I was supposed to be doing something else, and then I wasn't so we all went round to Chris' to play DBA. My Caucasian armies are nearly all done, so I took them to give them a run out. Phil, and Tim made up the numbers, so with four of us it worked out okay, having two games running at once.
Tim had my new Lezgin army (which uses the Alan army list). The Lezgin, or Leki, were a Sarmatian/Scythian sort of mash up, who raided into Georgia from Dagestan. My Georgians were invading Lezgin territory (I ask you, the Alans/Lezgins have an aggression of 1, which is a bit strange when compared to the Georgian's 2, seeing as how often Georgia was invaded) and have taken a hill top monastery with them as a camp.
All this meant that I was fighting on a fairly open board against a cavalry heavy army, with lots of knights. The plan was to envelope Tim's right and then overwhelm his light horse with my cavalry/light horse combo on my right. The green stuff is a ploughed field, which inevitably ended up being bad going.
Seeing the threat on his left, Tim pulled his light horse round to get at my centre. I shot one of his elements with my bows.
Then I turned the flash on my camera phone on, so you can now see the colours on the Lezgin knights.
Tim did a light cavalry raid on the right on my man line, but came off worse.
Tim finally got his knights etc close enough to charge my line, but by then I'd got overlaps and so on, and was able to kill another couple of elements and win the game.
As Phil & Chris were still playing their game, we reset and had another go. I ended up defending this time, so there were some difficult hills on the board.
Tim set up to make better use of his Blades, who got a bit left behind in the last game. As the hills were difficult he used them to secure his eft flank, not realising that my Bows were the only troop type that could move through them comfortably (NB We forgot that moving in that terrain doubles the PIP cost. Whoops).
Whilst I was getting the archers into position, I foiled Tim's attempt to get round my flank by bottling him up in the pass.
Once my archers got in range, Tim had a problem.
He also had a problem on his right, as I was in a position to outflank his main line.
Tim also had even more problems on his left, as he tried to avoid being forced back into his camp or one of his other elements.
He brought up some light horse to extend the right of his line, and then headed in. His mounted arm is generally stronger, but I had an overlap on my right.
It was an inconclusive combat, with people recoiling from one another.
Eventually we killed some stuff, and I had to switch my knights across to plug a gap before winning some close combats and getting my four kills.
We then swapped round, and I fought Chris with the Armenians whilst I used the Ilkhanids. I ended up invading, and Chris set the terrain up to achieve a packed front for him. I had chosen to set up on the open ground. I don't know if this was wise or not. If I'd turned it through 90 degrees so we both had to fight in open and closed terrain it might have been better for me.
Chris set up to hold the "valley" and put his archers on the hills to control the flanks, if necessary. I knew it was a tough position to crack if Chris was intent on staying where he was. However, I thought I might be able to winkle him out by getting some light horse in his rear, if I moved quickly.
I threw 1, 2, 1 & 1 for my first 4 PIP rolls. I got the light horse where I'd wanted it, but much too slowly, and Chris was able to redeploy to block me off and with a succession of 6 rolls for PIPs, his archers leaped about the hills like mountain goats.
The light horse in the top right corner were too slow to engage and flank the cavalry Chris had put up there, and then he positioned the archers so I couldn't go back the way I came. I had to abandon those three elements (which got destroyed over the next few moves), and pulled out the light horse on my right before they suffered the same fate. I then reformed my line, and waited for Chris to move. Given the troops he had a frontal charge would be fatal to me very quickly. I've mostly got Cv and LH against 3Kn and Spears. The LH have quick kill against 3Kn, but unless you can get an overlap it's a real Hail Mary (see Chris's attack on the Tibetans in the last set of DBA games). I couldn't see why I should do that, having tried and failed to winkle him out at the start of the game. Besides, now he had a three element advantage over me he could clearly use his superior numbers to shut me down and force a victory with relatively little risk. I had a slim chance to pull something out of the hat if he attacked me, but it was looking really desperate.
Bizarrely he chose not to move, and took the draw. Which worked for me, because I reckoned I was looking at a 4-0 drubbing, if not worse.
I's say Played 3, Won 2, Drew 1 was a decent result for the night.
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