Chariots at dawn - Kadesh 1275BC - part 1

Let's start at the beginning.  I always wanted a chariot army.  During my first dalliance with ancient wargaming in the late 1970s I did acquire a 25mm Egyptian chariot.  This caused high excitement until I looked at the army list - WRG 5th Edition was all the rage then - and found that I actually needed 40 of the buggers!

Fast forward to late 2012 and on the bring and buy at a show is a massive New Kingdom Egyptian army.  One of the other Sheffield chaps was interested in some of the figures and so a deal was done.  It needed three of us to carry the several boxfiles out to my car and over the following weeks I sorted through them deciding what to keep and what to sell on.  As regular readers will know, my 25mm armies are actually 25mm as I don't care for the newer 28mm types, so this made the selection process rather easier.  The survivors are mostly Lamming and Minifigs.  Massive self-restraint was required on the chariot front - I retained a mere 22 out of the original 70 plus!

My modest 'Biblical era' collection was further enhanced last year with the purchase of more Assyrians to add to the infantry from JR and a trio of ox-drawn heavy chariots.

When we needed a game at short notice for this week I had a quick look at the CCA website and picked out the Kadesh scenario.   You can find it here.  

The terrain was easy enough - though I did need some of Martin's river sections (I'll be buying more this weekend) and my dodgy pallisade sections stood in for Pharoah's fortified camp.

 The armies were cobbled together from what I had to hand.  Above is the right wing of the Hittite infantry, complete with their (Assyrian) general.

Chariot numbers weren't much of a problem - my 4-horse Assyrian behemoth represented King Muwatalis's unit while we made sure that the Hittite light chariots all had green wheels.

 This ridiculous thing stood in for the other Hittite heavy chariot.

 The king waiting to cross the river.  Or not.

 The Egyptian chariots all had red wheels.  Here is a typical example.  After impressing us with his knowledge of the battle, John was appointed as Pharaoh Ramesses II while Martin led the Hittite horde.

 The Hittites opened by sending some of their infantry across the fordable river....

...while Ramesses led his host out of the camp.

More of this soon!