Bletchley, 2nd April

The Society of Ancients BattleDay


Well, I am still struggling to keep this blog up to the pace of events in a very busy Society year (having the BattleDay and Salute so close makes me think we almost need to appoint an official Society photographer)..

So this report will very much be a quick photo tour of all the games that were on show plus a reminder that Ian Lowell has contributed a fascinating series of articles to Slingshot this year to set the scene for Kadesh.

Hopefully time will allow a return to some of the intriguing themes of this year's controversial battle - but it will be as well to do the 'glossies' version now (well, tack some photos together with a few lines of text - there'll be no adverts with it I'm afraid ...)...

(Muwatali's chariots)

So, the battle was Kadesh ... a grand tactical ambush by Muwatali's Hittites on a split up Egyptian Army under Ramesses II. The brief suggested a sprawling battlefield from the site of the ambush up to the Pharaoh's camp opposite Kadesh on the Orontes.

Just running around the room, I spotted ...
(click on the pictures for a bigger image)

Piquet
Armati

DBA 3/Warmaster/Impetus (the did one of each)

Lost Battles

Command & Colours

Hail Caesar

Warlord
Warmaster Ancients

Giant DBA
Peltast & Pila

Cool BattleDay stuff ...
Everyone got a bag of 28mm scale tokens/counters made up like Hittite or Egyptian shields by Warbases (don't worry if you feel you missed out ... ask Martin at Warbases - I'm sure he will run some off for you ... they went straight into service in some games .. as hit markers on the Hail Caesar table, disorder in Armati, marking the Command Track on Lost Battles)
(SoA freebies)

The Piquet game had special cards made up for the game - including a prominent SoA logo

(well I think its cool, anyway)

Martyn Simpson's Kadesh was a very simple cardboard model but made its understated point.

(cardboard Kadesh)

And ... audaciously ... the Command & Colours game used 20mm plastics ...

(cool plastics)

And some awards ...

(Richard Lockwood makes the presentations)
Yes, it is traditional to make a few awards. Now you might think that huge Perry Kadesh model (perhaps familiar from the WAB book) would win best terrain ... well, since Jervis was sent with instructions to apologise for it getting tatty (and the admission that it was neither new nor the Hail Caesar team's original own work), we moved on to the smaller, but equally perfectly formed Giant BDA layout from the Shrewsbury club.(Best Terrain - Shrewsbury)
Actually, given they followed the narrative very closely, had the biggest Kadesh by far, and (decisively, for the award...) played through twice in the day ... best game went to Hail Caesar.
(Best Game)
I can't remember how many chariots went into the 'most chariots' award winning Warlord game - but 'hundreds' anyway ...

Compiling all this, there are bound to be some mistakes - so contact me if I have got something wrong (it is a blog, so I can edit corrections in if I know where I have garbled stuff) ...

AARs and analysis will doubtless follow all these splendid contributions in Slingshot, where you can see Ian's excellent maps and diagrams.
(Slingshot pages)