~IS PROUD TO PRESENT~

HOPLOMACHIA

This is also the home of
STRATIOTIKA!

Hellenes!

Have you had it with those rascally Thracians swanning around your farms, heaving
javelins at your old rustics, and carrying off your lovely daughters?

Has the local Satrap come around for earth and water just TOO MANY TIMES?

ELELELEU!!!!!

THEN GO AWAY! SHOO! WE HAVE NOTHING HERE FOR YOU!
These rules are not for the faint of heart! There are lots of strange and arcane systems which may baffle the novice gamer, and loads of Greek words and terms that you’ll have to memorize. You have been forewarned!

An Almost Demosthenean Speech
In no other era has the experience of battle been as common as during the classical age…it’s quite  probable that the majority of citizens in any of the great city states of Hellas (Greece) in the 5th-4th centuries saw at least one campaign; a whole civilization of literate, cultured men saw horrifying close combat before their very eyes. They smelled the sweat of their bronze-clad fellows in the phalanx, could feel if they trembled with nervous energy as their enemy, only a mere 400 yards away sounded their trumpets, and answering it with their fearful armour-shaking voices as they raised up the paean, the hymn their people, the glittering mass formation lurching towards them. Their own approach sounded, they themselves would begin to sing and tramp forward, hearts beating faster as they measured their voices in their own hymn, making sure not to let their tones falter or crack, and thus show their kinsmen and friends any lack of courage.

Spear shattering on shields, or plunging into linen armour and the soft flesh beneath; shields crunching and buckling as they ram into each other, men falling and being trampled by friend and foe. For a moment the two masses were one and seemingly immobile as those in the rear ranks shoved their fellows forward, the men in front desperately jabbing at anything into the mass before them; those whose spears had shattered and fallen even trying to grasp the beard of the nearest enemy, and hopefully snap his neck. Then suddenly, ever so slightly, one side feels the ground begin to slip away under their feet, as their phalanx gives a little ground; then a little bit more, and then they begin to feel the men to their rear lessen their pushing ever so slightly- and over the din and the screams they heard the enemy strategos call for “one step more!”…and they realize that their cause is lost.

In a heartbeat, the rear ranks, now thinking only of preserving their lives, broke off pushing, dropped their shields and ran away as fast as they could. Those unfortunates in the front ranks were bowled over, crushed, and stabbed into the now bloody, churned-up earth. The battle, and life, moved away from their bodies; soon, the clamour died down, a herald from their city would turn over their looted bodies, searching for his countymen, to give them the proper burial he has begged the victors to allow.This was part of the experiences that nearly all of the male population of most Greek cities had incommon, and because of this commonality we are left with the writings of a group of veterans of thetime, writing for veterans of the time to read. There are many other war memoirs, tactical manuals,and histories in other eras, but few eras before our modern one has the vast amount of detail for thegame designer to draw from. Thanks to the growth of Classical military scholarship, and the fact thatall the source texts are readily available in all languages (try and say the same about, for instance,the Sassanid Empire, Medieval Russia, or even Renaissance France!), anyone is able to gather an astoundingly detailed amount of information of an age more than two millennia in the past.

We have tried to embody all the main characteristics of
warfare at that time in the systems of Hoplomachia

This includes:
An additive system for determining Army morale, depending on both artificial events orchestrated by the commander-in-chief, and events that are beyond his control

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A ranged combat system that makes you feel your troops cringing under their shields as another squall of arrows, javelins or rocks come their way!

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More Greek terms than you can shake a souvlaki stick at!

Let all the gods be witness:

 I will not allow the precious information gathered in playing this FREE game,
(which our generous Captain has laboured on for three years while playing hookey
from his day job) escape into the ether; but I will compose it into an email which
I will send back to the good Captain, telling him where he has screwed up AGAIN,
along with all the pedantic and trivial criticisms that I in my meager power can muster.

May I be DESERTED BY THE GODS if I break this oath, particularly the next time
I really need to roll a twelve on two dice.

Totally true Unsolicited Testimonials

Perikles, son of Xanthippus, from his own funeral oration (nice trick):

“Yes, I looted the treasury of the Delian League to build the Parthenon,
and I’d do it all again for a copy of Hoplomachia!”

Alkibiades, son of Klinias , in 415BC:

“Disfigure the Hermae? Impossible! I was playing Hoplomachia all night with Sokrates”

 Leonidas, King of Sparta, to Xerxes at Thermopylai, when asked to give up all his
early copies of Hoplomachia:

“Come and take them!…or better yet, why don’t you download your
own copy, you stupid Persian?”

Julius Caesar:

“I came, I saw, I conquered, but I wasn’t included in Hoplomachia;
therefore my life was a dismal failure”

DO YOU DARE ARGUE WITH THEM?

~Putting it all together~
Have we EVER bored you at The Captain? Here's one more novelty-
Impress your friends with your own Sanides!