Category: Ancients Wargaming

…made sweet summer by this son of York.

One of the challenges of HoTT as a fantasy wargaming system is that you actually have to be creative. Not for the HoTTer the crutch of army lists and approved figures. You must theme your own army. Some are brutally efficient, exploiting the imbalances of the points system, but we spurn them – they are players, not gentlemen. But being creative is not my forte and coming up with interesting themes for HoTT armies is not my forte – generic dwarves or undead egyptians are nice but hardly original.

But as I paint my DBMM War of the Roses army – genius strikes. I always talk to my figures as I paint them and obviously for the War of the Roses, all the best dialogue has to come from the first series of Blackadder (the one true series you might say). And then I think, why not do a Blackadder HoTT army. What would be in it?

Richard III – Knight General.

Richard, Duke of York “Let blood, blood, blood be your battle cry. Slit their gizzards” – Hero (anyone played by Brian Blessed has to be a hero).

Prince Harry “Now there’s going to have to be a certain amount of violence, but we all know its in a jolly go cause, don’t we?” – Difficult one this. I first thought a Cleric, but on balance I think he has to be a Paladin.

Edmund Blackadder, Duke of Edinburgh – Sneaker (obviously – very good at killing generals, albeit on his own side).

The Bishop of Bath and Wells (not the later baby-eating one, but the one who is apparently killed by Edmund but is still able to lead the service of thanksgiving) – fills the Cleric slot nicely.

The Spanish Infanta – Behemoth (obviously).

We nobles (obviously including Lord Percy “why, its the king”) – Knights

Peasants (lots of peasants, but they only count in the event of a tie) – Hordes.

The battle for next year’s SoA Battle Day is Kadesh, so I guess the time is coming to start doing some research on what forces we will need for the battle. And this seems to be one where there isn’t much information, so it will be mainly guesswork. Although that does mean it will be more difficult for someone to disagree.

So what do we think we know?

Firstly the course of the battle. This seems to have taken place in a number of phases.

Phase 1 is the attack of the Hittite chariotry from ambush into the marching Re division (Re may also have been crossing the river at the time). It ends with the effective destruction of Re as a coherent force and the Hittites pursuing the remnants north to the camp of the Amun division where Rameses was. It is possible that some of the Hittites may have pursued west and south as well (assuming that part of Re fled in that direction) and that they are not mentioned because they do not play any further part in the battle (or if they do they are not in the bit that reflects to Rameses’ glory and therefore are not mentioned).

Phase 2 is the Hittite pursuit into the camp of Amun. Initially there is confusion and slaughter of the Egyptians but Rameses single-handed rallies the Egyptians and puts the Hittites to flight. We can probably assume that there is an element of hyperbole in the accounts of Rameses’ role in this, but it is interesting that the Hittites are put to flight after a fight in a camp where you would expect their larger crews and close combat weapons to give them a decisive advantage over the Eygptians with their lighter chariots and bows. However the infantry will be on good ground in the camp – that they are not mentioned in the account might be because they are not Rameses. Rameses enumerates 2,500 chariots in the Hittite attack at this point – is that the number that led the attack in phase 1, or is that the remains after some turned south or west in pursuit (the 1,200 that would bring the 2,500 up to 3,700, but see phase 3 below)?. Even so, this is 2,500 against the 5,000 infantry and 500 chariots of Amun (plus any rallied remnants of Re).

Phase 3 is Muwatillis the Hittite king sending his reserves of 1,000 more chariots comprising the nobility across the river to support the fight in the camp. This would conveniently bring the original 2,500 up to nearly the total of 3,700 (which would then suggest that maybe only 200 chariots were lost by the Hittites in phase 1). At this point as they are about to join the fray, the mysterious Ne’arin appear from the north-west to reinforce Rameses. The Hittites turn and retreat or flee across the Orontes.

The second part is the numbers, which is important as we need to start sourcing figures:

Rameses states that the Hittite army was 37,000 infantry and 3,700 chariots, on a convenient 10:1 ratio. This seems to be repeated when contingents are mentioned as well.

The Egyptian army seems to have been in 4 divisions – Amun, Re, Ptah and Seth. Each division appears to have been 5,000 infantry (a total of 20,000 is mentioned). There is no total for the number of chariots, but as a working assumption it is possible that Rameses gets to his total of the number of Hittite infantry by taking the ratio of infantry to chariots of his own army and applying that to the chariot strength of the enemy army. As a working assumption therefore, lets assume that the Egyptians have 2,000 chariots, with 500 in each division.

