The Tournament

Burton-upon-Trent has a well deserved reputation as a well-organised and friendly DBM doubles tournament, which is the only DBM tournament that Swindon and District (SAD) Wargamers attend as a club each year.  This year, five teams from Swindon entered the tournament, which was for 500 Army Point DBM armies from 3000 BC-501 BC.

I didn’t have any Book 1 armies, so I had to decide which one I wanted.  Rather than collect a really competitive army I decided to take one which I could morph from my other armies.  Looking down the list I saw at once the Achaemenid Persians.  Lets see, Bactian cavalry and bowmen, Armenian foot, Bedouin camels – yep, I had all those, so I only need some sparabara foot and Persian cavalry and its there.  I also painted some psiloi and hordes and it was ready.

The army I fielded was:

Persian CinC:
Persian CinC – Regular Cavalry (O)
16 Sparabara Foot – half Irregular Bow (X), half Irregular Bow (O), all double-based.
6 Lydian Hoplites – Irregular Spear (I)
2 Armenian Foot – Irregular Auxilia (O)
4 Bactrian Archers – Irregular Bow (O)
1 Psidian Skirmishers – Irregular Psilio (S)
4 Kaspian Archers – Irregular Psilio (O)
3 Milyan Javelinmen – Irregular Psilio (I)
2 Libyan Javelinmen – Irregular Psilio (I)
8 Levy Dregs – Irregular Horde (O)
3 Skythian Horse Archers – Irregular Light Horse (F)
6 Baggage Elements.

Persian Foot Sub-General:
Persian Sub-General – Regular Cavalry (O)
16 Sparabara Foot – half Irregular Bow (X), half Irregular Bow (O), all double-based.
3 Armenian Foot – Irregular Auxilia (O)
4 Bactrian Archers – Irregular Bow (O)
1 Psidian Skirmishers – Irregular Psilio (S)
4 Kaspian Archers – Irregular Psilio (O)
2 Libyan Javelinmen – Irregular Psilio (I)
8 Levy Dregs – Irregular Horde (O)
2 Skythian Horse Archers – Irregular Light Horse (F)

Persian Cavalry Sub-General:
Persian Sub-General – Regular Cavalry (O)
2 Guard Cavalry – Regular Cavalry (O).
10 Persian Cavalry – Irregular Cavalry (O).
4 Bactrian Cavalry – Irregular Light Horse (S)
2 Sagartian Lasso-men – Irregular Light Horse (O)
3 Skythian Horse Archers – Irregular Light Horse (F)
2 Bedouin  – Irregular Camels (O)
3 Armenian Foot – Irregular Auxilia (O)
1 Psidian Skirmishers – Irregular Psilio (S)

The army was fielded in two big infantry commands, designed to deploy deep with the sparabara foot out front, a line of skirmishers behind (in case any warband showed up) with the horde behind them.  If there was a lot of terrain then the skirmishers could deploy there, and the levy drags could stand behind the sparabara foot and fill any gaps that appeared in the line.  Each foot command also had some light cavalry skirmishers.  The Cavalry command took virtually all the mounted troops and a small group of foot in case there was rough terrain to field.

Alan and Andy entered an ultra-competitive professionally painted army of Neo-Babalonians.  Graham and Steve combined their two Assyrian armies into one by rebasing Graham’s foot as horde!  Graham and Steve have a long history of pushing Assyrian armies around the table-top, and were hot favourites.  Paul and John took Paul’s newly collected Lybian Egyptian army, (more of which later), whilst Derek and Neil fielded a Kushite Egyptian army.

The First Battle – against Lydians (Graham Roberts and Justin Keely)

We invaded the Lydians, and, aware that they had lots of spearmen, we put down 4 steep hills.  Strangely, it landed in the middle of the table, dividing the table into two separate battlefields.

We set up on the left side of the table, with the CinC’s command poised to rush up the table and pin their foot whilst the Foot Sub-General held whatever they had on our right side of the table.  The Cavalry were to flank march and arrive on our left.  The Lydians had a huge spear command on our right, with a mix of knight and other units behind them.  Opposite our CinC was a large spear block, with more Knights behind it.

To my dismay, our flank decided to show up with no delay!  Rather come on behind the enemy spear and knights, it now came on our next bound.  Our CinC command tried to rush up the table and help, whilst not actually contacting the enemy spears!  The Lydian spearmen on our right played no real part in the battle, whilst the Lydian knights marched through the base of the steep hill to get to their left.  For a while it looked a as though we might get a wedge of mounted troops between their troop blocks, but some disappointing PIP rolls meant that the Persian cavalry command was too much pinned in place by knights, spear and more arriving knights.  Some inspired combat dice rolling by Rob meant that we almost kept the cavalry command together until the end of the game, but on the very last bound we lost the very last dice roll of the game to loose the command.  We lost 4-6.
Fortified by lunch, we set up for the second game.

