Spotsylvania Area Gamers: May 2020

I decided to finally spotlight one of my own armies, the Hyksos.

Back in the mid-1990s I took 2nd place in a De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) tournament, at Capcon, a small gaming convention that was then run annually at Ohio State. The prize for 2nd place as aa full, unpainted DBA army, #8a Hyksos 1650 BC-1546 BC from the DBA 1.1 lists. At the time, I was focused on building matching DBA armies, I didn't have a foe army, and the list changed for DBA 2.0 and after so my Hyksos army lingered unpainted.

Cut to 20 years later, when I've gotten back into miniature war gaming after a 10 year hiatus, and my new new club has finally started shifting from Flames of War, and some of the members are interested, finally in 15mm ancients.

But not in DBA, they want to play L'Art de la Guerre, which requires more figures. But I want to run this army, so I find some interesting terrain for a camp, buy the additional needed infantry and cannabalize some figures from an ancient Egyptian Hordes of the Things army i also have sitting aorund unpainted. I paint them all up now this represents ADLG list #13 - Hyksos (1650-1546 BC).

I ran it at the ADLG National Teams tournament in 2018, freshly painted. The tournament was a bit of a bust as my truck died permanently that weekend, but the Hyksos did okay, 2 losses, 1 win, and 1 tie, if I recall correctly.

It is a tricky list to play. The chariots require a lot of open space, but the medium and light infantry work best with a lot of terrain. Overall, I'm sure I've lost more often then won with this list, but that's true of all my armies! It's still fun to play. I'd like a chance to play Eric's Assyrian Army, maybe that army's bad luck would give me an even chance. 😁

The heart of the army is its light chariots, whirling about the battlefield with its archers.
About half of them are elite troops, so I painted some with red plumes and some with blue.
One of the blue chariots is one of the 'newer' model chariots, coming into vogue at the time and
represented by a New Kingdom Egyptian chariot, most often, that represents the Chariot Corps'
general, Khyan, who is generally an 'included' general.

Three Hyksos generals, including Sakir-Har and Yanassi.

I found a cool skull-headed Sphinx building for the Hyksos camp,
and the palm trees are the two ambush markers the army needs.

Canaanite javelinmen are a mainstay of this army.

The heart of the army are its warriors, medium swordsmen impact.
Not much staying power against heavy foot, but still dangerous.

I find the two stands of bowmen pretty useful for this list.

Libyans with javelins and Aamu with slings make up the skirmishers.

I would like to add more warriors and more javelinmen,
as well as some Egyptian levies to give the list more options.

Again, a fun list to play, and one of my more decent painting jobs. I probably need even more javelinmen and warriors for this army, it might work better fewer chariots. But I just love the look of the chariots sweeping across the board.