In DBMM (for that is what we shall be using), each element is 250 infantry (or 1,000 if Hordes) or 50 chariots. That gives us rough numbers of elements for the two sides of:

Egyptians: 80 infantry + 40 chariots. Lets assume that each division is 10 Bd(F), 10 Bw(O) and 10 Cv(S). Plus we need more Caananite chariotry for the Ne’arin (if they are Caananites).

Hittites: 128 infantry (unless some are Hd) + 74 chariots. Actual troops are more difficult for the Hittites. As a working assumption again though we could guess that the chariots are 1/3 each Hittite, Anatolian vassal and Syrian vassal, so 25 Kn(O) and 50 Cv(O).

Thirdly, we need to construct a plausible narrative for the battle. This is difficult because the Egyptian account fairly obviously contains a lot of tosh. We need to create a new one which makes sense in the following ways:

1. The numbers need to be plausible (which they are – no million man armies here).

2. The tactics need to be plausible. Here we start getting sticky. Why did the Hittites not use any of their infantry to push their advantage? Was their scouting as bad as the Egyptians’, such that they didn’t know that there were 4 Egyptian divisions (plus the Ne’arin) and though that they had plenty of time to destroy Amun and Re. Or was the Hittite infantry of such poor quality that they didn’t dare risk it?

3. The outcome needs to be plausible. Obviously the rules won’t cover Rameses winning the battle single handed. We need to work out how and why the initial Hittite charge of 2,500 chariots managed to scatter 5,000 infantry and 500 chariots so easily. And we then need to work out what actually was happening in the camp.

And in addition, why does it then end? Why do both sides then pull off? Were the Hittites surprised by the size of the Egyptian army? Or had they lost too many nobles in the first day to want to continue. Rameses certainly seems to have effectively capitulated in order to extricate his army, so why did the Hittites not press home their advantage? Was it that the Hittite core of their army was actually quite small and they had had to over-commit it on the first day (which would imply that the rest of the army wasn’t really very good)? Were they worried that if the Hittite core took too much damage, this far from home, their local vassals would take an opportunity to finish off the King?

More as a bookmark for myself, as I have a boxful of badly painted Abbasids myself, here are some rather nicely painted Abbasids that will serve as inspiration for me to get another good looking army on the table. Now if only I could understand the DBMM Abbasid list…

Rather late follow up for the previous post since the battle was months ago, but a photo journal of the course of the actual battle can be seen in the article on the Pinner Wargames website. I would repeat it all here but that would be a colossal waste of disk space for all the pictures.

Very few postings recently because I have been doing so much painting for the Society of Ancients Battle Day, but the day has almost dawned so tonight will just be the last couple of finishing touches. Here the army is, lined up against the Carthaginians they will be playing tomorrow (my Romans are the fuzzy ones facing you in the distance).

24 hastati are now painted and are gluing to their bases. The shields for the Italian ones are done but not the Roman ones as I am waiting for some transfers. Must buy some superglue tomorrow for the swords. I have now retired to the pub to celebrate being ahead of schedule.

I’m not doing the terrain (hurrah) but I am providing the Roman army, so it would be good if my bases vaguely matched the terrain. In aid of that, here are 3 very large pictures of some sample hastati and principes. The colour is as balanced as I can make it – it was taken with a flash – and the cloth is a Games Workshop green cloth for reference.

The figures are all Gripping Beast, and very nice they are too. The painting is all mine, and it shows :). Except that is for the shields; they are transfers from Little Big Men.

Click on the photos for a full size version.

David Mather and I at the Pinner Wargames Club have agreed to provide the armies for the DBMM refight of Zama at the upcoming Society of Ancients Battle Day in April, so now is the time to start thinking about how many figures we are going to need for that.

I am providing the Roman army, and the main sources for the battle are Polybius, Livy and Plutarch (mainly the first two). Livy seems to mainly cover it in books 28 and 29. In book 28 Publius Cornelius Scipio is sent to Sicily with 7,000 volunteers. Here he has two legions (V and VI) which seem to be the disgraced remnants of the survivors of Cannae, back in 216 BC, over a decade earlier. In book 29:24 he is described as bringing each legion up to a strength of 6,200 infantry and 300 cavalry, and also bringing their socii contingents up to strength as well (presumably the same strength but with more cavalry as usual). He then in section 25 comes up with 3 different values for the size of the army, none of which match this (there are either 10,000, 16,000 or 32,000 infantry – 4 x 6,200 is 24,800).

