A bit of DBA Doubles in Italy

Phil has a thing about renaissance Italy (it's the art, really, at the heart of it) and he has some very nice renaissance Italian DBA armies, assembled in his pre-stroke days. We were supposed to be doing 28mm DBA in his wargames room this week, but he'd found his boxes of Free Company, Sicilians and Condotta whilst tidying up and decided that some of our number need practice at DBA doubles. There's a tournament the rest of them are going to later in the year when I'm away.

Phil played a bit fast a loose with the playing area, and declared that the break point for the combined armies was half their total elements, i.e. 12, and not 8. We didn't have camps either (hooray!)

I partnered with Tim. He was our lead General with the Sicilians (IV/5) and I was supporting him with Condotta (IV/61). I'm on the left. Chris had a Free Company (IV/74), opposite Tim and Steve had more Condotta. The army Chris had feature some of Phil's favourites, being modelled on Sir John Hawkwood, with many conversions. 

Chris showed his appreciation by accidentally pulling Sir John's head off at the start of the game (see Phil's photo left, for what this means). The hut in the middle of the line is a da Vinci artillery piece. We were seriously out gunned, as Chris' army had many long bows (foot and mounted) and cross bows. Tim faced them with a load of solid Auxilia. These should do well if they can make contact, but their slow movement puts them in the beaten zone for an extra turn and any recoil hits make it even more difficult to close. Tim was on course for a rough evening.

Given their firepower they shuffled slowly forwards to get us into range. I staggered my line a bit to try to bring my cross bows on this flank into play, whilst I worked out how to overrun the artillery. I got confused as well as I thought I'd got 2 pike elements (they're holding pikes!!) but they're spears.

Tim had some really bad luck. Archery isn't that effective against infantry unless you keep rolling ones against them, in which case you can get doubled if they gang up on you. Which Chris did. Tim's already two elements down and he has desperately thrown his right wing into combat rather than get shot up by the mounted longbows. Alas the horse facing his overlap can be shot at, so may well recoil or worse, die.

I got a kill with my crossbows, but nothing else was going to plan. Low PIP numbers mean my General is lurking too far in the rear, off camera. Tim was taking a hammering off to my right, and was down six elements. At least he hadn't lost his General.

Then things turned my way a bit. Match ups started to work and the dice went in my favour, and Steve is 6 down AND he's lost a general. If only Tim can hang on. He's down to two elements, but I've only lost one. So we're on 11 losses, but they're up to 8 or 9 so there's hope. Just. 

That's Tim's general on the end, fighting some light horse. He should have killed it, but got a draw. He held on with his other unit too. Can we do it? At my end of the table Steve loses his spears. We need two more kills, they need one.

Start of the turn and Tim's general finally kills the light horse. We are now in with a real chance at my end. I had a flanking overlap on a knight unit, and a double overlap on the artillery. Just needed to roll the same as Steve or better for two kills. Got beaten and bounced in both. Tim's last Auxilia base then got surrounded and died. 12:10 to Steve and Chris.

Tim had a fairly miserable evening from beginning to end. He didn't really do anything wrong and the longbows had a really good game. It it had just been the two of them Tim would have lost 4:0 in two turns, with no one doing anything other than line up and move forwards. On my end I wasn't as smart as I should have been, showing I get rusty with DBA really quickly.

I hope Phil's able to reattach Sir John's head.