In these days Miguel worked a lot on a restyle for his MM01 Thermopylae map.
Here you can find his work report:
I have been working on a new Thermopylae (once more!!!)... It was after the remarks of Bevan on BGG on my Thermopylae scenario, and having a closer look I realised that I didn't like it...
The other two ones, from Joe (X18) and Don (A10), treat the fighting on the wall in a too small scale to my taste, and the flanking around the mountains distracts from the battle itself. I made mine with the wall diagonal because I was afraid of doing a too big scale, with the wall going along the whole board. But then the retreat paths were awkward, the fighting was left-to-right, and the flanking force, though treated as the official ambushes, sometimes arrived too far from the Greeks.
I made some tries, solo, with my brother, and sending some tests to Bevan, who tried it with his group and sent feedback! I have kept the starting cards, but left out the deck "clock", removing 20 cards was complicated (specially in VASSAL!), I wanted only a few special rules but that gave the right flavour to the battle.
The ambush is now very effective; "300 Spartans vs 100 Nations" centers the fight around the Spartan HI, gives a better chance to the Persian, gives more importance to "Rally", and conveys the overwhelming Persian numbers without filling up the starting board. "Go Tell" introduces interesting choices at the beginning of each Greek turn. And no more elephants, Bevan thought that that was too "300 the movie" and that it introduced a too random element in the fight!
As usual... Good Job, Miguel.
Here you can find direct link to MM01 Thermopylae (480 BC)
I've also updated the download link for original PDF from Miguel HERE.
It would be best to update also Vassal Module Extension HERE.