222 BC · Sellasia, Greece
Antigonid Macedon under Doson defeated Cleomenes III, ending Sparta's last bid to dominate the Peloponnese with its reformed army.
Cleomenes III had spent the 220s BC remaking Sparta: he broke the power of the ephors, cancelled debts, redistributed land and enlarged the citizen body, then rearmed his infantry in the Macedonian manner with the long sarissa.
The reformed army won him most of the Peloponnese and frightened the Achaean League badly enough that it did something unthinkable — it invited Antigonus III Doson of Macedon back into southern Greece to stop him.
Cleomenes held the passes at Sellasia, north of Sparta, with his army split across two hills and the river road between them. It was a strong position and he was outnumbered.
Doson attacked both hills at once. The fighting on the Spartan-held height turned when the Macedonians closed and their deeper phalanx told; Cleomenes' line gave way, and with the position lost the army broke. Cleomenes escaped to Egypt, where he died a few years later.
Sellasia ended Sparta's last serious bid to dominate Greece, and with it the reform programme that had made it possible. Macedon was once again the arbiter of the Peloponnese.
The scenario is about a good position held by the smaller army: Sparta's strength is the ground and the reformed line, Macedon's is depth and the ability to press everywhere at once.
The sides, the commanders and the terms of the problem are historical. The specific cards and costs are the game's abstraction.