Defending Hittite Empire honour
Italian DBMM championship 2013-13 will finish with a first period tournament, and with a close run to decided the winner. There are four players having the possibility to be declared champion. I'm one of the four guys, so this tournament I need a strong army and a top scoring.
First period is not my preferred to be honest. I have few armies and in the past I have often used, with good results, new kingdom Egyptians. This time I needed a new army to surprise opponents and be able to win as many battles as possible, including ones against the dreaded Assyrians and their RKnS.
When I pick a new army to be painted, I try usually to have it paired as historical opponent to one I already have, looking to have the enemies of a specific military campaign. So in the past to face NKE I collected Sea Peoples, Syrians and Hittite. After some studying, I decided to use Hittites.
After much tinkering, this is my list:
C1- CiC RKnO, 4 RKnO, 4 RCvS, 4 ICvO, 1 RLhF, 4 RBdF, 6 IPsI - 36ME
C2- SG RKnO, 16 RPkF - 24ME
C3- SG RKnO, 4 RKnO, 4 ICvO, 4 IAxO, 4 IHdO, 8 IPsI . 28ME
C4- 6 RBgI - 12ME
The idea is to have a large army, able to survive long combats, with some quick killing troops, and finally able to beat Assyrians with RKnS.
RPkF corps is a sort of secret weapon. Pikes can hold and beat enemy chariots and almost any troops except BdO and Wb. The corps is ideal to be used as pip dump, and is very resilient thanks to the high bp related to the very short combat frontage. The typical formation is 4 deep, to keep as long as possible full support bonus by pikes. The pike tactic is to deploy them in the center, send them in and create overlaps fot the chariots. The CiC corps will always have the highet pips,using the RBdF as a reserve flying column, to engage the best targets. CvS and KnO are deployed in line, screened by PsI and supported by CvO and BdF to charge and smite enemies thanks to the huge BP that should guarantee survival. C3 has a similar task if facing weak opposition, but should be more wise when sending the RKnO in.
The terrain to be selected in defence is 2 x 1FE GH and 1 FE Bua, to have a battlefield as plain as possible. The goal is to have two RKnO groups able to charge and destroy also enemy light troops exposed. In attack I would select GH and eventually very small difficult/rough going.
RPkF must deploy in good going, fight in RgO is just a secondary option.
The doctrine is to use at the best the combined arms, hit hard and be aggressive if the opportunity present.
These are the game played
In the end the scoring was 80, second place in the tournament and win in the 13-14 italian championsip. I was very satisfied, because the opponents were strong.
The army was successful. The high BP saved me many times from being disheartened or broken, and also the troops in each corps were balanced in number to the pip received and needed to perform the manouvers required. RKnO proved to be battlewinner when screened and well supported.
The combination of several chariot types was useful, as a good troop type proved to be the RPkF.
Hittite is a good army worth to be used again