Battle Day 2011 – Kadesh 1274BC

The eighth annual Society of Ancients Battle Day took place on Saturday 2 April 2011, and by common consent a good time was had by all.

This year the battle was Kadesh, or Qadesh if you prefer. Attended by over 60 wargamers, we had eleven tables putting on refights, playing a total of twelve different sets of rules:

  • Armati
  • Command and Colors: Ancients
  • DBMM
  • Donald Featherstone
  • Giant DBA
  • Hail Caesar
  • Impetus
  • Lost Battles
  • Peltasts and Pila
  • Piquet Archon
  • Warlord
  • Warmaster Ancients

Some games ran once, others twice and some three times (including one that used three different sets of rules!)

The day started with a riveting introduction to the battle from Ian Russell-Lowell. One of the Society's foremost Hittite experts, Ian took on all the controversial aspects of the battle, including the infamous "3-man Hittite chariot". Look out for the third of his articles in Slingshot soon.

We had some fabulous terrain this year - a lot of games had gone to some considerable effort. In particular I would mention the very effective flat river and fields effect produced by Peter Kershaw for the DBMM game, and Ross XXX purpose-built river and Kadesh for the Warmaster in 10mm game - splendid efforts. However, winner of the Best Terrain prize, for the second time now, was the Shrewsbury club with their beautiful layout built for their Giant DBA game. Look out for the pics on the website.

Overall Best Game was awarded to the Hail Caesar game run by author Rick Priestley and friends. They too had good terrain topped by Alan Perry's hand-built Kadesh, but also they took a lot of newcomers, including some juniors, and produced excellent games that generated shouts of triumph and despair. Well done chaps!

More of our more spurious prizes were awarded. "Most chariots on the table" went to the Warlord game with a staggering 136 chariots deployed! I counted around 650 in total in the room - surely a record of some sort!

Other prizes were awarded for "Rameses of the Day", "Best Sherden bodyguard", "Egyptian fortitude", and "Hittites of the Day".

So, a great day. Now to plan for the ninth battle in 2012...

Richard Lockwood