Outings for some new DBA armies

Chris K said for Tuesday it would be good to bring over matched pairs of new armies for an evening's DBA. We were down on numbers with just Phil, Chris and me in attendance.

We tag teamed the games so everyone got a go. I started using Phil's Prussians against him with his Scandinavians. There are no pictures of the game for two reasons. Firstly, I lost, and secondly my army was based but unpainted, so not doing any favours for lovers of eye candy. I lost mainly because I'm out of practice (if I ever was in) with warband armies, and came to grief fairly quickly against a blade shield wall. I think I lost 4:2 in the end. Well, I know I lost. Just can't be certain of the score.

The next game was my Armenians (in the distance, commanded by Phil) and the Ilkhanids, played by Chris. I was interested in watching this to see how the light horse played out. I've not used a lot of them historically, and my latest project has piles of the little fellows. The trees are flats, provided by Phil. I can't say I care for them very much, but Phil has this thing about flats (which I do NOT get) so we let him put them out. The painted board is all squared up to show the deployment zones.

Here's the Armenians. They look rather spiffing I think.

Chris sent his light horse out wide and tried to avoid the bowmen on the left. I had no idea what he was playing at.

He hits the end of the spear line with his Cavalry and flanks it with some light horse. That's the Ilkhanid general in the yellow coat of the left centre.

A couple of turns further on and Chris has killed a couple of spears and one of Phil's knights. He has lost some light horse and cavalry himself.

In the final turn Chris gets round the flanks and rear with the light horse and runs out a winner 6:3. Bit disappointed with the Armenian performance there, as I'd have backed them to win.

We then gave Phil the Ilkhanids and I brought out the very nearly finished Georgians. They're missing some banners and a bit of varnish. Expecting a pasting here, as Phil is the master of light horse in our group. And he had the choice of set up.

Bizarrely he gave me the chance to pick a 1:1 fight, more or less, in the centre, and also gave me the chance of an overlap.

I won a couple of combats and lost one along the line and got some recoil results too. It looked promising.

Then Phil gave me a target for my bows on the left and I also smashed a big hole in his line to win out 5:1. 

Then Chris whipped out his Tibetans and Tang Chinese. I took the Tibetans with all those cataphracts.

Not learning from Phil, Chris threw his line at me, which was mostly light horse, looking for extreme results and quick kills. I thought turn one was a bit early for a Hail Mary move. I killed three or four of his light horse by doubling them.

Then I killed a load more and won 6:0. I claim no skill at all in this victory, which was entirely due to my opponent.

My new armies acquitted themselves okay, with only the Armenians failing to register a win. They look nice on the table, and I'm starting to think how you go about using them, so a successful evening's outing.