," both of whom, according to his account, thought nothing of stripping, beating, robbing and, often, killing Spanish sailors as they were washed ashore.

Gripping read

Cuéllar eventually, after many misadventures, found refuge with anti-English chieftains, escaped to Scotland, and finally made his way home, where he wrote an account of his deliverance.

His story does not take up a great many pages of what is anyway a slim volume, published in 1897, but there is a long introduction - best read after Cuéllar's tale, although it appears before it in the book - and some well-chosen illustrations.

A lot is packed into little, including burnt-out monasteries, hanged bodies and desperate attempts to survive in the face of hostility from men and nature.

My edition is a reprint by Clachan Publishing of Ballycastle, County Antrim, bought through Amazon, although I can no longer recall what prompted me to search for it - probably a passing reference in another book, or perhaps a mention in Wikipedia.

Either way, it proved a great read.

Living History

MENTION Zeppelins to most Brits, and they will either think of bombing raids in World War One, or the Hindenburg disaster of 1937.
More than 500 people, overwhelmingly civilians, were killed by the former, and 36 died when the Hindenburg caught fire as it landed in New Jersey.
But what few people realise is that Zeppelins are still flying, from their original home in Friedrichshafen, on the shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee in German) in the southwest German state of Baden-Württemberg.
Last month, while visiting nearby Bregenz, also on the shore of Lake Constance, but this time in Austria, I took the chance to fly in a Zeppelin.

Monument to Ferdinand von Zeppelin

Zeppelin coming in to land

Touchdown

The flight before mine, taking off

Co-pilot addresses the passengers on my flight

We were traveling at 35 knots (about 40mph or 65kph) at a height of 1,000ft (305 metres).
It was a sunny day, with little or no breeze, which made for ideal viewing of the ground - and water - below.
Soon after take-off, passengers were allowed to leave their seats and spend the rest of the 45-minute flight moving around and taking photos, the co-pilot having opened two windows in the side of the airship's gondola for this purpose.

Farmland

The cockpit

Lindau Island

Marina

Lake Constance

Insight into how a river delta is formed

The airship's shadow stands out starkly

History, Naturally

HENRY Walter Bates is a person who could easily be confused Alfred Russel Wallace, if only because their names have a similar cadence, their lives largely overlapped (they were born within two years of each other), and they both became famous as explorers and naturalists, being keen exponents of Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution.

They spent years together in the Amazon jungle rainforest, collecting specimens that in turn funded more exploring and collecting.

Much of Wallace's collection disappeared when the ship carrying it to Britain sank, but Bates, using three separate vessels, transported home more than 14,000 species.

Today Wallace is undoubtedly the better known, but that was not always the case, and reading Bates' account of his collecting, often in dreadful conditions, is eye-opening.

A modern reprint of the 1864 edition of Bates' book

Bates spent 1848-59 traveling the main Amazon, or, as he calls it, Amazons, and the river's tributaries.

You would have to be a keen naturalist to call the book gripping. I am not, and I found some of his detailed descriptions of insects, birds and plants a little wearying.

But there is no denying Bates' enthusiasm, and there was plenty of travel and history to keep me reading.

Bates comes across as, for his time, enlightened, but he is not an apologist for the people he meets, whether they be indigenous, colonials or slaves.

I doubt if I will ever be tempted to re-read the book, but I am glad I have read it for a first time.

Summing Up Across The Danube

DESPITE my uncertainties and misgivings in the heat of battle, it was a fairly comfortable victory in the end, with only two Roman units lost.

It was definitely a fun experience, and I certainly plan to fight the remaining nine scenarios.

Across The Danube has a smaller-scale, more-intimate feel to it than the scenarios in Mike Lambo's Battles Of Napoleonic Europe,

The latter are based on actual battles from the Peninsular War, while Across The Danube - and presumably the rest of the scenarios in Commander - is more generic.

But this one, at least, was just as much fun, and, I would say, ranks Commander as a simulation, not just a game.

My only quibble from the simulation viewpoint is that cavalry may be too powerful for the type of terrain encountered in Rome's Dacian wars, but I will hold judgment on that until I have played more scenarios.

Great fun