Building Adam's Chariot Army

An impulse buy of some Ral Partha Egyptian chariots many years ago first aroused my interest in building an army of the era of ancient Egypt. A recent holiday up the Nile reawakened this project and I rooted out the figures and started to have a look at what reference, miniatures and rules were available.

I had never previously been convinced that wargames rules covering the entire ancient period would give the right "feel" for this era of warfare. I did not want my Egyptians to be like Romans but wearing funny clothes. This concern has been reduced with the arrival of more period specific supplements for Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) and Warrior, and the possibilities of tailoring Piquet's Archon. The Chariot Wars supplement from WAB has a host of inspiring pictures and some ideas for army organisations but I was initially going to buy the miniatures that I liked the look of and  worry about the balance of the army later!

An early spanner thrown in the spokes (chariot spokes?) was the complaint from one of my regular opponents, Nick, that he had thought of the idea of getting an Egyptian army first (disputed!) With tremendous good grace I looked around for an alternative nation to champion. I liked what I saw of the Canaanites.

These inhabitants of what is now Palestine, Israel and Lebanon were constantly the victims and pawns of the surrounding empires but plugged on gamely and gave the "big boys" a bloody nose on occasion. There was a fair amount of information about them in "Armies of the Ancient Near East" by Nigel Tallis/ WRG and some nice figures available from The Foundry and Ral Partha. With some research it also seems that they were a major component in the armies of the Hyksos who ruled over Egypt for at least 200 years. This was more like it!

The most important arm to this army was going to be the chariots; masses of them! Buying chariots gets expensive very quickly however at £8.50 each from Foundry. The Ral Partha one is much less expensive but there is just the one variant. I decided to buy some of the very cheap Irregular Miniatures Egyptian chariots and add spare Foundry and converted crew instead of the Egyptians. Half price chariots! The other main components of the army are militia type spearmen and levied / mercenary light skirmishers. Most of these are supplied by Partha, who have a nice selection of spearmen and lightly armed javelin throwers in their Hittite and Hyksos ranges. Apart from their excellent chariots the Foundry offerings were less inspiring and are now unavailable. Their Shosu nomad skirmishers were recruited and a few Egyptians as vassals for the Hyksos. Another source of figures was multipart QT figures from Amazon Miniatures. Some spare javelinmen in short kilts received a scattering of new heads to make them look less Greek and became instant units of chariot runners.

For pictures of completed units so far click here.