A Meroitic Kushite civil war

 

Steven home usually means a game. So, he said 'Didn't you have a load of Zulus you used as Kushites?' Yep, looked up armies. Meroitic Kushite. Saw it could have a elephant general... intriguing, couldn't resist myself, so sorted out 2 DBA armies - Indian elephants acting as general as I don't have any Meroitic elephants.

Steven lost dice roll and had to set up first. I mirrored him to a degree except I put my Ps element next to my blades (well, guys with spears and shields pretending to be blades). Ready for spears mayhem in the middle as our generals slog it out.

I let my left flank get too close to him while he partially refused his...

OK, I thought. Lets take out the Psiloi element - straight dice roll, I win, he flees, unless he doubles up I just recoil. No, I died... Happily, one of archery elelents succumbed to a hail of arrows leaving a gap in his line.

Just before contact I had stopped a bit over a move away from Steven. That meant I got to be the one making contact and choosing order of combat. As I had given myself a right flank overlap to start with, and as I had also made sure his single ranked spears next to the general were facing a double rank, I had given myself a slight combat advantage...

Steven threw a 2 for PiPs...meant he took out one of my archer elements but couldn't then roll up my line... 

Anyway, the way the combats went I finished up with a double overlap on Steven's middle spear elements. Steven had a dice roll advantage over me early in the game; that changed and I got three sixes in a row. Including here... two dead elements, suddenly the game moved to my advantage...

Last move of the game. Steven's single element of spears succumbed.

I did actually get my flank attack in on that last move. It bounced! But, having taken out four elements, game over and I finished up winner!

So it proved to be a very close game. It would be easy to say that it depended on dice rolls - true, but that's true to a certain extent of every game. When his Psiloi took out my archers we both thought it was game over; I would his line being broken by the loss of his arher unit was more important - broke his line and made him more dependent on PiPs. At the wrong time he threw a two, couldn't dress his line and attack as much as he wanted and was left vunerable. Meanwhile, throwing three sixes at the right time helped me - but my tactics had given me a +1 or +2 advantage across the whole of my right wing and centre anyway. If the dice rolls on that combat that took out his two spears elements had been reversed I would simply have been pushed back!

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 Saitic/Kushite battle

For the next battle I went for a Saitic/Kushte shoot out, with the Kushites including 2 native Egyptian elements. In other words it was DBA army 1/53 versus army 1/46! Again some of the photos weren't very good due to the lighting situation.

The start of  Move 1. The Kushites are on the right, like the Assyrians still putting cavalry and chariots on the right flank with the native Egyptians holding the left. Kushite Spears and Egyptian Blades standard Garrison figures, Cavalry Minifigs as I never got round to doing the Garrison versions.

The armies at the end of Sequence 1 - as it was really the first 3 moves getting into position. Same Saitic army as before but I thought I would swap the positions of the Bow and Light Archer elements this time.

'Move 2' and the Kushite right is starting to draw ahead  as the Saitic left holds back a bit. The Light Archers are not quite as capable of holding Cavalry as Bows are!

Contact. The Saitic General has decided that the light archers facing the Kushite cavalry will be needing help more than the bows do... or perhaps, didn't like his chances where he was...  In retrospect I should have refused the Kushite right flank a bit.

As the Saitic light horse are pushed back and one unit of outnumbered Bows is destroyed, could be right. Meanwhile the Saitic Spears destroyed the Kushite light chariot and light archers managed to push back one of the Kushite cavalry elements.

At the start of Move 4 the Saitic right is not looking very happy! Meanwhile the Saitic General has managed to hit the Kushite cavalry in the flank but as the Kushites made contact with the light archers first it meant the chariot just counts as a flank support.

Sadly, this move the cavalry managed to destroy both light archer elements while on the left the Kushite blades took out the Saitic bows and the light horse - well, they should probably have followed the General instead of charging back in.

So end of Move 4 the Saitic right and left flanks had both been destroyed plus they reached that 4 elements lost/battle lost moment. Swapping the Bows and Light Archers round proved a bad choice.
Again, a shortish but fun game where I thought I'd try a couple of things that didn't quite come off.

The random palm trees again did their job well as Move Markers - it's proving to be a a simple but effective way of visually keeping me straight for sorting the photos!

Back to basics - Saitic Egyptians v Neo-Assyrians, Saitic v Kushites Part the First.

Haven't played a DBA game in ages and feeling withdrawal symptoms, so got down to getting the figures out. So, decided on a couple of games. Normally I tend to use Minifigs for Egyptian and Assyrian armies, for these I decided to give the others a chance.

Rather than putting this lot in  with the battle descriptions I thought I 'd just put the army descriptions in a separate post with links to the armies/figures from previous posts.

Neo-Assyrian Empire 1/45

So sorted out my (mainly) Lamming Neo-Assyrians - basically the ones that appear at the top of my blog - plus my Garrison Saitic Egyptians and Kushites. However, I also used the tin plate chariot as the general. Likewise, the army itself dates back to the 70s - pre-DBA, pre-Hordes. So for them I used some of the S Range javelin men that I put on Hordes bases.