Now if we look at Polybius’ account of the structure of the legion, he says that it should contain 4,200 infantry (or 5,000 at times of emergency) (III:20). Add to this the same number of socii, and then double it for two legions and you would get 16,800, or 20,000). On the other hand, these aren’t normal legions, so they probably weren’t formed using the text-book system.

He then tells us that there are 600 triarii, 1,200 principes, 1,200 hastati and the rest are velites (by subtraction another 1,200). He also says that the ratios remain the same if the size increases, except that there are still always only 600 triarii.

The two most important classes are the hastati and the principes, both by now identically armed but the principes being men in the prime of life (the hastati being younger). Each legion should contain 10 maniples of principes and 10 of hastati, each with 2 centurions (and therefore by implication 2 centuries although he doesn’t use that word). Polybius also says in his description of the layout of the camp that there are only half the number of triarii (the oldest men) as there are principes or hastati (he at least is consistent).

Thus each maniple should be 120 men, making them much smaller than the maniples in Caesar’s time. If we take Livy’s numbers of 6,200 per legion, and assume that there are still only 600 triarii, that leaves 5,600 for the other ranks, which is inconveniently indivisible by 3. Lets therefore err downwards and assume 1,800 each of principes, hastati and velites, giving us 6,000 men per legion. That would then give us maniples of 180 men, now actually slightly larger than in Caesar’s time.

How does this all fit into DBMM?

Well the standard figure scale is 200 – 250 men per element. We’re going to double this (because we can’t afford that many figures). So lets assume 400 men per element. This would give us 1.5 elements of triarii, 4.5 of principes, 4.5 of hastati and 4.5 of velites per legion. I don’t like this because I want to have shield patterns per legion, so lets play fast and loose with the element scale (since the original numbers are pretty dodgy). This could then give us 2 elements of Sp(S) triarii, 4 elements of Bd(O) hastati, 4 elements of Bd(O) principes and 4 elements of Ps(S) velites per legion, which is a pleasing ratio of elements. It also doesn’t do too much damage to the original sources being somewhere in the middle of the mess.

Next – ground scale and how that fits in.

An exciting and ultimately close battle using Phil Sabin’s Lost Battles rules last night against Darth Mather. We were refighting 2nd Coronea – he was Agesilaus, I was the humdrum allied hoi polloi. I felt I was doing very well initially as I pushed forward my right flank and broke right through his weak left flank and was getting the better of the melee in the centre, while his right flank commanded by Agesilaus was just sitting there like a bunny in the headlights, but two poor morale rolls saw me loosing all my remaining hoplites on my right flank and in the centre as they were already spent. I used my last command points to withdraw my hoplites on the left unengaged and end the battle. When we added up the points though, the 26 point bonus for starting the battle with only 51 points to the Spartan 64 points, and that most of my hoplites had fled because of poor morale rather than being shattered in close combat meant that Mather had actually only won by 70 points to 67, which was pretty close.

All in all a very enjoyable battle. In the last turns I felt like I was being rolled over, but since that was pretty much what happened in real life I felt that the scoring system worked wonders in showing that really I did no better or worse than could be expected with the forces at my disposal. A refreshing change from the equal points fantasy historical match-ups that I am more used to.

No pictures unfortunately, which is probably a good thing.

I’ve just realised that there are no pictures of my Ottomans up here, only over on the Pinner Wargames website. So here they are, the result of some focused evening painting while on holiday in Wales. Apologies as usual for the quality of the photos.  I must find my tripod so I can take some photos where the depth of field is more than about 3 mil. I seem to remember seeing it somewhere in the garage about 6 months ago when I was looking for something else, although I can’t remember if I ignored it or hoiked it out on the grounds that it didn’t belong in the garage.

First up are the sipahis – the feudal landowner cavalry, normally armoured and armed with bows and a mix of lances and hand weapons. I’m experimenting with a fairly fast painting style at the moment with a base colour, some quick high-lighting and then a wash, in this case Devlan Mud from GW.

The other figures that I almost finished are the akinjis. I say almost finished because I am 4 riders short, which is irritating. I am hoping that when I split the packs with Lord Mather we just miscounted and I can scrounge the missing 4 figures off him. Akinjis are the rabble peasant light cavalry, unarmoured and bow armed and fighting for loot rather than duty.

I also managed to paint some voynuks, but there are no pictures as yet because I have run out of grass for their bases. Plus I can’t actually fit them into the army. Ho hum, I am sure they will come in handy in other eastern European mediaeval armies.

Still to come are the generals and the kapikullu – I have some figures but I need to replace the lances and I am looking for some more inspiring general figures.

The janissaries are done as well, they just need to be photographed.

Last is the azabs – I don’t even have the figures for them yet.