Phil & Chris are going to a DBA tournament in Coventry on Saturday. Unusually it is a themed doubles competition, based around Armies & Enemies of Early Imperial Rome (II/56). I hadn't looked at the tournament regs as as I'm not going. The tournament is using Big Battle DBA rules, but with two instead of three armies and some other simple changes. I'll say it out loud now: I don't like BBDBA. DBA is a brilliant two player quick play set of rules. It has a whole load of compromises to make that idea work, but it is brilliant. All of the changes to make it something bigger and better just go to show how tremendously good the original idea was and is. Just leave it guys.
Still, people are free to do what they want, so Chris thought it might be a good idea for him & Phil to practice this week. He's been following the FB group for the tournament, but not the Fanaticus forum page, as it turned out. He was relying to some extent on Phil, an experienced DBA and Doubles player, to fill in the gaps for him. Alas I don't think Phil has played DBA doubles, and anyway, since his stroke there are bits of his memory that either aren't there or are incomplete. Chris had managed to put together most of four armies, and Phil brought along some boxes to make up the numbers, including the all important Early Imperial Roman army.
Being me I did read the regulations and also skimmed the forum before I went. The rules seem to be you and a partner each have an army. If you go for Romans, you can chose one of the allies. If you chose enemies, you have one enemy, together with one of their normal allies that is also in the enemies list. NB the enemies include the Romans. If your chosen "enemy" doesn't have an ally in the list, you can have two of them, except for the Romans, where you can only ever have one.
Clear?
Chris and Phil had cobbled together Early Imperial Romans, some Armenians, Pyrrhic and Parthians. Even the Romans were to some extent a lash up (the Parthians are Tibetans) and the Pyrrhic army isn't listed in the book, although apparently the FB page says you can use them. ("Special pleading" said Phil.)
For the opening game Chris had the Armenians and Phil the Romans. Steve had the Parthians and Tim the Pyrrhic.
In much blundering around, Steve charged his Cataphracts into the Roman legionary line, and was very unlucky, whilst his light horse on the right got taken to pieces as Phil got at them with cavalry and LH, supported by some Ax at the end. Steve might have done better out there as he could have used a move to get overlaps and close the door on the cavalry, but chose to go for some more precise lining up in the centre.
Tim and Chris faced off with little damage. You play until one army loses four bases. Steve lost six in a single move, I think, so it all came to an abrupt halt.
Despite Steve's car-crash performance, the general view was that the strongest legal pairing on display would be the Romans and Parthians, so they were fixed on as the armies for the weekend.
For the next game Tim took the Pyrrhics and I took the Armenians so Chris and Phil could practice with the armies they were taking. We were defending. We should have put out lots more terrain. The Armenians have a lot of fast auxilia, which are quick killed by "knights". Which the Parthians have in abundance (i.e. cataphracts).
This is a couple of turns in. I tried something clever in turn one, and sent my LH on a wide flanking move, as I'd rolled 6 PIPs, and then threatened with my whole line. Chris rolled 6 as well, turned his archers and LH round, and then shot me to bits over several turns.
Tim did succeed in killing some of Phil's elements, but not before Chris mashed up the rest of my Armenians.
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