The Battle of Raphia, also known as the Battle of Gaza, was a battle fought on 22 June 217 BC near modern Rafah between the forces of Ptolemy IV Philopator, king of Egypt and Antiochus III the Great of the Seleucid kingdom during the Syrian Wars. It was one of the largest battles of the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Diadochi and was waged to determine the sovereignty of Coele Syria (from Wikipedia).

Raphia was technically designed as a Standard Combat Series (SCS) game.  However, only a small subset of the SCS rules are needed for play. If you are familiar with usual wargame movement (what an MP is, how units count movement, etc), stacking, step loss, and retreat conventions, there is no need to review the SCS rulebook itself (not included, but will be referenced in the links section).

Players take turns moving their units and conducting ranged combat and melee until the victory conditions are reached.

A player wins Raphia by being the first to move one of their Phalanx units into the enemy home tent.  If all Phalanxes are destroyed before either player wins, the result is a draw.

Raphia is included as one of the games published in MMP's Special Ops Issue #1.  It consists of an 11x17" hex map (paper), a half sheet of counters, and 4 pages of rules/charts.



Game info on BoardGameGeek.com