"Getting Chariots Right" Topic

Which set(s) of Ancient rules get chariots right, in terms of making them historically accurate in their performance?

First you would have to determine what historically accurate performance is? There seems to be a lot of speculation out there.

Are we talking Bronze Age chariots?

Battle Cars? Late Bronze Age chariots? Hellenistic scythed chariots?

My first thought is 'none' … Many equate them with a form of cavalry but this is tenuous (as in many ways horsed cavalry comes later and brings in specialisations which may not be there earlier) …

Phil

… so I'd probably have to go for 'big picture' games like Lost Battles or Command & Colours

Sword & Spear seems to work for Biblical armies. The bulk of infantry is medium, poorly disciplined and less well protected. They can suffer from the bow-armed chariots if the chariots time their attacks correctly (though massed archers may well seem them off). Even heavy chariots don't get the impetus bonus that cavalry normally get, but with armour they have a chance against the hoi-polloi – and light chariots need to steer clear of them.

But having said that, I don't really understand how they worked. Massed infantry with missiles ought to be able to deliver a much greater density of pointy sticks than a formation of chariots, and those horses would be vulnerable. Yet they were the weapon of choice for a long time.

None that I've come across. I think they could only be done "right" in a very tightly period specific set of rules.

Yes, the role of the chariot really changed too much over time (and varied by region within the same time frame) for any general purpose rules set to get them totally right I think.

Plus, at least as of a few years ago (when I was getting my MMH) there was still debate over their exact role and purpose within virtually every historical period they were present.

-Will

Agree with Who asked this Joker.

Troop density, frontages, are the core to the problem. If your rules originate from that established basis, and the difference in combat between men and horses has been settled, then the men in the car added to the hooves on the ground brings the mechanical effectiveness close to completion. What remains then, is to determine the differences between harness, wheel placement, and perceived tactical use. Some chariots, e.g. the Egyptians of Ramses II, were more maneuvering platforms, while their Hittite counterparts were used to charge INTO people. The Egyptian chariot had a centrally located axle, very nimble, whereas the Hittite axle was located more to the rear, very stable but less maneuverable. Then again, the Hittite "ultimate" chariot was a larger chariot, had four horses and four crew, etc.

The coauthor of our rules worked all of that out to HIS satisfaction. I trust that the rules for chariots work as well as can be expected, within the mechanics of the system.

link

Re: the construction of an Egyptian chariot (which apparently had the axle location shift to the rear over time), this was an interesting watch:

link

Doug

Perhaps the Egyptian axle moving to the rear was a mercenary chariot?…

Or the perceived differences between Egyptian and Hittite chariot axle placement is due to too small a sample size? :)

This is why archeology is such a pain in the rear!

-Will

I like the way Impetvs handles them.

Perhaps the Egyptian axle moving to the rear was a mercenary chariot?…

The evidence for this is from illustrations on tombs, so in theory the chariots shown would be for egyptians, not mercenaries, but who knows … it could also be mere artistic license. The Nova reconstructors, however, seemed to think that the rearward axle placement made for a better suspension. I would think it would put more weight on the yoke, and thence onto the horses, though. Perhaps as the horses got better and stronger, the axle could be placed further to the rear?

Doug

Merkava means chariot so I'll go with Fistful of Tows.

I always thought chariots are motorcycle troops of the Ancients.

Are there any surviving manuals about chariots? --another vicim of the burning of the Library of Alexandria..

Perhaps the Egyptian axle moving to the rear was a mercenary chariot?…

The evidence for this is from illustrations on tombs

I think Great War Ace was making a funny, based on an alternate reading of "moving to the rear".

Heroes of the Colosseum has it right.

link

Oh wait, that's chariot racing. :)

Interesing topic! I have never seen a convincing account of how chariots actually operated on the battlefield. We have all seen TV programs featuring attempts to re-create historical light and heavy chariots. to me, the light chariots look far too slow and clumsy to shoot and scoot as they are generally assumed to have done. They have to slow down so much to turn that one would think they could easily be caught and mobbed by infantry.

Similarly, heavy chariots look like they would be harmless unless the infantry facing them panicked and lost formation. Some people talk aboutchariot crew dismounting to fight as in the Iliad. If this is true, why bother using the vehicle at all once you have arrived on the battlefield? The things are expensive and, in that scenario add nothing to combat power, they just let you arrive and run away faster. Nice, I suppose, but of limited use in a set piece battle.

On the other hand, people would not have kept building the things if they weren't useful. But how?

I think Great War Ace was making a funny, based on an alternate reading of "moving to the rear".

Probably, but since he didn't specifically say Greek mercenaries, I gave the benefit of the doubt.

