'The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold' - Part 3

The Egyptians are well on the way to destroying the Assyrian left.

 

Between flank attacks and kind dice the Assyrians are starting to crumble.

In fact, things are looking bad forAssyria.

However, the king is coming...

And takes out the opposition.

I was seriously considering the game was over until that 6:1 happened...

But although the chariots went, the Assyrians were still losing elements.

A few good dice rolls and who knows....

But they didn't get them - game over.

 Fun game. Again, dice rolls had a major effect on the result and the game was in doubt for quite a while. On balance, I think the Assyrians were just a couple of units short. Or possibly the Egyptians had a couple too many.

'The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold' - Part 2

Overview of the battle. Probably the main point in this picture is the Egyptian chariots and light archers widely swinging out on their right flank. It always surprises me the effect a couple of terrain pieces can have on a battle, especially when it comes to slowing down outflanking movements.

The other, less obvious, point in the above picture is that Young speciality of rolling 1s! In this case, 4 out of 5!

While archers are proving fragile in this battle, the spears are doing what they do best. Slogging things out. It's very difficult to get a kill in a spear v spear fight, usually just back and forth pushbacks!

Right flank out flanking manoeuvre by the Egyptians..

The Egyptians are gradually taking out that Assyrian heavy archer unit, Egyptian chariots are holding things up on the other side of the slugfest.

The Assyrian general and his chariot strike force have caught the Egyptian horse archers.

While the Egyptian chariots facing Assyrian left flank spears and slingers are finding things difficult.

While one Egyptian chariot is still hanging on, the other Egyptian chariots have gone through the oasis and contacted a detached slinger element. Of course, the chariots will be fighting on a -2 because of the oasis!

The light horse die.

And the onesie curse strikes the centre again! 4 out of 6 - sadly for them the ones include remains of the Assyrian archers and the lone slinger element near the copse.

And now the way is clear for the Egyptians on the Assyrian left.

While the remaining Assyrian archers have gone.

While the Assyrian general and his chariots are slowly getting round the Egyptian left - just a few more elements of archers to go.

This is the battlefield when I had to stop for the day. Hopefully, battle will commence tomorrow. The Egyptians seem to be in the better position though the Assyrians are just ahead as far as elements lost go. Archers don't seem to last long.

'S' Range Egyptian army Review

About four years ago I posted the slightly unfinished version of this army but didn't officially list it as a Review. As wargames activities seem to be suspended at the moment I thought it might be a good idea to redress that omission.

The army in full - Royal Division, Division I Amun, Division II Pre, Division III Sutekh and Division IV Ptah.

The Royal Division. This started out as just a chariot squadron but expanded slightly as I acquired more figures.

Division I Amun. Theoretical 'Standard' organisation of my Egyptian Divisions. 1 heavy infantry regiment, 1 medium/light infantry regiment, 1 heavy archer regiment, 1 light archer regiment, 1 scout cavalry squadron and a chariot squadron.

Division II Pre. Heavy infantry regiment slightly depleted (ie, person I bought them off used a 20 rather than 24 figure unit), light archers replaced by a unit of light javelins.

Division III Sutekh. Heavy infantry regiment replaced by another light/medium regiment, heavy archers replaced by an LMI unit of light archers, LI archers replaced by a slinger unit. However, does have an 'extra' unit of LMI javelins. For some reason never got round to giving this division a general.

Division IV Ptah. The 'Foreign' or 'Nubian' Division. Reduced emphasis on spears, lots of Sudanese archers, one fewer chariot in the chariot squadron.

And the last part... the Egyptians

This one is more a case of the Egyptians that are considered 'right'. This means the chariots, archers and light cavalry. What I haven't included here are the later 'Saitic' infantry and cavalry conversions. The Egyptians I'm looking at here are earlier - New Kingdom or so - that 'ended' in 2014 rather than coming to the fore in 2017!

This lot were doing quite nicely apart from my unfortunate experiments with the dip. I spent ages trying to get the Rose chariot to work... still takes a while to get them but finally succeeded. Everything stopped while I was still building up the chariot force - I have another 3 finished but without crews. So that needs doing - the number I've got crewed at the moment won't be enough for a decent army.

Having said that Harry's purchase stopped everything - not completely true. This lot are conversions made by me, sold to Harry, then returned painted when I bought his collection.

The figure was a follow up/production version of the one in my last post and designed as a generic horse archer - there are actually two versions. I also wanted to use ones without the plume as Parthians - I've got a unit I'm trying to paint now - but so far I haven't got that aspect sorted yet.

This is the universal archer that likewise replaced the archers in my last post. It gives an indication of how useful and versatile this figure is. I honestly haven't the faintest idea how many of them I have spread over several armies.

