Xerxes' army - a note on numbers and perspective.

Specifically, numbers and perspective relating to the wargames army.

Looking at the figures, my rough scale of 1 figure representing 2,500 men works well to give 6 element infantry Corps.

However.

How does that work for the marines and cavalry?

For the marines, assume the Persians started off with about 1,200 ships with 30 marines each. Total force 36,000 men spread over 10 units - an average of 3,600 men each. So, on average, each marine unit would be about 1.5 figures!

The only marine unit that is of major interest though would be the Egyptians - they represented about a quarter of the fleet, so a bit under 10,000 men or one 4 figure element!  Good reason why they don't really get mentioned in battle scenes! The Egyptians are of interest because the Egyptian marines were stated as being left to serve with the army when the Egyptian fleet went home.

As to the cavalry:- average 10,000 men each, doubled for the Persians and combined camel/chariot units. If you ignore the camels/chariots but include the Sakae as another unlisted unit you get 90,000 cavalry - total cavalry force about 36 figures or just under 4 figures per unit!

Putting the cavalry and marines in front of the main army and using the same figure scale the entire cavalry, chariot and marine force is shown in the front row.

Light cavalry and heavy cavalry. Cavalry units I, II and III are represented by a single unit of heavy cavalry - 30,000 cavalry, 12 figures. Cavalry units V, VI and VII are likewise 12 figures so represented by a combined 6 element unit. I should possibly have included a 2 element Sakae unit but have chosen to think that they were actually included in the Bactrian part of this lot.

General flanked by 2 chariots. The general is ignored as far as numbers go. Camels and chariots were supposed to total 20,000 so I've represented '10,000' as 2 chariots!

Indian cavalry 10,000, camels 10,000, hence 2 elements each.

So 36,000 marines -  14.4 figures! The Egyptians represent about a quarter of this, gives them 1 element. I've included a 3 figure element to bring the numbers closer to 'reality', so that's the Lycians. Finally, to represent all the Greek costumed figures I've included 2 elements of Carians. 15 figures, represents 37,500 men, so this lot is actually 1,500 men over strength!

So the important thing:

What does this mean as far as the project goes?

Well, it changes the whole dynamics of the thing.

In practical wargaming terms, units consisting of  one element or less may be doable in DBX - but if you've got a 180 element army, 2 or 3 cavalry elements are not really going to do much. In DBA, the cavalry wouldn't even exist. So you have to treat the marines and cavalry as separate items - in my case, still do the marines as 6 element units, and the cavalry as my 'standard' 12 figure units...

Further, by grouping the light and heavy cavalry units together it gives a good idea of how to organise the cavalry in any re-enactment od Plataea. Not sure whether I would include Indian cavalry or Arab camels in such an army but possibly.

Finally, each Corps is supposed to represent 60,000 men. If we're talking about 9 or 10 infantry corps it would be a bit much for a 30-40,000 strong Greek army to handle so there would have to be a slight readjustment made in this area.