by Oisin » Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:23 pm
Ok, so the Fianna has done something kinda like this on a smaller scale for a while, and it works pretty well. This is not at all drawn from 300, so I don't know what different ways the movie and us might have interpreted Thermopolae.
Divide into two teams, one outnumbered about 3 to 1 (having 4 teams rotate as the Spartans would actually work quite well here).
Field layout is as a bridge battle, uncrossable river, anyone who steps over the hay bails is dead.
Spartans are allowed any equipment they want except bows. Heavy armor, large shields, polearms and javelins are recommended. So are helmets. Within the unit, those of us who had brought heavy armor and big shields threw em all in together for general use by anyone on the Spartan team.
Persians are not allowed shields, armor, red weapons, or javelins (including throwing Spartan javs back). They MAY have bows (the Persian army was very bow heavy, recall--"Their arrows shall darken the sky" "Then we shall fight in the shade"). In our experience, because of the close quarters and the high percentage of helmeted Spartans, arrows were mostly ineffective.
A Spartan who dies is dead. He is done for the fight. However, he may still recover spent javelins and return them to the living Spartans.
Any Persian who dies is resurrected eventually. We experimented with both resurrecting the Persians en mass to simulate wave attacks and give the Spartans a few seconds to recover, and also allowing individual Persians (or, in a larger scenario, perhaps a small group--only allow Persians to respawn when they have 1/4 or 1/2 of the entire Persian side dead?) to respawn after a certain amount of time.
Really, it's something that would require on the field testing for use in a large group.
*, I just wish we had thought of this to do at Ocfest using the big castle gates. Would have been * sweet. Next year, that so needs to be done.
Oisín Leathshúileach ua Duibhne
Ard Laech
Fíanna Cú RuadhAn Fhírinne in aghaidh an tSaoil--Truth against the world.