The Battle of Michmash, 6mm biblicals.

 After a couple of weeks holiday it was back to wargaming today and back to Hail Caesar in biblical times. A recent issue of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy was a Chariot Wars special and one of the battle covered the Battle of Michmash. Now we don't have the armies of Israel or the Philistines so we adapted the scenerio to suit our armies. 

Thus Nigel in his new role as Nigelath Alespic, King of the Assyrians led his army down onto the plain below his camp to do battle with King Ianhep Ratep and his Elamite army with a few Hittite allies led by Instu Shushinart (me). 

It was a good scenario but we had to be careful that it didn't deem too loaded against Nigel. With roughly equal armies but most of the special events usually being bad news for Nigel. 

Assyrian Deployment

Elamite deployment minus their Hittite allies who arrived after a flank march.  

Ianhep urges his army forward. 

The two forces soon clash in what was to be an epic battle in the centre. 

As both sides started to take casualties there was a chance that some of the weaker Assyrian vassal spearmen could defect to the Elamites but sadly Ian fluffed the dice throw so the two units of spearmen remained loyal to Nigelath. 

Initially the Elamites seemed to be getting the better of the battle with Ianhep bravely becoming personally involved in the fighting. 

The Hittite flanking force arrived on turn 3, chasing off a weakened unit of Assyrian chariots, but then they met the Assyrian cavalry who proved to be a very tough unit, possibly unit of the battle? 

Over on the Elamite left flank the two forces were involved in a face off, mainly as both armies kept failing their orders to charge, so it became a shooting match for a while. The Assyrians had more missile armed troops but their missile dice throwing let them down. 

Ian always likes to get his skirmishers safely into rough ground, see top of photo. Look also at the damage counters as the two forces on that flank finally clashed. It was now a close fought battle.

As usual, at this point the game became so involved I forgot to take any more photo's. Both forces had one of their three divisions broken and a second very close to being broken. As we entered the final turn I thought that Nigel and his so far unbeaten Assyrians were going to grab the victory but in an amazing round of melee Ian managed to win a multi units combat and slay the opposing general Nigelath and break the Assyrians chariot division granting the Elamites a hard fought victory. What a cracking game. The biblical era really suits the Hail Caesar rules as we always have closely fought games with them.