Mark came over today for some DBA, we played an out of period matchup 3 times, my Hittite empire facing his Spartans twice then his Arab Conquest. I think the Hittites are perhaps my best army, provided they have open field to fight on. They are very well balanced, with 6Sp & 2Ps to act as a holding force, and a mounted arm of 3HCh and 1LCh which is very punchy. There is really only one way to play this army- load up the mounted on one wing, the "hammer", and refuse or hold the other with the foot, the "anvil". 6Sp with 2Ps is perfect for holding since the Ps support Sp, and the 3HCh has a lot of punch with the LCh to outflank.
In the first game I almost snatched defeat- Mark fielded a 12 Sp element Spartan army and my mounted wing crashed into one end of it and was ground into bits, I was down 1-3. But fortunately they did enough to mess up his lines and allow the anvil to overlap his other wing and the surviving HCh-general (great for quick kills, just don't get him killed) just enough room to pull it out 6-4. The second game saw a rematch, the hammer hit his right flank with overlaps and two of my elements rolled 1s and died, one of these was the general, so that wasn't so good (0-2 loss in record time). Thankfully it was mercifully short. The third game saw Mark retire the Spartans and bring on Arab Conquest. This is quite a tough, but I think hard to play army, with a combination of Bw, Wb and Cv. Fortunately I got my HCh in against his Cv and managed to grind it out 4-1 before his Wb could overlap my refused flank. Sp with Ps support can hold off Wb for a while but start to die if Wb get overlaps.
So, Hittites are great if (1) you don't roll 1s with your general in combat and (2) you fight in good going. It would have been ugly if he pulled out the Thracians, but that will have to be another day.
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