Saitic Army 1/53

One that was completely off the shelf with no need for substitutions.   One nice thing about this army - from my point of view anyway - is that every figure is one of my conversions. 

Kushite Egyptian 1/46

Another army of conversions (mostly) - though in this case I still haven't sorted the Cv element out yet (?) and had to use one from my Minifigs Kushite army...

Hail Amun

1st Division of Egypt, Destroyer of Vile Kush and Victorious Defender of the Frontier.

In celebration of the Victory over the Vile Kush Pharaoh honours his own Division.

Pharaoh approaches the border fort with his guard as the Amun Division acts as a Guard of Honour

The defence of the fort by 4 companies of light archers is credited with a major part of the victory. The Regiment, brought back to strength, awaits Pharaoh.

Pharaoh  honours the Commander of the Regiment. As the 1st Division is often under the direct command of Pharaoh it has not got a 'dedicated' General itself - the Leader of Hariots usually does this job - however, this will soon be corrected as Pharaoh's bodyguard increases in size.

Pre Division approaches the fort. Amun takes a well-deserved leave, job done.

Pre is given responsibility for the border from Pharaoh.

Due to the greatly increased perceived threat from Kush the garrison has been substantially increased.

The Kushites are coming Part 3

And the main battle is about to start...

The battle lines are drawn...

In this battle, both sides just want to attack.

I allow archers a 6" firing range, so cavalry need to close quickly.

This is true of the Kushite cavalry as well.

Things aren't going well for the defenders in the fort.

The cavalry attacks didn't go well - the Egyptians ran away and the Kushites were stopped dead in their tracks.

The end is in sight here...

As the main battle develops, the Kushite centre is looking fragile.

The Kushites continue their attacks and some Egyptian right flank infantry turn to block an outflanking move.

Having cleared the fort the Kushite attackers stream out to  join the main battle.

When the Egyptian chariots broke the cavalry they were facing, the surviving element eventually took a Kushite chariot with it - and another one died in combat. The hard battle for the fort obviously left a mark on the Kushite warband from the fort - they broke on contact with the spears.

Feeling a bit lonely, the Kushite general calls it a day... time to regroup and come back later...

A very enjoyable battle. As to rules... a bit of a mish mash of DBA, WRG 4th Edition and RY 'that's seems about right'. I speeded combat up a bit treating them as units if everything the same but separate elements at other times - for example, spears v warband 1 dice roll for the whole unit, chariots separate rolls as the general was present and he gets the plus 1, the others don't - so 3 separate combats instead of 1.

The Kushites are coming - Part 2

So the cavalry are off to get help while the fort gets to see some action.

The fort is under siege whilst the main Kuskite army bypasses it and starts to form up a battle line.

One problem with the fort is that you can't put the bases on the ramparts - they fall off.

This could take a while as the action swings back and forth. Here, some Blemye have broken into the fort but the Kushite warband has been pushed back. Under DBA the garrison should have a plus 4 but I've ony given them a plus 2. My game, my rules.

The Amun Division has (mostly) arrived - some still on garrison duty elsewhere.

The Blemyes are inside and fighting the garrison. Meanwhile some warband are still at the walls, the rest sit out this move having been pushed back (unlike 'standard' DBA where they would be straight back in - I feel that that wouldn't represent the siege nature as well as having a delay). For all, enemy scoring double on dice means a kill, but I've also said 2 pushbacks running will kill a defender.

The defenders win the battle inside the fort and the attackers are pushed back outside.

Meanwhile, in the main battle both sides are advancing towards each other.

The Kushites are coming Part 1

Seemed like a good idea - Egyptian haven't had an outing in ages, likewise Kushites...

So, this one is basically a Kushite incursion into Egypt, possibly the incursion that led to the overthrow of the ruling Dynasty and founding of the Kushite 25th Dynasty. The defenders are the Amun Division.

The scenario also lets me use my ancient Airfix Foreign Legion fort. It's rather old, having bought it when they first came out, and seems to have lost it's gate, but, can't have everything.

First sign of trouble is when a cavalry patrol rides back to the fort screaming things like 'The Kushites are coming! The Kushites are coming!

Now, the fort is there more as a customs house rather than somewhere designed to stop actual armies...

I've set this one up length ways giving me a battlefield 6' long and 4' wide. The Nile forms a boundary quite simply A4 and A5 MDF sheets sprayed blue. As the battle proceeds I'll move the terrain/action up and down the table as required!

The original idea was to use my Ptah Division as the Kushites, but then thought - well, got a perfectly good dedicated PB Kushite army so...

The Kushite figures cover quite a range of 90s era Minifigs Egyptian/Blemye figures. The chariots are a reasonable paint job, infantry are mostly black undercoat and drybrushing - not sure, think the warband are actually supposed to be Old Kingdom Egyptians!