Not entirely in my Element. DBA Friday

Chris had some friends over to play DBA. It would have been rude not to join him. There were six of us, me, Chris (obvs), Steve, Phil, Peter D and Richard M. Peter organises the Mercia DBA event in Coventry at the end of February, so we were getting in some practice under tournament conditions. Supposedly.

I took my Khmer & Cilician Armenians as I still wasn't fixed on what it was best to take. First game I used the Khmer (III/23a) against Chris' Tibetans (III/15). He's just got some new 3D prints of dismounted Tibetan cavalry, and seems to think that'll make this army a winner.

I ended up defending, and the way the dice fell I had all the woods to my back, threatened by Chris' massed hordes. I'm not entirely sure I knew what my plan was. I should probably have deployed further back and stuck my Auxilia in the woods.

First turn, not too many PIPS, so I was only able to step my artillery and bows forwards to make sure the bolt shooter at least was in range. The purpose of this is to mess up his spear line, slowing it down and making a gap - whether through death or recoil - so the elephants can get stuck in. The General is under the white umbrella. I protected my elephants with Psiloi in front. Don't think that was actually necessary in this game.

The bolt shooter, supported at closer range by the bows, made a mess of the line as desired. The shot before this we're lined up as you see above. I was able to pull out my Psiloi and hit Chris' spear line with my General + overlap on the left. This combat resulted in the spears recoiling in front of my General, and (as it's a game of skill) I killed the spears in front of the other elephant. One up to me. Always good to be on the score board.

Chris then throws everything at my Auxilia on the left, and tries to overrun my bows with his spears, whilst avoiding fighting the elephants.

Mixed results over the next two turns. He kills one of my Auxilia, but his spears lose out to my bows, the artillery overlap giving me just the edge I needed. My elephants trundle forwards and crush another spear base. Which I think was his spear general. That makes it a 4:1 win to me. Whew! Where did that come from? Perhaps the Khmer are quite a resilient army after all.

Next game I was up against Peter. He'd brought Normans III/52. Or at least most of them. He was a base of knights light. The rules for the competition we are playing in is that you swap armies on alternate rounds, so I got the Normans, and Peter my Khmer. Peter was defending. I have a Norman army under DBA 2.2, but the DBA 3 lists mean I don't have enough Kn elements in it, and the figures are hard to get hold of as the manufacturer only sells them in a DBA 2.2 box set.

My clever plan here was to use a column of knights to move out to the wing quickly, and deploy into line to overwhelm his Auxilia.

Pete tried to close as rapidly as possible, or at least bring the bolt shooter into play.

The knight column stalled with low PIP rolls. B*gg*r. It needs 4 PIPS to move and deploy fully. However I was able to shoot and kill his bolt shooter with my bows.

I then rammed into his centre. The LH double banked quick killed the elephant facing them, and the overlap then helped me quick kill his bows. Alas the elephant general held on. I'd finally got the knights/cavalry into line, but I could have done with the extra PIP to get them into contact. Still, I'm 3:0 up at this point, so it's looking pretty good.

Then the wheels dropped off. A 1 for PIPs meant I couldn't get anything into contact, and my bows couldn't hit a thing. The elephant general smashed a hole in the line, and the Psiloi on Pete's left were able to gang up on the end of my line of bows, who just sat there doing nowt. It was now 3:2.

Another one for PIPS, and the army continued to sit there. With chunks of the Khmer army at my mercy I couldn't move enough to make a difference. And I didn't even have any elephants needing two PIPs to move.

Pete rolled 6 for his PIPs, shoved stuff where he needed it and ran out 4:3 winner.

And then...controversy. As he took the Normans back and set them up for his next game Pete realised he'd given me an ineligible army. What's more it only had 11 elements. (count them in the first photo if you don't believe it. I never even checked). I should have had one less LH and two 4Bd instead. Not that this would have changed the PIP rolls. Peter disqualified. Trebian awarded 4:0 walkover (or whatever - I suspect it would have made little difference overall).

Next I got my Khmer back, and played Richard's Later Poles (IV/64), complete with War Wagons (only two, mind you).

I forgot to take a picture of the opening position, so this is where we are after our first moves. As I was defending he was able to put all his stuff afraid of elephants well out of my way.

I was able to destroy one of his War Wagons with my bolt shooter early on.

I then lost my bolt shooter to a 6:1, the support from my bows therefore being of little consequence. My elephants did manage to catch some knights in the open and stomp them to death, so I was 2:1 up at this stage.

Now I did have a slight problem here. I needed my Auxilia on my right to hold on long enough for my elephants to finish the business in the centre. Alas this failed to work in either respect. Rich got a recoil result against my elephant in the centre, which meant I need 2 PIPS to regain contact, and 3 for the flank attack with the supporting Auxilia. Well, that didn't happen, meanwhile two of my Auxilia on the right got killed - although my cavalry did survive a flank attack.

With the PIP famine in full swing the best I could manage was a 2, but I was able to use that to get sufficient advantage on the cavalry in front of the war wagon to kill that and get to 3 all. The following turn the attack went in again on my cavalry on the right, and this time they went down, so I lost out 4:3.

So, two losses and one win, with an element kill count of 10:10. In all honesty I can't see that having the full 12 elements would have made much difference against Peter, although perhaps the slightly different troop mix might have done. The truth of the matter is that the killing part of the army, the knights, took too long to get into place. The four element column moves quickly, but to deploy into line and attack takes four PIPs. That's not necessarily as bad as it sounds - after all that's 50:50 on a D6 - but it can seem a long way off at times. On the other hand the Spears I should have had might have done better than the bows against the Psiloi. However, although I subscribe to the view that rolling high in combats beats rolling high on PIPs everyday of the week, it would have been handy to have had one or two more PIPs to have got the archers out of trouble.

As for the last game, that too could have gone either way.