Marathon

Since there is already a chess variant based off the battle of thermopylae (Thermopylae) in the Persian Wars, I've decided that I think it is a good idea to finish off the set of notable battles and create one about the battles of Marathon and Salamis, both equally as interesting and strategic as Thermopylae. This variant is the first of this set featuring white as greece and black as persia during this battle, with black moving first.

Since the Persian army at the battle featured the immortals, or their best warriors, in the middle and conscripted and less trained warriors on the sides, I decided to replicate this by putting more powerful rooks in the center and other various weaker pieces on the left and right flanks with less power and more variety of pieces to represent conscripted men from different parts of Persia with less training but different and more variety of fighting methods. The alibabas and grasshoppers represent the Persian archers because these are long range chess pieces that are positioned near the back. In the very back we have the Persian king Darius the First who sat in the back of battles and commanded the army while being safely protected by guards. I have him in the back surrounded by protecting guards, and since he is the most important figure in the Persian Empire, he must be captured for the Athenians to win the game. This part is a little bit different historically because Darius did not actually show up in battle and he would probably run away if he was about to lose, but I figured that would be the easiest way to create a realistic objective for the game that also highlights the ideological differences between the role of leaders between Persia and Greece. The villager pawns are there merely as a way to avoid instant piece capturing and make it more interesting and less of a game of trading, although many ancient battles feature structure and therefore trading pieces to change up structure so there is still a heavy amount of trading for that purpose.

On the other hand, the Greek army at marathon features a bunch of generals, which highlight the teamwork that the Greeks fought with. I have them forming a rectangular phalanx formation with clear rows and columns like they used to fight battles in. I chose to use the general to represent this because the Greek hoplites had very short range but were tightly interlocking with each other in battle (shown by the king part in the king+knight general piece) with long spears for near combat (the knight part of the king+knight general piece). The two chancellors on the frontlines of the battlefield represent Miltiades and Callimachus, two of the more prominent generals during the battle out of the 10 generals present. This highlights the ideological difference between the Greeks and the Persians because the Greek generals fought in the frontlines in the phalanx with the rest of the Hoplites, while Persian leaders and generals like King Darius stayed protected behind.

While the left side of the board represents the initial battlefield at Marathon, the right side represents the city of Athens that was pretty much unprotected. The bricks in the middle are to add some time and make it harder to move from the battlefield to Athens and vice versa because in the reality of the battle it was very hard to shift from Athens to the battlefield or from the battlefield to Athens. While the hoplites were all fighting at Marathon, there were still teenagers and retired Hoplites who were left in Athens as well as women and children who would all fight to death to protect the city. The kings surrounding it represent the teenagers and retired Hoplites who had some fighting skills and can maybe put up a little bit of a fight, while the dead kings represent the other citizens that would try and fight but be innocently killed by the Persian fleet if they were to reach Athens successfully. The bishop in the lower right corner represents the Athenian Acropolis, or the center of the city. The bishop is blocked so it cannot move, it is there merely as a marker for black. If black reaches the bishop, or the center of the city, then they win the battle and therefore win the game.

The strategy for this game should be pretty similar to what happened at the actual battle, except that I tried to make both sides have an equal chance of winning. Persia overall has a massive army and wants to use that to their advantage, while the Greeks have a smaller army but better warriors and leaders. At the actual battle, the Persians used their strongest warriors positioned in the middle to attack the middle of the more spread out Athenians. Militiades led the Athenians with his famous gamble to run forward in order to avoid the Persian archers and then attack the wings and eventually surround the Persian immortals who were attacking in the center. In this game, black should use their large numbers to try to trade their weaker pieces with the stronger white pieces while using the rooks in the middle to attack the middle of white. White's strategy should be to attack the weaker sides of Black's formation in order to surround them, and they should focus on quick attack tactics to avoid the long range black pieces. The Persians also used their cavalry and some of the pieces on the side to try and attack the city of Athens from behind. Their goal should also be to occupy white with the battle and then counterattack from behind with their knightriders and bishops before white can bring enough reinforcements.