6mm Hail Caesar: Here come the Assyrians.

 Nigel showed us his completed 6mm Assyrian army a few weeks ago so we thought it was about time it saw some action. Would his Assyrians suffer the fate of all newly painted armies...? Only time would tell but his Assyrians are certainly a well painted and lovely looking 6mm army. See photo below. 

 With four players we each chose 300 points of troops plus 3 command/leaders. (Early in the game we discovered that we had all selected too many chariots and need to pay closer attention to the armylist limits).  For today's game I loosely based the scenario on the battle of Shrewsbury, a medieval battle of 1403 where Harry Hotspur of the powerful Northern Percy family rebelled and opposed the rule of Henry IV. Although we mainly randomly placed the terrain, once we had decided which players were teamed up on each side deployment was as in the battle of Shrewsbury. For this game I referred to each side as the Royalist and the Rebels. The Rebels deployed in the centre in one long block and the Royalists came on in two blocks, one angling in from each flank. The aim was simple, to capture or kill the opposing leader. The main commander of each side had a leadership rating of 9 whilst all other leader figures were leadership 8. 

Dice decided that Nigel and his Assyrian's allied with Phil's Egyptians to be the Royalists with Nigel being a biblical Henry IV, leaving Ian's Elamites to ally with my Hittites 

Phil's Egyptian marines advance.

My cunning plan to destroy the Assyrian light troops and a section of their 4 horse chariots which had done a two-pronged advance soon backfired and Nigel wiped out my Hittite chariots in two turns and routed our Hittite Harry Hotspur. Never in the whole of Hittite history had such poor dice throwing ever been seen before. Thus, Nigel's Assyrians proved the newly painted army trope completely wrong. 

This part of the Assyrian force hardly moved, it was his chariots that did for me. 

Nigel, Pharoh Phil and Ian discuss tactics whilst laughing at my dice throws. 

Assyrian Chariots make tough units

The Egyptians were slowly gaining the upper hand on the right flank which was a much closer fight. 

Assyrian chariots surround and rout my Hittite chariots taking our Biblical Harry Hotspur with them, the Royalist forces are winning already.   

Two turns in and what is left of my chariots are falling back. 

With my force broken and Nigel's mostly untouched Assyrians aiming to come and help Phil's Egyptians, Ian wisely chose to withdraw from the battle, and we awarded the Royalist force a resounding victory. Great fun despite a complete drubbing for my Hittites.