Da Baltic Armies evening

Themed DBA rolls on across the summer. Phil's choice for this week. He went for armies linked to his Medieval Scandinavians. Being Phil he went outside the armies and enemies in the rule book and set up a walk through Baltic history, starting with the Slav invaders (who aren't in the list). His idea was that he would introduce the various inhabitants and invaders of the Scandi region in a winners stay on kind of way. He'd sorted out six or seven armies, finally ending with a Mongol later tribes invasion.

This was a great idea, but fell apart on game one as it required people to sit around whilst each game was played to get the full sequence. That was never going to happen, so two other armies were extracted from Phil's box of boxes and away we all went, sat out in Chris' garden on a very pleasant summer evening.

The evening was in a way sad and also a testament to the indomitability of the wargamer's soul. Prior to his stroke Phil was one of the best - if not the best - painter and modeller in 15mm that I've ever known. The intricacies of his conversions and painting defy belief at times. His WW2 work is beyond compare, and his DBA armies are an absolute delight. He usually produced matched pairs or linked armies, many of which contained little in jokes and the attention to detail was exquisite. Post stroke he soldiers on, collecting and building new armies but alas the new work mainly consists of getting the figures stuck on textured bases with simple undercoating and broad brushed colours when applied. Unpainted metal glints through on many elements. We all took along armies that fitted the theme, but in deference to Phil who had been sorting stuff out for several days (his work was delayed as he left his rule book in SHQ and I only spotted it last Thursday and took it over to him) I made the point that we should accommodate his work and just go with it. Which mostly worked, although some armies were incomplete (thanks to Steve for lending me some LH at one point).

I started with Southern Slavs (III/1c), facing Prussians. My chaps are mostly auxilia, some psiloi and a couple of cavalry bases (one of the psiloi is missing because I forgot to put it out). Phil has four warband, four auxilia, two cavalry elements that can dismount as 4Wb and a couple of psiloi. We're both Forest types, and he was defending.

Phil had a plan. He always has a plan. Just don't know what it was. He had two isolated auxilia out on his left, a block of double banked warband in the middle with his cavalry one behind the other so they could dismount to be the same, and auxilia and psiloi lurking in the wood are to his right.

I reckoned those two isolated auxilia could be overlapped and overwhelmed fairly easily, and then i could outflank the warband body and at least fight it on more or less equal terms.

First move I advanced as far as I could to bring my psiloi out to the right flank, and put my cavalry out to cover my left flank.

I proved to be correct on my right, and was two kills up pretty quickly. The warband proved to be a bit of a mixed bag in the centre, but I was able to catch the lead cavalry unit and prevent it dismounting. Phil has whipped his rear cavalry element round to face off against mine, and brought up his remaining auxilia to give me problems. The inner cavalry element is my general, so I have a slight advantage there. All I need to do, however, is to hold on whilst my right hand auxilia swarm all over those warband.

Which I duly did, winning out 4-0. Alas I forgot to photograph the end state, as I got this win with run of the mill dice rolling and didn't need to fall back on being a tactical genius and rolling 6:1 victories.

So the Slavs stayed on. Chris and Steve were still playing, so Phil pulled out the next army on the list of invaders, which were the Teutons. I set up the terrain as the defender - lots of woods to hide in away from those pesky knights that quick kill auxilia.

Then Tim turned up, so we swapped out and I never played the game.

Tim was bold and tried to envelope the knights on both flanks to even up the scores against the double banked guys, but he was very unlucky on the dice and went down heavily.

Chris and Steve finished, so I swapped in to face Steve. He was using to "base" army for the evening, IV/54d, Medieval Scandinavians. They are a nasty army to face. Some knights, a whole load of blades, plus three bows. And they have a low aggression and they're Littoral, so they can do the flank deployment from a waterway. Steve had used them in the previous game against Chris.

I, on the other hand, had Later Nomadic Mongols (IV/52). That's five cavalry, including a general, five light horse and two bows. High aggression, so I should have attacked. 

I didn't. I defended. Scandinavians invading the Steppe. My deployment had a cavalry heavy left, with the LH double ranked to fold out to hug the board edge (as in the photo at the end of turn one). The bows were on the right, with a bit of LH support.

My deployment seemed to perplex Steve, and I was on him before he could sort himself out. The plan was to roll up his right, whilst "entertaining" his left with my bows. It went fairly well in the end.

The flank attack got me three kills, but it got badly fragmented. The knights pushed me back and threatened my general.

Before I knew it Steve was back in the game. He shot and killed one of my bows, and his knights duffed up two of my cavalry. An overwhelming LH attack against isolated blades was repulsed, and I finally got over the line by surrounding a knight and killing it with my general. Phew! A 4:3 win in the gathering gloom.

Time for tea and biscuits.

Next week it's post roman Britain up to the conquest. Everyone to bring their own armies.

Chris' account of the evening is here.