Doug

I like to remember the point made in the 18th century that a man standing firm with no more than a stick could turn aside a charging horseman; together with the utter annihilation of some infantry lines by cavalry charge. The key point must be one of discipline, surely.

… while their Hittite counterparts were used to charge INTO people.

No evidence for this.

… The Egyptian chariot had a centrally located axle,

Incorrect

… very nimble, whereas the Hittite axle was located more to the rear, very stable but less maneuverable.

It is clear that there was very little difference between the Hittite, local and Egyptian chariots at, say, the battle of Kadesh and reference to the hard charging Hittite chariot is something of a wargame myth (squeezing wargamable variety out of negligible difference in illustrations and no evidence of divergent tactical use).

Phil

Well looking at the Egyptians, for example, I think there are two things which no ones debating.
One chariots could move around a lot easier than foot and two they could carry a lot more ammunition. So there's two advantages Chariots had over massed foot bow. Its hard to shoot some one who is encircling you and more ammo means a possible higher rate of fire.

Chariots are too big and too spaced apart to allow the crews to create the same density of shot as massed infantry.

Phil is waxing pedantic, imho. As already pointed out, there is scant physical evidence for making such dogmatic assertions of "fact". I think that there was evolution going on over a period of many centuries. So some periods would have the centrally positioned axle, others to the rear, and heavier chariots with four horses tried out toward the apogee of chariot development. Determining which kind of chariot and when is the worm in the apple. Playing a particular set of rules will define the confrontations of chariot types. And two or more sets of rules will disagree on the details….

One of the best sets of rules for chariots is War Gods of Aegyptus from Croc Games. They actually handle battle chariots pretty well.

In case you are curious:

crocodilegames.com

I often wondered (but never really looked into) whether the Kadesh inscriptions could be looked at as a description of series of events in a campaign (like the Bayeaux tapestry) rather than a single actual encounter battle.

All new technology toys (and that is chariots in their day as drones currently) have game changer potential until the other side learns how to counter them. Sometimes the counter is other chariots//tanks/planes/subs, sometimes it is discovering their weaknesses (AFVs in dense urban environments by their self,) or another technology/techniques – denial and deception or convoys for subs.)

While I no longer play Ancients other than outright fantasy but given all of military history I think Chariots had their place when:

1) combatting other chariots,

2) try to panic battered or less disciplined foes to rout (this is not the 7YW and I think many troops were "hard but brittle" based on the variable results from similar troops facing similar foes,)

3) getting the elites positioned/repositioned prior to/during battle,

4) they opposed the lower tech, less disciplined, spear/javelin armed masses of the tribal nations on the periphery of the early ancient empires.

Again just my old school dos centavos.

Caesar's accounts on facing the British chariots is interesting. I need to go back and read that.

I think one clue to how chariots were actually used is in the fact that once warriors sufficiently learned how to ride horses in combat, chariots ceased to be used. If chariots had THAT distinctive a use and effect in battle, then they would have been continued to be used longer than they were.

That may not be entirely correct, but it is useful to think about context not just contemporaneously, but also in the context of what came before and after.

Phil is waxing pedantic, imho. As already pointed out, there is scant physical evidence for making such dogmatic assertions of "fact".

Actually, I made no assertions … GWA made the pedantic assertion (about axle positions etc.) … but unfortunately not one that can be sustained by evidence. The 'evidence' is, in fact, quite extensive – thousands of wall illustrations and a number of actual excavated vehicles. Most of the illustrations and all of the excavated examples show that a rear axle is typical of the Egyptian chariot.

No evidence indicates any difference in harness.

To make an assertion (not mine, but most scholars'), it seems very likely that the Hittites and Egyptians both copied from the same, say, Hurri-Mitanni, say, Hyksos, model (which is why when the Egyptians and Hittites clash in the Levant they are using, more or less, the same vehicles).

Once only, attacking the camp at Kadesh, Hittites are shown with an extra crewman perched on the back. There doesn't seem to be any difference in the vehicle. Some argue this is a spearman hitching a lift for what is 'raid in force' … others argue that it shows a tactical difference in the Hittite use of the chariot.

Wargamers must decide but need to be mindful that Kadesh is the one and only example (and that the depiction you see of it is an Egyptian source anyway) …

There is some useful analysis by Ian Russell Lowell in the Society of Ancients game Call it Qids

Phil

Mute Bystander has my vote on probable use. Sounds right (but may not be if we knew more).

> Which set(s) of Ancient rules get chariots right, in terms of making them historically accurate in their performance?

Well, DBA 3 … but only with my own additions, as included in my DBA3 QRS posted on TMP earlier. 8)

Chariotry and cavalry aren't like tomaytoes and tomahtoes, but like apples and oranges.

