I am not a geek. I 'm a grognard. It's a lot like being a geek, but with more manoeuvers.

Excuse me while I take a break from my usual post style (huh? what she talkin about? What style?) to talk about my one true love in my life as a wargamer:

The Cataprhacts.

Yep. A few hundred pounds of man and beast, covered in chain or scale mail from head to toe (OK, to hoof, you nitpicker), armed with a compound bow to turn people into pin chushions from afar, and a lance for the charge when things have to get personnal. What's not to love?

My love affair with them started in Medieval: Total War. In the game, they 're the elite cavalry of the Byzantines, the faction to which I gravitated from the start, by default. When I checked the units available to me, and saw I could build "cataphracts" in the royal stables of Konstantinople, a faint echo of the words "Kataphraktos ippotes" breathed through my memories, a remnant of the time when I didn't listen to my school teachers teaching their boring version of history; and I said to myself, "oh, yeah, the Kataphraktoi! Cool!". To tell the truth, I mistook the first stirrings of love in my heart for the side-effects of a nationalistic upbringing. But true love shines through shit every time. When I realised what the K'tanks were and what they did... when I saw them dealing some hot butt love to the massed ranks of spearmen of my enemies... well, my hard grognard heart melted and I heard vultures sing... I think I must have cried...

What they are, or, well, were, in the real world, was a centuries-old tradition, nay, a philosophy, which began in what is modern-day Iran, then Persia, or Parthia, or the Sassanid empire (depending on the slice of time you chose to look it up in the map) and, carried through the Eastern Roman Empire to the royal knights of the Catholic nations in the middle ages, found it's final expression in today's heavily armored tanks.

The Kataphracts were the first tanks. They were also the first knights, only, when the post-Alexander Persians employed them, although they were of noble birth already, they were to a much greater extent normal soldiers, than those uppity, spoilt brats in urgent need of serious spanking of western knights, ever where. Like the knights, they were elite, impetuous and proud, but they were also disciplined. And if there is value in a soldier, it is equal only to his discipline.

The original kataphracts were Parthian horse archers covered in heavy armor and equipped with heavy lances. The horse archers being a well-known specialty of the eastern armies after Alexander, their heavily-armored variety must have been a surprise when the 36. 000 men of Marcus Linius Crassus' legions crossed the Euphrates and attempted to conquer Iran in 54 BC. Against the Parthian cataphracts and the lighter horse archers, the Romans met their doom near Carrhae, beyond the river Balissus.

It is said, of the battle, that the one thousand cataphract lancers that formed the bodyguard of Eran Spahbodh Rustaham, the Suren-Pahlav, general, of the Parthian army, rode into the field concealing their heavy armor, so that they were indistinguishable from the other nine thousand mounted archers of the host. Once the Romans were arranged for battle, the Parthian's drums sounded and the cataphracts uncovered their armor. Then they charged the legions, led in person by their Suren. The legions withstood the charge, but then the horse archers began their work, and the battle, already lost for the Romans the moment they presumed to be able to take on the finest cavalrymen of the ancient world, in their desert turf, in the heart of summer, with only foot soldiers and light horsemen of their own, turned into a slaughter.

The losses of the Romans were indeed terrible, that day. The archers were constantly supplied with arrows by a baggage train of one thousand camels (a supply hard to disrupt with only Gauls with javelins on horses, in the manner of cavalry, for the Romans) so the hail of arrows only subsided when night came. In the course of the day, Crassus's young son, Publius, was killed along with about twenty one thousand of his men, when he attempted to create a diversion. He was cut off from the main Roman body, his force wittled down with arrows and decimated, all the while penned into close ranks (and offering, thus, an easy target) by the threat of the cataphracts. It is said that the Gaul infantrymen of Publius's division, which the Romans meant to use as meat shields, as was their habbit, fought bravely, getting hold of the cataphract's lances to pull them down, and running between the horses to stab the animals, but in the end, only five hundred men escaped with their lives, to be sold into slavery; and the Parthians returned to the site of the main battle carrying Publius's head on a lance.

By the end of the day, the Roman army was in complete disarray. Their force had broken up into several parts that dispersed around the hills and the desert; there was no chance of reinforcment, as Crassus had gathered all of the Romans legions in the East. Under the cover of darkness, two of Crassus' lieutenants and their men tried to remove themselves from danger, but their wounded comrades realised their plan and raised the alarm. At length, the Romans found refuge in the city of Carrhae, but, the city being unable to withstand a potential siege, they were forced to leave... they were betrayed by their guide and were cornered by the Parthians; the Romans were offered peace, but while their head officers were being brought to the Parthian camp to sign a treaty, one of them thought they were being carried off to be murdered, drew his sword and brought the end of himself, his commander and all the other Romans in the party.

That was the definitive battle where the power of the cataphracts was established as that of the most formidable cavalry of the ancient world.

(deep sigh)

Those are the things that bring tears to my eyes. As someone once said, war is desirable only to the ones who have never experienced it... so right, but I can't help to love a good story when I hear one...

In Rome: Total War, the latest of the Total War bunch, and my favorite game of all time, thank you very much, the Cataphracts are back... This time, there's three factions who can field them by name: Parthia, of course, the Seleucids and the Armenians. Other factions, like the Pontians, have heavily armored cavalry that should be counted as cataphract cavalry, and they are that in all but name. I spent my first few months in the game trying to find what was the best depth of line to deploy the Greek phalanx into... until I realised my favorite tanks were here in force, and I haven't looked back ever since. For some unfathomable reason, the Parthians, who are the only normally (ie, pre-modded) playable Eastern faction... don't have access to Cataphract archers! The Armenians do, and the Pontic heavy cavalry are armed with javelins, but those two factions are not playable in the campaign (though you can play them in the custom battle part of the game), and the Seleucid and Parthian Cataphracts are only armed with lances... what a disappointment... Once me and my love are nice and cozy in our new place in England, I 'll have to sit down and give a bit of a tweak to the game's stats, 'cause it's just damn stupid the way the Parthians are now...

... mind you, that doesn't mean they can't still whoop Roman ass for fun...

Those guys are rapidly becoming my favorite army in R:TW.

There will soon be a complete Parthian strategy guide- on this blog. Consider yourselves warned.