There is not much known about the historical Trojans. It is virtually a universal assumption in diverse wargames lists that the Trojans were little different from their Achaean enemies, apart from some nominal differences in their alliances. The suggestion has been made by Hittitologists that the Trojans would have been little different from the Hittites, and recently a Luwian fragment has been found in the digs at Hisarlik. Luwian was the language of the Hittites and many of their Anatolian contemporaries:

A late twelfth-century B.C. bronze seal inscribed with Luwian hieroglyphs is the first evidence of writing from Bronze Age Troy. It bears on one side the name of a man, identified as a scribe, and on the other the name of a woman, possibly his wife. A bronze figurine similar to Hittite representations of a god holding a weapon or thunderbolt was also found. (Archaeology Magazine Field Notes, Volume 49 Number 1, January/February 1996)

Eric Shanower, a graphic artist who is currently re-telling the Trojan War story in comic book form (and his work is spectacular, no mere comic book this), has related in a brief note on his project that Manfred Kaufmann, the leader of the current and most ambitious excavations at Hisarlik, recommended that he base his comic book Trojans on Hittite models. So it follows here that the AW list break some new ground by looking to the Hittite list for inspiration for a Trojan army list. Noted Egyptologist Donald B. Redford related in Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, 1992) that his reading of the thin evidence brought him to conclude that Troy led a Western Anatolian confederacy in rebellion against the common Hittite overlord prior to falling to the fractious Achaean confederacy shortly thereafter.

This perhaps has its greatest impact on the gamer’s choices of figures to use, rather than the play of the army. As Tom McMillen pointed out in the Courier article the top warriors of both sides exchanged arms and armour either through gift-giving (voluntarily) or spoils (over someone’s dead body), so they at least would look pretty much the same regardless which side they represented (always keep in mind bronze armour was very expensive and scarce, so it would be “recycled” repeatedly over the course of a long war). So it is in my Trojan War armies. Foundry and Redoubt Trojan War personality figures fit the bill, look wonderful, and therefore fill the ranks of the Trojan household.

There is an undertone in the Iliad that originates in the uneasy relationship between the House of Priam, rulers of the city of Troy, and its cognate, the House of Ankhises, rulers of the Dardanians (the Trojan hinterland). Aeneas, the son of Ankhises, bears a grudge against Priam and sons, and often holds back in the fighting. This is extrapolated in the list below into two separate army contingents: (i.) the city-dwelling Trojans, cosmopolitan and commercial, traders and raiders, with a strong orientation towards the Aegean and its commerce; and (ii) the rural Dardanians, horse tamers and charioteers, provincial and Anatolian in orientation.

I would judge the Trojans themselves to be most like the Achaeans militarily, sharing in the new martial technologies revolutionizing Aegean warfare (slashing swords and improved hand-to-hand combat armours), and de-emphasizing the chariot. As with the Lukka (cited below), the Trojans may well have combined with Ekwesh elements in the Sea Peoples’ assault(s) on Egypt.

The Dardanian traditionalists are directly -- politically and economically -- threatened by Trojan alignment toward the Aegean. Moreover, it is Trojan overseas rapacity that has brought the Greek coalition down on the necks of the Dardanians on their home ground. No happy campers there.

The Achaean onslaught has brought the parties back together, but the alliance is an uneasy one.

In the list below, the LCh maryannu and the Antiheroes Paris and Pandaros are given longbows to represent the power and reach of the composite bows wielded by the best archers of the age. The Dardanian charioteers, in contrast, have been assigned bows. This artificial distinction was made to underline an alleged emphasis on close combat associated with the introduction of heavier chariot cars and larger crew in the Hittite mold, which is modeled in AW as an MCh armed with spear and bow. For Dardanians I have used mostly Foundry and Old Glory Hittite figures.

More Trojans

Introduction
Who Were the Trojans?
Trojans Navy, Lukka, and Allies
The Wargame List