Chris K & Phil are off to Steel Warriors in Sheffield this weekend to play in a DBA tournament. This tournament has a twist that there's a prize for the worst performing army*. I understand people bring and army then everyone swaps round. As Chris is just back from running a major NQM game last weekend I set up for some DBA games in Shedquarters so Chris & Phil could try out their loser armies. I hadn't really got the message about worst armies, so I picked out Early Byzantines (i.e. Justinian & Belisarius) and some Alans to face them. Tim came along as well, so we had four of us and got in three games each.
Chris & Phil arrived first, so they got going with some armies I don't recall for now. When Tim turned up I let him chose between the two armies I'd fished out, and he went for Count Belisarius. Wise move.
I think I was invaders for this game. Belisarius has a lot of Cavalry. I have knights & light horse. To stand a chance against cavalry my LH need to be two deep, so I risk overlap. My intention on the right is to move the LH out wide and swing the knights up to complete the line.
Sort of like that. I shouldn't have pushed the LH up like that, however.
Yes. I let myself get a bit caught out right. What a nuisance.
In lost a LH base, but pulled my knights up to make more of a line. My left has been hung out to dry a bit, but I'm hoping to make hay on the right.
Well, sort of. It all unravelled and I got the dreaded draw result with knights against one of the blades, and then came second in a heap load of other combats and lost 2:4. Not complaining. I love the Belisarian army and it is good to see them win.
We then switched round, and I took on Phil with my Belisarians.
I don't think I've ever won against Phil with this army. It normally ends up fighting Goths, who are optimised for taking it down it seems to me. For this game he had some Baltic army which comes with warbands and loads of woods and a gentle hill. Or was it a marsh? I forget. I was invading again.
It was an awkward problem, but I thought I might punch through the middle and take on the warbands. The blades in column in the left hand wood are to move quick as possible and then deploy into line. The LH on the left are to delay Phil's flanking force. The rear rank of cavalry is there to exploit any openings. The right hand wood has psiloi in it. This is the position after Phil's first turn.
Back to Phil moving. I rolled a 1 for first turn PIPs, which was suboptimal. I should have held back, but I wanted to get at Phil's warbands before the centre was locked out by Threat Zones.
I took fewer pictures of this game, but I managed to knock out a 4:1 win by destroying the warbands.
Lastly I played Chris, using Mongols against Alans. It did not go well. I mostly got the troops where I wanted them and Chris' insistence on having a BUA didn't help anyone.
Alas Chris also got his troops where he wanted them and prevailed in the dice rolling competition. I lost 0:4. Oh well.
But it was good to get the Count and his boys out. I did a series of posts back in October/November 2011 called "Can you tell what it is yet?" about painting them, and it is still an army I really love and am very pleased with the look of it.
Even if it doesn't win all that often.
* Last year's "winner" was Paoanians, who are ultra aggressive but consist mostly of Psiloi. So, great in difficult terrain WHICH YOU RARELY GET TO PLAY ON as you're normally the invader.
With all of these quick-playing DBA games, you are doing well in front-loading your annual game count.
ReplyDeleteYes. Not my aim at all, but a useful by-product.
DeleteI had a look back at your Early Byzantine army - very nice. Forty years ago, having read Procopius and Robert Graves's accounts of Belisarius's wars, and seen some impressive pictures of model armies I was pretty set upon 'doing' and Early Byzantine myself. Then I got a sample figure from 'Tin Soldier' (an outfit based in Sydney) of their home grown range of Byzantines - an 11th Century skoutatos. Well, I knew about the 'White Emperor' Nikephorus Phocas, John Tzimiskes and Basil the Bulgar Basher - and let's not forget the wonderfully named George Maniaces - so that is the route I took.
ReplyDeleteJ.F.C. Fuller remarked upon the genius of Belisarius in achieving so much, considering the 'unsatisfactory raw material of his armies'. I rather think that is reflected in the army lists.
The main problem I had with playing with my Byzantines in a competitive environment, I once only fought a more-or-less historical opponent (Fatimid Egyptian) that was not itself a contemporaneous Byzantine army. I could never get much enjoyment out of fighting against Aztecs, Chinese, Timurid Mongols, Romans (various), Mediaeval English and German, Carolingian French, and various armies featuring knights (S) - not even though my Byzantines won more often than they lost.
But the real joy of Byzantine armies lies in their variety and their colourfulness, don't you reckon?
Cheers,
Ion
Procopius and graves are both inspirational reads. I did the army with the intention of playing in more Armati tournaments, but the new version of the rules and subsequent interpretations broke the game for me and my experiences playing locally was that it was a real devil to handle. The ability to shoot didn't make up for the weaker fighting value of the main cavalry arm as it didn't have "Impetus" and everything it came up against did. Or, as has been pointed out to me, I never learned how to fight with it properly. But it still looks great. Ironically, as Fuller says, it is one of the historically most successful Byzantine armies but subsequent armies when the empire was getting kicked about tend to have better troop types. Funny isn't it?
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