The Second Battle – against Chu Chinese (Greg Mann and John Samson)

We again invaded, and again put down 4 FE equivalent of steep hills.  To our surprise it all landed on our side of the table, leaving us almost no space to deploy in.  To make matters worse, the Chinese put down a Waterway, which reduced our deployment zone even further.  Once again, we decided to refuse the right flank, put the Foot Sub-General on the left and flank-march the cavalry on that side.  We would have liked to set up the Cavalry Sub-General on-table, but just didn’t have enough room.

The Chinese army had Regular generals.  On our right it had a fleet of five ships, which included a Sub-General.  He also had some bow on-table.  The centre command was a large mixed blade and bow formation, with knight chariots behind, and on the left a command with regular blades, fast irregular blades and warband.  This was also backed up by lots of knight chariots.

The Foot Sub-General immediately started to throw skirmishers forward to ward off the warband and fast blades, but this desperate skirmishing only delayed the inevitable.  After about an hour, the blades and warband hit the Sparabara foot, quickly making holes and driving through.  The Persian Foot Sub-General’s command then went demoralised.  The Cavalry command took some time to arrive this time, and the Chinese had ample time to line up their knights facing the board edge.  The waterway meant that there was no need to worry about guessing which side our flank march would arrive, and it duly arrived to fight desperately for survival.  It soon went demoralised as well, and we lost the game 0-10.  Ouch.

The Third Battle – against Mannaians (Paul Frewin and Phil Murphy)

Mannaians?  Who?  A desperate search through Book 1 turned them up.  Lots of irregular auxilia, a few light horse.  There must be something else!  There was.

We invaded again, but after our desperately cramped deployment yesterday we dispensed with the largest hill and put down 3½ feature equivalents worth.  The Mannaians put down four pieces of rough terrain.

The Mannaians had irregular commands.  There were two large commands of bow and auxilia, plus some irregular knights in one.  They also had an allied Kimmerian command entirely of light horse.  They also had a flank march.

We put the CinC in the centre, the Foot Sub-General to his right and the Cavalry to their right.  In other words, another refused flank, this time our left.

The first dice roll for the Mannaian ally was a ‘1’.  “Allied command?” I asked hopefully.  They didn’t let on.  Anyway, their CinC rushed his auxilia forward into the rough going on our right, whilst our Foot Sub-General stood just outside the rough going.  The CinC’s auxilia rushed the Sparabara, who shot down lots of Mannaians.  The auxilia did penetrate the spara wall, but were killed by the Horde behind!  The allied flank command arrived, and it was indeed allied.  It was a Median command, a wall of supported spearmen, but was unreliable!  We calmly lined up our cavalry about one mm from the spearmen, staring them in the eye.  The Mannaian’s CinC would break after 14 losses, and after we had weathered the first attack, killing 10 of his command, we started to push forward to get the last four elements to get his command to break.  Four more elements and we would convert the Medians to our side.  However, the Mananean pulled his CinC’s command back, the Medians became reliable, and we fought to contain them.  Excellent dice rolling by Rob kept the Median ally pinned in the corner.  The game ended a five-all draw.  The Kimmerian ally and the other Mannaian foot command played no part in the battle.

The Fourth Battle – against Libyan Egyptian (Paul and John )

I don’t believe it!  Four and a half hours round trip from Swindon to Burton-upon-Trent, and we face another Swindon team who we face every Wednesday!  We had played against Paul and John in the practise games before the tournament, so we knew each others armies well.  I suggested that we call it a five-all draw and swap armies, just to make it a bit different, but they were keen to get it on, so we did.

Paul and John’s Egyptians were carefully constructed around two cavalry wings of superior-cavalry chariots.  They were supported by massed ranks of irregular, inferior auxilia, which meant that the chariots could all be lost, and the commands would not break!  They also had a huge (32 elements strong) force of “invincible Meshwesh” – superior warband – which we were anxious to avoid.  We invaded a bland wilderness with a waterway down our right, a BUA chock-full of inferior auxilia, and some rough going and a gully in our deployment area.  Deployment was like this:

We immediately set about marching the Foot Sub-General’s sparabara foot away from the warband, behind a screen of skirmishers.  The Persian cavalry rushed into the centre of the table, opposite the Meshwesh, to harass the warband.  The Persian CinC’s command advanced slowly on the opposing cavalry, driving them back.  The Persian Foot Sub-General’s command took out all the Egyptian light troops and Chariots by the waterway, and set about turning the warband’s flank, who by this time had stalled against our mounted arm.  Paul wisely let the warband go impetuous, giving us some hairy moments and delaying our turning of his flank, before we were able to break his formation up further and start recoiling warband elements into themselves.  Paul and John were unlucky, in that their chariots couldn’t rush in and support the warband – our foot simply shot anything with four legs to pieces.  Eventually the warband command broke, and the battle ended with a 6-4 win.

Conclusion

Overall, both Rob and I had some really fun games against some friendly opponents.  The Persians did okay, and although we scored less than 20 points we did not feel we had performed too badly.  With more playing time before we had submitted the army list we would have made minor tweaks to the list, but nothing drastic.

The SAD Team scores were:

Congratulations to Graham and Steve for finishing the top Swindon team.

Finally, I’d like to thank Derek for organising a superb weekend away, everyone really enjoyed it.