Biblical Update

MY long-term major project of fighting battles from the Bible with 10mm-scale figures is progressing nicely.

There is still a fair bit of painting to do, but I have been reading and researching the period, and, importantly, have settled on a ruleset.

I will be using Neil Thomas's biblical rules from Ancient & Medieval Wargaming, but incorporating ideas from Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame, as well as modifications of my own.

You will need both books to fully understand the concepts, but especially A&MW.

Here I want to discuss how the armies will be organised.

Under Thomas's rules, an army always consists of eight units, and each unit almost always consists of four 40x20mm bases, aligned in two ranks of two bases.

I like this approach, especially for the pre-classical ancient period, when information on army sizes is very limited, and usually very biased.

In addition, knowledge of unit organisation and tactics are usually extremely limited - guesswork is the order of the day.

So normally I will follow Thomas, albeit reserving the right to vary unit numbers when I feel it is necessary.

In my experience the rules work perfectly well with more units on the table, and with rival armies fielding different numbers of units.

Thomas has nine types of unit for his biblical armies.

Five are on foot: heavy infantry, biblical infantry, heavy archers, auxiliary infantry and light infantry.

Four are mounted in one way or another: heavy cavalry, light cavalry, heavy chariots and light chariots.

I have discussed before why I disagree with some of the terms he uses as I think they can be inappropriate and confusing.

For example, Thomas's heavy archers often have neither shields nor armour - the defining criterion for them is that they fight in close order.

Below I list Thomas's nine types of troops, my names for them, how many figures there should be per base, and the basic characteristics of each type.

THOMAS'S NAME     MY NAME                 FIGURES

Heavy infantry            Professional infantry       6

Well-drilled, fulltime, close-order, often with heavy protection, ie shield and body armour.

Biblical infantry          Biblical infantry              6

The great bulk of close-order melee infantry.

Auxiliary infantry       Auxiliary infantry            4 

Disciplined melee infantry, but in looser formation. They move quickly, and are a match for biblical infantry (but not professional infantry) in hand-to-hand fighting in, and are especially effective in difficult terrain.

Heavy archers           Close-order archers           6

Bows in close-order formation. Do not carry shields, but can have full mail armour, but can also have just medium or light protection.*

Light infantry            Open-order infantry          2

Skirmishers equipped with bows, slings or javelins.

Heavy cavalry           Close-order cavalry          3

Usually melee troops. Often, but not always, protected with shield and body armour, and the horse may have protection too.

Light cavalry             Open-order cavalry          1

Mounted version of open-order infantry.

Heavy chariots           Heavy chariots                 1 (plus crew)

Chariots designed for close combat.

Light chariots             Light chariots                   1 (plus crew)

Chariots designed for shooting, usually with bows.

*Troops have heavy, medium or light protection, needing a saving throw to negate a hit of 4+, 5+ or 6 respectively.

Six units of javelin-armed open-order cavalry - figures from Newline Designs