Happy New Year, everyone!
I closed out 2021 with the last (really!) of my planned Bronze Age DBA armies - the Kaska. These perennial foes of the Hittites (whose name also gets transliterated as Gasgans or Kashkans) lived in the mountainous north of Anatolia, and are covered in DBA under the I/4 Zagros & Anatolian Highland list. Unfortunately, information on them is pretty scant - there are few, if any, Kaskan archeological sites, and they don't seem to have left written records of their own, so we have to rely on Hittite sources. These don't include any visual depictions that I was able to find, so I was left largely to my own devices in deciding what the Kaska should look like. The result is a mélange of scraps and leftover figures from a number of sets:
In many cases, the figures themselves are little Frankenstein's Monsters, with heads, torsos, arms, or even feet swapped around to create an appearance that was relatively consistent and distinct from my other seven armies. I also tried to tie them together with a color scheme that was heavy on reds and greens and eschewed blues and bright whites. (The Christmas colors are entirely coincidental - I had plotted them out quite a while ago!) There are also quite a lot of checks, stripes, and even tartans worked in.
So without further ado, here is the army:
LCh or 3Wb general
First up, we have a general, either in a light chariot or as a fast Warband.
3x 3Wb
The army includes three more stands of fast Warband as "elite warriors." The DBA book suggests that they might be armed with both bows and axes, so I've done something I would not ordinarily do and mixed some archers in with the melee troops here. To help keep the "elites" distinct from the next set of units, I have also depicted them with armor, generally a shirt of bronze scales.
2x 3Ax or 3Wb
Next up, we have two units of "common warriors" as either fast Auxilia or more fast Warband. Ironically, they may prove more useful than the elites as Warbands in DBA 3.0 are quite vulnerable to cavalry.
6x Ps
Finally, half the army is psiloi skirmishers - mostly with bows, but I did put together one stand of javelineers.
I will admit, I am a little skeptical how well this army will play out in DBA, as they seem pretty vulnerable unless they can take advantage of rough terrain. For a change of pace, I may also deploy them as the I/4c Hurrian/Early Kassite/Nairi list instead (treating all the warriors as fast Auxilia instead of Warband) - the I/4c list also has a more extensive selection of historical opponents, including the Mitanni, Assyrians, and Syro-Canaanites.
Speaking of historical opponents, the completion of my eighth army lets me put together a nice little bracket:
Maybe in 2022 I will get a chance to play it through and see who comes out on top! If I do, it will help fulfill my New Year's resolution of taking all the figures I've painted over the last couple of years and getting them on the table for a game. 2021 was another good year for painting, with 368 figures finished:
