Where Are My Arrows? Hittites at Chariots of Fire 2023 - Part 1

 

Over the weekend of 16th/17th September there was a small "Chariot Period" MeG competition held at Boards and Swords Hobbies in Derby. This period is one of my favourites and so my Hittite Empire army was packed ready for action.

To see how they fared, read on ...

Due to circumstances there were only 6 of us at the competition, however, I think I can say that all had a great time; which is what it is all about after all. As ever, Manny was the perfect host and so many thanks to him as well as Will Denham for doing the organisation honours.

As mentioned, I took my Hittite Empire army. Here is the list I used:

This is the same list that I used at Warfare in 2021 to some success - 2nd place in fact. If you want, you can read how I did at that competition HERE (part 1 with link to following part at the end). As you can see it relies heavily on its shooting, with the Skilled Bow Hittite chariots being key in this. If the shooting is sub-par things can get difficult.

The first game matched me up against a Minoan army. Oddly, the first game at Warfare in 2021 when I last used Hittites also matched me against a Minoan army.

The PBS (pre-battle sequence) saw me invading. Both of us wanted a fairly open table, however, my opponent wanted a Secure Flank and so chose Coastal as the territory type. However, it ended up with no Deep Water and the only terrain was a small patch of Rocky Ground on my left flank and a gentle Hill on the right.

I outscouted the Minoans by a reasonable amount and so got to see enough of the army to work out the likely deployment. The Minoans massed their chariots on their left and their infantry on the right. I massed most of my chariots to face off the Minoan ones, with a small number of chariots and infantry (mostly the ally) deployed to hold up the infantry.

It looked like this:

First couple of moves saw the Minoan chariot wing push forward aggressively with their infantry following on at a slower speed - well they are infantry 😉 The chariots on my left helped restrict the speed the Minoan infantry could advance and the Hittite infantry sitting in the rough ground also provided a block. One unit of the allied chariots pushed forward to threaten some skirmishing archers holding the end of the Minoan line.

On my right my chariots and supporting skirmish infantry fell back in front of the Minoan advance shooting as they went. Not that the shooting did much despite the numbers involved and that many were Skilled shooters. On top of that one of my Hittite chariot units rolled badly for a Skirmish response and was caught by a larger Minoan chariot unit. Had all the hallmarks of one of those battles ...

Thankfully, despite their rubbish shooting the chariots fought like demons in combat and quickly routed their opponents and pursued past the Minoan infantry line. On the other hand, the rest of the chariots and skirmishers of my right wing definitely seemed to have left their arrows at home ...

On the other wing the Minoans continued their thankless task of trudging towards a few chariots, whilst my allied unit had despatched a skirmisher unit and was in a position to turn the end of the line.

The next moves saw the near total destruction of the Minoan chariot wing. Once again it was actually done in combat and not through my superior and numerous shooters. Arrows? Who needs arrows 😂 Both ends of the Minoan line were now exposed, although on my left the Minoan camp looked a better target than the infantry.

The game was wrapped up fairly quickly after that. The remaining Minoan chariots were broken quickly when attacked from 2 directions, although I did lose a unit in the process. The Golden Chariot Fighters crashed into the flank of the Minoan infantry and my allied chariots went and sacked the Minoan camp.

Overall a very satisfactory result. However, not obtained the way I had anticipated or planned. I had expected most of the damage to be done with my shooting with combat as a mopping up exercise, but the reality was that my army won mainly through combat. All a bit odd really.

Onwards to game 2 ...

In this game I faced a Sumerian army played by Philip Powell - we seem to have met in most competitions this year for some reason. Sumerian is basically a huge infantry army with added onager pulled "battle carts" - sort of primitive chariots.

I again invaded and the Sumerians managed to get a Deep water secure flank to narrow the table - I nearly avoided it, but not quite. We then added 3 pieces of terrain which gave the Sumerians quite a nice deployment position - no running around the ends of the line for me then 😔

I did outscout the Sumerians quite heavily and so could arrange matchups as best I could. The Sumerians had a centre of their best troops, which included 2 units of Skilled shooting archers, flanked by solid infantry. Their left wing had a huge mass of the battle carts and the whole was screened by loads of skirmisher infantry. With their flank secure this was pretty formidable - although, if I could get shooting at them, most of the army is Unprotected meaning all my shooters could be on Green or better dice.

I weighted my army to my right, with the ally again covering my left wing nearest the deep water. 

After deployment things stood like this:

The first couple of moves saw cautious advances by both sides. I was not wanting to overcommit given all the shooting in the Sumerian, whilst Philip initially had poor cards and also wanted to redeploy a good number of his battle carts from his left towards his right wing.

After this initial "fencing" I pushed forward more or less everywhere. This allowed me to push the Sumerian skirmishers back behind their battle troops, exposing the latter to my massed archery. However, it also brought me quite close to the dangerous Skilled shooing archers in the Sumerian army.

However, as I had moved to force some of these to shoot at Skirmishers, and my chariots were Superior so less vulnerable, I hoped that with the volume of shooting I'd be able to take the archers out reasonably quickly. In fact my first shots were effective on the archers. Alas, my other shooting was in the "we forgot our arrows again, didn't we" category 😕

Never mind, the dice always average out so on we went.

They didn't. My shooting remained significantly sub-par. Mind you, the Sumerian shooting wasn't doing much either so we were equally incompetent 😂

However, just like the first game combat was another story. A unit of the battle carts charged and caught my Golden Chariot Fighters, and were promptly and brutally defeated with my chariots then pursuing into a unit of fragile Sumerian Loose formation infantry who had (probably foolishly) moved into the open to drive off some of my skirmishers.

My chariots started to quickly chew their way through the infantry, however, across the rest of the table both sides continued to fail to do anything worthwhile against each other.

So the game timed out in a low scoring draw.

Despite everything it was an enjoyable game. It was just one of those days where the dice had decided that neither side was going to get anywhere.

So the first day ended there. I knew that in the morning I would be facing Sea Peoples, and that would be a very tough matchup indeed.

Would my troops discover where they were hiding all their arrows? You'll have to wait until Part 2 to find out 😁