Ancient Battle! ADLG Hyksos versus Numidians!

Image from the Egyptian Museum. 

On the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend it was just Rob and I at the club, we played a game of Art de la Guerre. Rob has only played a handful of games of ADLG, and I am somewhat rusty, so we took our time, it was a friendly game. 

This is the second ADLG battle report I've done recently but it won't be the last. I really want to expand these reports to other games like Blood & Plunder or Black Powder. 

I supplied both armies, Rob loves chariots so he played my Hyksos (#13) list (which was previously spotlighted here). I didn't have a perfect match, so I played my Numidians (#56) list. Light chariots with a mass of infantry versus light horse with javelins, some elephants javelinmen. I felt the Numidians were a decent substitute for a tribal attack from the Sahara into Egyptian lands. 

Still, huge chronological distance between these armies, 1236 years. Imagine a modern U.S. Marine force (2025 AD) versus the Islamic warriors of the Abbasid Caliphate (789 AD). These two armies, despite the time difference, are not far apart. The biggest difference being being mounted cavalry versus chariots. The list of differences between a modern force and the Abbasid's is far more extensive!

Please Note: If you click on the images they will expand and the battle report text will be easier to read. 

As I mentioned, Rob's only played a couple games of ADLG. He made a mistake with his deployment I didn't realize until much later. The single palm tree in the gully is an ambush marker, in game it might or might not have units there in ambush. Rob in fact did have 4 light infantry stands there in ambush. That was fine, but those light infantry stands were part of his center corps, the medium swordsmen in front of the dunes. In ADLG you cannot mix up Corps when you deploy. So technically that was an illegal starting position. But it really made no difference to the game and we just payed it as it was. 

So, I managed to pull a victory out in the end. It was a fun, relaxing game. Rob is always a pleasure to game with. 

This was the first game on my new duck cloth desert game mat. I need to do some more work on it, probably make the boundaries more obvious, and also I'd like to break up the color a bit so it looks more like real ground. And I need to get the edges hemmed. 

And I need to make new terrain myself I never realized I have no dune terrain, yet my Hyksos army has desert as a terrain type. 

Comments and suggestions welcome!

Dark Ages fight at the Richmond Open!

The Byzantine center charges the foe...

 On 2 May 2026 I tried to run an Art de la Guerre tournament at the Richmond Open. I ran a successful tournament there in 2024 - Strategos: L'Art de la Guerre at the Richmond Open 2024 - which you can read about at the link. 

This year, I waited too long to decide and it was announced only a few weeks before hand, and so I only had one player, my fellow club member Eric, who should up. Nonetheless, we enjoyed an excellent game of ADLG set in the Dark Ages. I played the Justinian Byzantine list, my favorite list since much of my Master's thesis covered it. Eric played the Carolingian Franks. These two arimies are roughly two hundred years apart, so it is not a historical match up but they are still fairly well matched. Both are primarily cavalry forces with heavy infantry in support.  

A fun, well played game. I am going to try again next year!