These are the original Nubians... not a single conversion in the picture...

Which ends the day's linked trilogy - useful to get my thoughts in order like this and see what needs doing even if, a real possibility knowing me, I don't get to do it!

Egyptians, Assyrians and Indians...

Doing the Persian Review I mentioned that I didn't have any Garrison Nubian Auxiliaries in the army because they had all been allocated to the Egyptian army. Egyptians and Assyrians were two of the armies I was working on when I acquired Harry Pearson's collection. At that point work stopped on 'my' armies and they've been in a kind of stasis since. It does mean that some units weren't finished or based and when I came across some of them I thought...

Anyway, quickly painted green over the sand figure bases on these Nubians and now have either 2 24 man Nubian units or 1 48 figure unit... which are now officially part of the Persian army. Should have painted the bases a lighter green.

The standard bearer is Rose and I used the axe version of the basic Nubian figure as the officer (the figure was designed with an axe head on one end, spear point the other so you could use it as either). There is an extra command element to allow for the 1 or 2 unit options.

Of all my conversions this is the most versatile.

As a basic archer it appears in lots of my Ancient armies - for example, Egyptian light archers, sparabara archers, Elamites... here being used as Assyrian unarmoured archers.

Some bought-in already painted Minifigs Indians from a long forgotten source... don't think these are ex Harry, could be.

Nothing to add really - probable reason it's avoided being based in the past is because it's only a 4 element unit rather than my usual 6.

So that's a few units based. Plenty more figures lying around in various states of readyness, especially for the Greeks.

Chariot of the Apocalypse

There are still a lot of individual or small groups of  figures in my collection I don't seem to have covered yet. One of these is a model in the RAFM Demons of Darkness range - number 3705, the Chariot of the Apocalypse. (Actually, thought I had but can't find it so....)

Painting style a bit different from my current block painting efforts. Could probably touch up the chariot wheels.

One thing I like is how the charioteer's head turned out

It's one of those figures I'm not sure about. Not convinced I like the horses for instance. Quite happy with the painting though - comes under the heading 'once upon a time I could paint'

Kushite/Saitic Heavy Cavalry

Simple conversion of the PB Indian cavalry figure to make something that looks Egyptian.

Conversion simply consists of cutting of the rolled piece of cloth at the front of the headband and painting it as just a tied headband.

Again, figures mounted on Garrison horses.

Being Kushites armour should be painted as copper rather than iron - didn't have any copper paint so... the armour is not very satisfactory, I usually do better!

I have enough figures to do another unit, but don't know yet whether to do light or heavy cavalry.  If heavy, I'll paint the skin tones as Kushite, if light I'll use flesh coloured tones to represent native Egyptians. Another option for the lights would be to use the Numidian cavalry from the Garrison Roman range.

The Greek Wars - not quite accurate DBA armies

But pretty close. For example, there isn't a specific army that fits the combined Greek armies, so I've used the Athenian Early Greek army as far as troop types go. Likewise, I wanted to use my 70s Garrison Assyrian and Egyptian Auxiliary figures in the force so slightly modified the early Achaemenids.

As usual for these games I've gone for a plain battlefield.

The Persians are a wide mix of figures. The Assyrian and Egyptian auxiliaries are part of my original 70s Persian army. The general previously served as Harry's general in a number of campaigns. Cavalry are quite recently acquired S Range, the heavies being Assyrians painted up as early Persians. Most of the other infantry are conversions.

The Greeks, on the other hand, are quite a homogeneous bunch of Garrison hoplites and psiloi, some painted by me, others acquired from Harry.

As usual the first tree marks the first precontact phase of the battle.

Both sides have pretty obvious game plans - Greeks try to break through the Persian centre and Persians try to outflank Greeks.

Back to moves, and 'Move 2' shows Greeks trying to refuse flanks as Persians start their encirclement.

And... contact as Persian left contacts Greek psiloi while the centres crash.

This did not go well for the Persian centre which basically died on contact. On the other hand, the right flank Persians have started to do their job and one of the Greek right flank psiloi elements has run away. Leaves the Greeks 3:1 up and the Persians one element away from breaking.

This where it turns more wargame than real battle - 'spare' Greeks turning to face Assyrian/Egyptian auxiliaries as they return from beating the Greek psiloi whilst the Persian general and lights fight it out with the Greek left flank hoplites.

Which is where the Persian general rolls a 6 and forces the hoplites they are facing onto the hoplites being pushed back by the Persian lights - 3 hoplite elements die. With the fleeing psiloi, at the end of the move it's 4:3 in favour of Persia, game over!

Hero of the day Darius in the ascendant! Possible revenge for Harry's Marathon refight.