My latest rules project was focused on Assyria. The focus would be chariot warfare, Bronze Age, and even early Iron Age warfare. Of course, that meant one of the historical scenarios had to be the Battle of Kadesh. Despite not having any Assyrians in it, I started building armies for Kadesh as I figured it would make a great display game and demo! It is one of the most famous battles of all time.
In 2023, I finished off my Egyptian army for the battle (and other scenarios) here:
These are all 6mm from Baccus and mounted on 60 x 60mm bases.
After finishing the Egyptians, it was time to turn to the Hittites! I have all ready finished most of the army. But I still have the Royal guard, with and without Bow support, and the rather large chariot corps.
Here is the Hittite army so far....
With two infantry units left, I got to work on those first. These guys represent the core of the Hittite army and the most disciplined of the King's forces. I had two units, one with just the infantry, and the second with bow support built-in. I have to say, the Baccus minis have an amazing level of detail for 6mm models and they looked great!
My camera has a hard time getting good detail shots at 6mm! However, I used my standard techniques and soon had two more units of Hittite infantry done. Here is a quick photo-montage of the process. If you have been following the project on the blog, you are well aware of the steps I take.
So, the Guards got finished up and added to the rest of the Hittite infantry force. Here you can see them in action at the forefront of the army.
Next up, was the Chariot corps. The Hittites actually made use of two types of chariots. They used a lighter 2-man chariot and a larger, heavier 3-man chariot. The why's and the how's are still a but up in the air. However, many feel they used their chariots in a more "shock attack" and charging role than the Egyptians. Egyptians preferred a mobile archery platform.
Anyway, I realized right away that my typical techniques for painting 6mm were not going to work. I had a hard time getting the chariot draught pole and yokes attached. I decided to skip having those as part of the models. It was not going to be worth the effort.
That means I also had issues mounting them on the sticks to paint them. I was going to have to change everything up. I started by undercoating the horses, and then I tried to mount the light chariots and horses to their bases. Then, I undercoated the Cars and Crew from there. Overall, this was much harder than my preferred method. For the Heavy Chariots, I just undercoated and did some painting separately, but again it was not as easy as the Egyptian chariots.
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| Hittite Light Chariots |
Once assembled on their bases, I went ahead and painted them all up and got ready to finish them off. This was a bit harder than doing them on the sticks. However, it was easier than I had feared. Thankfully, the models have pretty decent detail and painting 6mm models is more like sticking a dot of paint in the right place than any real detailed painting.
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| Heavy Chariots in front, Light to the rear |
You will notice that like the Egyptian Pharaoh, I gave the Hittite King a four horse chariot to help them stand out a bit. I also tried to color-code the units to help differentiate who-was-who a bit better. Heavy's are White, Purple, and Yellow; while the Lights are Red, Green, and Blue. This will make them easier to ID on the field at arm's length.
From here, I finished up the bases using my usual method. Territorial brown, a drybrush of khaki, some green ink, and black around the edges of the base.
With that, the last step was to take a few action shots out in the arid lands of the Levant. I also wanted a group shot with the rest of the Hittite forces. The soldiers of Hattusa march to Kadesh under the command of King Muwatulli II.
With the armies done, I still had one last thing to complete for this project. That was the city of Kadesh itself! You may recall that my friend Kelly made a 3D printable version of a Bronze Age city for me. Well, I had to get it painted up for the demo game!
I primed it Seer Grey and busted out my Big-Box Acrylics. I used the same basic colors as I used for the bases; Territorial Beige, Khaki, and Nutmeg Brown. I used a few spots of color on the marketplace tents in the design. After the base coats, I washed them with a Light tone wash.
I made up a QRS and put it in the main rulebook this time. I am learning! Now, the last steps is to play-test the basic rules a bit more and the Battle of Kadesh scenario specifically. Then, I think I am ready to take this around as a demo game for wargaming.
Until next time!
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