Proper understanding of their tactical use will only come with more practical archaeology and that means constructing and deploying several dozen chariots.

The axle placement and actual wheel size may be critical here. as regards speed and manuevrability

Bearing that in mind there are quite a few carvings and illustrations of 2 horse Neo-Hittite chariots with smallish wheels.

The next development is the move to large wheeled 4 horse chariots.

So where do the large wheeled NKE chariots (that Essex Miniatures sell) fit in here? Are they anachronistic to the tune of several hundred years?

The value of chariots is mass at speed (just about any speed). The psychological value of hundreds of these mardi gras floats running at masses of..usually..undisciplined and poorly geared foot must've been vital, especially given they were only one of several arms in conterminous action.

Phil is waxing pedantic, imho. As already pointed out, there is scant physical evidence for making such dogmatic assertions of "fact".

I guess no one told the sculptors of the friezes at the Temple of Luxor. Dogma indeed.

We have examples of "actual excavated vehicles"? Cool! I hadn't heard.

I have to wonder about the "thousands of wall illustrations". Have most of these been discovered in the last couple of decades? Or were most of them known contemporary to when "my" rules were being written (70s and 80s)?

The reason why I ask is out of personal curiosity: you see, I did not design the chariot rules in "my" rules, those were the work of the coauthor and other input from "ancients gamers", which I am not: I am a "medieval gamer".

As far as I recall, the reasoning behind denying Egyptian chariot "charge bonus", while the Hittite chariot receives a charge bonus, was mainly based on the placement of the axle, the Egyptian getting mobility from the central axle placement, the Hittite getting charge bonuses from the rear axle placement. There was something about Egyptian harness being an inferior design too, "choking" the horses or somesuch nonsense (it seemed to me, but what did/do I know?).

Any further weighing in on these details here will be appreciated.

(I retract the "waxing pedantic" assertion. :)….)

Sorry, GWA, I didn't know there were further comments here …

We have examples of "actual excavated vehicles"? Cool! I hadn't heard.

Well, there were 6 in Tutankhamun's tomb alone. Otherwise the best known are the Chariot of Yuya in Cairo Museum or the 4 spoked chariot in Florence Museum.

As far as I recall, the reasoning behind denying Egyptian chariot "charge bonus", while the Hittite chariot receives a charge bonus, was mainly based on the placement of the axle, the Egyptian getting mobility from the central axle placement, the Hittite getting charge bonuses from the rear axle placement. There was something about Egyptian harness being an inferior design too, "choking" the horses or somesuch nonsense (it seemed to me, but what did/do I know?).

No … there is no evidence for these assertions. The evidence for NKE Chariotry has been accessible since Yigael Yadin's Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands from the mid '60s (but still consulted by most scholars) and the best summary is the Ian Lowell material cited above.

The key point, emphasised by the wall art, is that Egyptian and Hittite chariots were the same (derived from the same sources). There may have been differences in tactical usage (I follow the view that there were not) but this is not dependent on there being any evidence of different construction (and, of course, the idea of different tactical use is entirely supposition as there are no tactical manuals or descriptions on which to base it) …

The harness issues were fully resolved I think by Spruytte and Littauer …

The persistence of Phil Barker's Hittite Chariot myth – the heavier charging chariot – I think owes a lot to wargamers liking to have differences between the various troops on the model battlefield (especially when they are on different sides, especially in ancients).

Of course the more you repeat a myth, the more entrenched it becomes. When WRG embodied that myth by making Egyptian chariots cavalry and Hittite ones knights many wargamers assumed it was based on some sort of evidence.

Unfortunately, WRG's researcher for this period, Nigel Stillman, wrote the Warhammer Chariot Wars supplement … so the myth is bedded in on both sides of wargaming's cultural divide. Not that Stillman believed there was a technical difference, of course, just a tactical one …

Phil

link

Illustrations 6 and 7 on that page show axle positions on 3 man chariots.

The Hittites and their allies may have improved axle and wheel technology enough to mount a cab 3 men wide. This would not necessarily be shown in representations but could be inferred.

The only Hittite chariots in those illustrations have the axle at the rear (just like the Egyptian ones).

There is no indication of any alteration to technology at all. The Hittites are only shown with three men in a chariot in Egyptian depictions when attacking the camp at Kadesh (i.e. for just one special op in just one battle) and the cabs are not 3 men wide).

Phil

Well looking at the proportions of the men to the chariots and the chariot wheel you might guess at a cab depth of about 15 inches.

Are you suggesting one of the three crew is standing behind another in the cab of that depth?

3 men side by side equals a cab width of three men.

