Return of the Tactical Genius

It was Phil's birthday on Tuesday. In celebration we had a small DBA gathering at Chris K's house. The gathering was so small that Suzanne (aka Mrs Chris) made up the numbers so we could get a couple of games in simultaneously.

Chris asked me to bring Burmese, as he wanted something with a lot of elephants in it to take on his new Indian army. Phil brought along a new army too, "Teutonic Order", which he has just finished, having started work on it before he had his stroke nearly two years ago. Chris provided Late Polish to fight them. I have nothing contemporary to take them on.

Here's Phil, getting ready to fight Suzanne's Poles. Lots of knights and cavalry. Phil won this one quite quickly.

That left me and Chris with the Burmese and Indians. I blundered around a bit, not really sure how to take on Chris' army. We got some bits of it wrong too. I moved my Auxilia through the wood as a group. That's not correct, but it meant we ended up fighting sooner rather than later. We both have missile troops and are trying to line them up on the other side's elephants. I managed to kill some psiloi early doors. Chris has killed some Auxilia.

Chris committed his elephant first, and it was all rather confusing. Shortly after this I killed loads of stuff and won the game 5:1. I was so surprised I forgot to take a picture.

Next I took on Phil's Teutonic knights.

I had no idea how to fight with the army I had, nor how to fight the army Phil had. I posted my cross bows on the left, with cavalry flank guards, and my knights on my right, with cavalry in reserve. Light horse and psiloi were lurking in the woods you can see peeping in on the right. My deployment area was squeezed by some crappy terrain deployment rolls. I was reduced to identifying "Hail Mary" plays and hoping for the best. This picture is several turns in, and it was actually going okay. I'd done for a base or two with a combination of luck and positioning. I took this picture as one of my Hail Marys had just failed.  I stuck some light horse in as a flank attack to destroy some spears with my knights, but then only got a draw. Phil is ganging up on my turcopoles, to punish them for their temerity. On the left my double depth cross bows are keeping Phil's double depth knights at bay.

This is the end of game picture. Didn't forget this time. I've run out 6:2 winner, as there's a dead Teutonic general in there too, together with double depth knights who count as two losses. All of my wild gambles, pretty much, came off. I'm getting better at positioning troops so that quick kills arise from match ups or inability to retreat. I'm also getting the hang of using mobility of mounted troops to bring it about.

Wow. Another 2:0 outcome for the evening. It might be getting to the point where I'm not just getting lucky. 

Nah. It's all down to the dice.