Sasanid Persian - an old favourite

 

Sasanid Persian was the first army I used seriously when I started MeG and has been one of my more successful choices ever since. Here I go through an army list...

As listeners to the MeG Players Podcast will know I recently used this army at the Post Covid Cup - a somewhat optimistically named small competition hosted by Ray Duggins in his back garden. My Sasanids faced off against Early Imperial Roman and for various reasons we came away with a draw. Listen to the podcast if you are interested in a few more details.

During the podcast I gave some thoughts on the army, but thought I might expand a bit here and also post some pictures. My army is wholly Lurkio figures apart from the camp, and as I recall I was the first customer to buy Sasanid figures from them when they started up many years ago. In fact the figures remained unpainted for a long time as my enthusiasm for wargaming was somewhat low and I concentrated on re-enactment, however, with the advent of MeG and renewed enthusiasm I painted up the army and haven't looked back since. The original purchase has, inevitably, been expanded. Some Little Big Men Studios banners have been added along the way as well.

The list I fielded was:

As mentioned in the podcast this list had been slightly tweaked from a successful previous version. The material change was that whilst previously I had used a Talented army commander, in this version I had switched to a Competent one, but he is Professional and not Instinctive. The thinking here was that this boosts the PBS and Scouting cards by 1 each whilst the number of command cards remains the same. Obviously, the other advantages of a professional general will not apply as he is the only Professional general, but as the points costs was more or less the same as my previous version this seemed OK.

In practice, however, I felt the lack of a general who has 4 cards for one command and was restricted in a couple of moves where the cards were not letting me do what I needed to do with my "main" command. A Talented general with 4 cards would have let me do this.

Therefore, I think I would revert back and use the following list in future:

It has meant dropping one of the Competent generals to Mediocre, however, the number of command cards remains the same and there is usually one command that only needs 2 cards - and as mentioned, it is how I have set the army up before. In an ideal world you would still have 3 Competent generals and thus 13 command cards, but it isn't an ideal world and I don't want to drop any troops to make the points available for that.

As I have been talking about the generals here they are with their LBMS banners.

The one with the yellow banner usually ends up as the Mediocre one.

The camp is just a basic one, and I have never felt that it needs to be anything more than this. If the enemy get there the army is defeated anyway. Figures are, I think, Essex Miniatures with a Baueda tent. Plastic palm tree from a bulk buy from eBay.

The army has 2 units of elephants. Whilst somewhat iconic for wargamers, Sasanid armies did not always include elephants. However, as I initially was thinking of the C4th CE for this army, and we know Sapor II used elephants, they were something of a must for the army. That said, my initial outings with it did not include them, mainly as my initial army purchase didn't include any. This was resolved after winning a voucher from Lurkio at a competition and the value almost exactly bought 6 elephant models.

My list has a unit of 4 and a second unit of 2. As 6 is the maximum number a Sasanid army can field I don't need more.

I have the units the sizes they are as they usually have different roles in the army. The larger unit is for attacking with, and as elephants can be rather brittle is a maximum size for an elephant unit. They can still break with alarming ease though. The 2 base unit is more of a blocking unit, or sometimes just a sacrificial unit to try and soften something up. It can, however, assist the cavalry against other mounted as elephants are rather effective against mounted.

After the elephants the mounted punch is provided by 2 units of catafracts.

I don't think Lurkio do this figure any more, having a replacement that is in a more aggressive charging pose. Whilst the new one is nice, and I have another unit of them, I still rather like this older model.

Two units allows for quite a bit of punch, even though both are Average - the cost of Superiors was just too much for the sort of composition that I wanted, although you can take up to 8 bases of them if you want. If I did a version of the army that did not have elephants I think I would take a 6 base unit of Superior catafracts instead to have a really heavy hitting unit.

In use the catafracts will normally start held back at to allow the shooting cavalry to weaken the opponent before they are committed. However, if the enemy is a shooting army they may  well be committed quite early as their ArmHrs makes them very resistant to shooting. I recently had a game of Sasanids vs Gok Turks (although a slightly different Sasanid list) and the catafracts could push forward with a degree of impunity supported by the better shooting cavalry.

Which leads us onto the shooting cavalry.

As mentioned I wanted this army to be roughly a C4th CE one and this meant having the shooting cavalry on fully barded horses if they had horse armour, or none otherwise. I did not want the half armoured horse as those are based on a C6th/7thCE rock carving possibly of Khusrau II. The earlier evidence is for fully barded horses, and Ammianus describes it as being of leather.

The army has Superior and Average units of these cavalry, and I use units who are all on armoured horses for the Superior ones, and they have larger LBMS banners as well to help tell them apart.

The Average units are more mixed and have smaller banners.

All of these are likely to skirmish with enemy at the start of a battle and only fight later one when the enemy are weakened. Obviously the Superior units can be used a bit more aggressively, but it is still worth looking to get quite a few shots in before hand to hand. Against shooting armies who have Skilled shooters, the fact that these do not get the full upgrade to Green dice against Superiors can be useful - especially in conjunction with catafracts as noted above. If catafracts and Superior cavalry charge enemy shooters together it is more likely that the enemy will have to Run Away instead of Skirmishing as with their longer move the cavalry have a better chance of catching the evaders if they roll low on their Variable Movement Dice in their charge response.

The army also has 2 units of skirmishing light horse.

These are very useful as they have the Cantabrian characteristic which means they they can shoot as if Skilled shooters. As the shooting cavalry are Experienced shooters and so usually on White dice, the addition of these 2 units who can be on Green shooting dice (with a Skull) adds an edge to the shooting that the army really needs in my view. Acting in concert with the other shooters they can create a hole in the enemy line that can be exploited - small units can disappear quite quickly if you get a few lucky rolls on Green dice. As they are skirmishers and so don't count towards army break, and you have quite a few other shooters, you can usually be quite aggressive with these units.

Lastly there is a unit of really rubbish javelinmen.

These have one real role in the army and that it to screen the larger elephant unit from enemy shooting. They are expected to die in the process. But they are dirt cheap. As elephants can be very brittle being in a relatively small unit, protecting them from enemy shooting is a must. Occasionally they may do something else, and even damage the enemy, but if they don't I don't care.

So there you have it. One of my favourite armies and one of my most successful. Some of the figures probably need a little TLC after many uses and some like the elephants were painted quite quickly and some additional detail would not go amiss. They will be used again, no doubt with a slightly changed  list on occasion, but for me this list is a really solid one and can take on a wide range of opponents in and out of period. As I said when Ray asked on the podcast, I would definitely use it in an open competition and have done, it has even beaten Cid who is probably the best UK MeG player at present.

There are 4 different Sasanid lists available although 2 are very similar - the Middle Sasanid Persian and the Sasanid Persian lists, but even then there are some significant difference which allow materially different armies to be take. In addition there are many manufacturers who make Sasanid figures so you should be able to find something you like.

Go on, give it a go ...