Correct … the cabs are 'D' shaped … the men do not stand side-by-side (again, see Spruytte and Littauer, Yagin or Lowell). They are extremely confined which is why the supposed third man (only ever shown on one occasion, for the special op at Kadesh) in the chariot is sometimes referred to as 'perched on the back'.

Most wargame model chariots are oversized compared with excavated or depicted examples as it is almost impossible to fit chunky figures in the small space (so rather than make proportionate figures, they make oversized chariots).

Oversized wargame chariots kind of reinforce the myths they are fitted to .

Phil

Picture 7 shows a vehicle with the shield bearer on the left hand side who is protecting the driver holding the reins and a whip.

The warrior climbing back into the cab is using the side of the chariot to remount and must be entering a space large enough to stand on the right hand side of the driver.

I can only relate the evidence as it stands.

Picture 7 is an Egyptian relief made by a man who almost certainly never saw a Hittite chariot with 3 men in it (if such a chariot ever existed): it is by no means clear that the extra man is getting in beside the driver (though he appears to grabbing that side); in 6, the extra man seems to be partly behind the other two (this is even clearer in some of the Luxor examples); in 6 the shield bearers seem to be on the right-hand-side (so clearly these are not to be taken as layout diagrams) …

Don't forget that there is no other evidence that this extra crewing ever happened (or that there was properly room for them to fit in) – so don't read too much into how the craftsman has rendered it.

(behind him but looking over his right shoulder? same scene, this time from the temple at Abydos).

But we should look at all these images together (rather than take any single one too literally).

I am neutral as to whether the third man was made up by the Egyptians or was a genuine feature of the real battle .. but have few doubts as to whether the craftsmen depicting it were eyewitnesses …

The scenes are depicted on several sites, but the vehicle/crew details are inconsistent (one assumes, of course, due to different craftsmen dealing with the same script).

Hope it helps

Phil

It seems to me that if this discussion (very nice, by the way) establishes anything, it is that nobody has any clear notion of how chariots actuall operated on a battlefield. All rulesets are basically educated fantasy on this point.

I do have some knowledge about Chariot warfare. There were basically 2 types of Chariot, The 2 horse Light Chariot and the 4 or more horse Heavy Chariot. And that includes the Mesopotamian heavy onager pulled heavy chariot. When the spoked wheel was invented around 2000 B.C. the versatile light chariot came into existence up in the Russian Steppes. Hittite and Hyksos conquered the middle east with this weapon and its axle was located in the center of the vehicle. Around 1500 B.C. the Chariot axle moved to the rear which gave the Chariot more stable ride. The Light chariot could preform as both light and heavy cavalry and there was a third member of the crew who was a Chariot runner who9 could preform maneuvers with the light the Light Chariot in the same manner as the Roman combination Cavalry and Light infantry Cohorts. Hittite Chariots kept the 3rd man an a shield bearer, the same function he would take in the 4 horse heavy chariot arounds 900 B.C. With 4 horses the heavy chariot was less maneuverable and became a shock weapon. That's how it was used in the middle east.

Should anybody out there wish to argue with me I have some books you can read that will verify what I just wrote.
Armies of the Ancient Near East, by Nigel Stillman and Nigel Tallis,(C) 1984, Published by
Wargames Research Group, printed in England by Flexiprint Ltd. Worthing, Sussex
Chariot, by Arthur Cotterell,(C)2002, Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA, Great Britain. ISBN-0-7126-6942-6
That should be good for a start.

That's all very well, Jon Lead Slayer, we've ALL read those books and more. Lots more, in my case. What did they actually DO on the battlefield? Did the lights roll up and shoot from a stationary position, like some bow cavalry did, until charged? Did they ride past the infantry front shooting away like Huns or Parthians? Did they charge home? What? The sources you cite do not answer this question, nor does the archaeology, OMHO.

Thanks for continuing this discussion all you all. I've learned more than I thought I knew.

So blaming wargamers on the myth of chariot use being two-fold, shock or missile platform, shouldn't surprise me, but it did. All this time I thought that our rules were based on interpretation of ancient texts and illustrations and artifacts, when it was the seminal imagination of wargamers. I've been had.

At least it isn't "my period", so I don't have any investment in how the arguing falls out….

The (very interesting) Discussion here is rather focussed on the design of the chariots, less on other aspects, like armament of soldiers. Doesn't the descision of bow vs. spear (if there was such thing) tell about how the chariots were used? And wasn't that difference at least one of the reasons to distingusih two types of "wargaming" chariots?

Bytheway, I read at different places that an axis at the rear of the chariot would keep off some of the weight from the horses. I would have guessed it the other way round, actually?