To Ur with Four Horse Chariots

I’ve been thinking about four horse chariots and how we might characterise them in To Ur. 

I decided to go back to basics and work from forward there. 

 

More horses made bigger carts possible and bigger carts could accommodate more soldiers. That meant more soldiers who could shoot or fight. I can think of no other reason for the introduction of the four-horse chariot.

We know the extra horse’s experiment was successful because we see representations of four horse chariots.  The four-horse chariot does not move faster than its two-horse counterpart because it is drawing twice the weight.  Therefore, I think all chariots in To Ur should move at the same rate.

The advantage of the four-horse cart is solely that it contained more soldiers. In most cases it allowed a crew combining both spear and bow armed warriors. 

In terms of To Ur that means our four-horse chariot can opt to fight with missilery or spear as circumstances dictate. It can shoot in the shooting phase and spear in the combat phase.  This would negate any advantage of an opposing spear armed cart in close fighting.

As such it offers more tactical options than either the bow only armed cart or the solely spear armed cart.  Apart from the foregoing there is no need for us to treat four horse chariots differently to two horse chariots.

You may believe that your four horse chariots should contain only extra archers.  If so, discard the spear tactical option above.  Instead, roll 4 shooting dice per chariot rather than the customary two dice per chariot.  This is because your chariot is shooting with twice the normal number of archers.

I think that should do it on the topic as far as my suggestions go.  I hope they are well reasoned, simple and clear.  As ever please let me know what you think. 

I've updated this post to include a welcome comment from the author of To Ur which gives us food for thought.  I hope readers find it as useful as I do.

Are you thinking of modifying any of the combat factors in the Hand to Hand for the spear armed chariots? If you do, then they'll have the upper hand in the Fear Test against a bow armed chariot, unless it has shot off a base before combat. You might like to think about a +1 to Fear Test if you inflicted hits on an opponent you are charging in the previous phase. It'll have to be previous phase as shooting follows movement, and Defensive Shooting only occurs after the Fear Test has been rolled.

 

To Ur in the Late Bronze Age

We had a look at To Ur is Human recently and I opined it had Late Bronze Age potential.  This post is about my thinking so far. I’m very much influenced by the views of Andrew Drews on Bronze Age Warfare and also those of Ian Russell-Lowe. The latter sees chariot fights as being akin to aerial dog fights which works for me.  This concept has the drivers manoeuvring their vehicles to the maximum advantage of their chariot warrior.  I can see that working with To Ur. 

For example there’s a nice bit of jeopardy in the chariot move rules.  Your cart can normally move up to 2 squares (if they are unoccupied).  When charging your cart moves 1 square and then dices individually for moving into each of the next three squares.   Obviously if you have an archer cart you want to move and shoot or vice versa. Conversely, if you have a spear cart you want contact.  I can see the dog fight analogy working nicely as players vie for the optimum positioning.

Where ever possible I want to stay within the rules as written.  I should say that what follows is written assuming that the reader has a copy of the rules.  

First, we have to turn equid drawn battle carts into swift and deadly chariots.  The author of To Ur was kind enough to supply the following thoughts:

All chariots can wheel in square 1

All chariots can charge without dicing

All chariots can wheel before charging

All chariots can have one free wheel per move.  They must dice for any subsequent wheels.

All of the above is clear enough and should supply the requisite mobility.  Should you wish to follow the development of To Ur here is a link to the author's blog.

  http://wargaming4grownups.blogspot.com/

Now, let’s deal with missilery. 

We should, at the author's suggestion, use the bow stats in the rules for our chariots. Chariots are two stand units and we have two options.  We can use the light infantry bow stat of 1 dice per stand or the massed archer stat of 2 dice per stand. 

I’m going to use the latter which also has a greater hit potential.  That is because our charioteers were highly trained men using powerful composite bows with an ample supply of arrows.  Our chariots will not suffer the moving and firing deduction because they spent their whole lives doing just that.

If you agree with Drews that all fighting charioteers were archers we have now done the job. 

If you don’t agree then we need further provision and I’m still thinking about that.  Any suggestions from To Ur users would be of great interest to me. Luckily the author of To Ur is going to give us his considered view too. 

To start us off, Sea Peoples charioteers, if they existed, probably threw javelins because that is what they did on foot.  We might consider using the massed archer stat limited to javelin range to reflect this because they were very proficient at throwing javelins and you can get lots of javelins in a chariot.

Let’s turn to Mycenaean chariots if you believe contra Drews that Mycenaean chariot warriors fought with long spears then you will want to reflect that.  Very tentatively I suggest trying extending the Battle Cart +1 d6 for the first round of combat into the second round solely for spear chariots fighting non- spear chariots.  I think combats between spear armed carts can be fought and resolved without such an extension.

Should you want to depict Drews version of Sea Peoples infantry we need to stretch things a little.  He sees them as swarming the opposing chariots disabling the horses with javelins and cutting down the warriors with their swords. Drews thinks they could do this because most of them wore some sort of armour and all carried an effective shield and so they were well protected against archery.  He also, obviously, thinks they were not scared of chariots.

Let’s take this in steps. 

The missilery is simple; the Sea People use either the mass archery stat at javelin range or the light infantry stat at javelin range. 

The Sea people are Medium infantry except for receiving missilery frontally where they count as shielded Heavy infantry.  This is stretching things but I think the rules can take it.  My thinking is Medium infantry are faster than Heavy infantry and I think faster suits the Sea Peoples.  The Heavy infantry bit is to reflect their armour and shields.

The third step is the biggest as it involves an exception to the rule.  Sea People infantry uniquely can charge chariots.  You might say this breaks the rules just as the Sea Peoples apparently did in the Late Bronze Age.  I think To Ur can probably take it.

The Sea Peoples bold as they are will still be subject to the Fear Test.  They are going to have to work very hard to corner a cart and if they fail they will be at risk. Obviously they can still be shot down before contact by fast moving carts.

All of the above ideas need to be table top tested but I hope it has been an interesting exercise so far.

You may be wondering what about the rest of the infantry?  What about four horse chariots? We will look at them next time.