David popped by this evening for a couple quick tries at the latest draft of the DBA3.0 rules. We just used the rules as written – no changes to the terrain placement. The really new thing was the side support for spear…
GAME ONE
David thought he’d try out the Welsh, I took the Anglo-Saxons because I wanted to try out this new-fangled spear side support.
FORCES
Middle Anglo-Saxon III/24b
1x Spear General
10x Spear
1x Psiloi
Welsh III/19a
1x Cavalry General
9x Warband
2x Psiloi
THE GAME
The dice said I was invading Wales so David picked two Difficult Hills and three Woods and diced for their locations. One of the woods was discarded as it didn’t fit in the section rolled. Both the Difficult hills ended up on one side of the table and as I did NOT want to have to try and winkle the bloody Welsh (WARBANDS!) off of difficult hills with Saxon Fyrd (SPEAR) I chose that side to deploy on!
(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)
Unfortunately deploying on that side put two large bad-going features at the front of my deployment zone…
Painstakingly trying to get those coloumn of English spear down off the steep hills before the Welsh got to them – despite being uphill of them, the Welsh would still have the advantage there!
First contact was with some Welsh skirmishers on my left…
…which recoiled my own skirmishers back up onto the hill!
The battle was more or less split in two and devolved into two drunken brawls on the flanks – while my general sat in a valley in the middle wondering what the hell was going on!?
Over on my right Warband were attacking Spear
…and scored some initial success! (English down one!)
Meanwhile over on the right…
It was the reverse (tied up; one-to-one)
Whoops! Looking at this picture I just realized the Welsh should have pursued me up to the hill…
GRARRR! Right back into it went my lads!
Shoving the Welsh back (before they could
The lines meet again… well.. out on the flanks…
The Welsh General galloped up to give some support to his troops – overlapping my Spear.
And the Spear were destroyed! (English down two)
Lines evened out on the right again.
And another Welsh Warband is destroyed by the Spear (tied, again, at two)
Here I thought I might have had a chance for a quick victory – the Saxon Spear General vs. the Welsh Cavalry General flanked by spear… of course I had an overlap as well… my +4 to his +3…
NO such luck, the Generals' element shoved of the attackers and pursued the following turn.
Over on the right the English success continued (Welsh now down three)
The Welsh surge forward again…
And took down another spear over on my right…
…and I think killed the General, because that was apparently the end of the game… but I don’t seem to have taken any pictures… Anyway, close game, lots of fun. Catching the Welsh in the open is great – if you can deploy in the open. Having to deal with the bad-going kind of hampered my ability to maneuver to meet the onrushing Welsh Horde…
I also got to try out the side-support for spear, which I’ve got my head around now and it seems pretty neat! Spear recoiling from Warband on a tie came up a couple times… kind of glad they don’t have rear support anymore… Not sure if I’ll be so glad when I’m playing the Welsh.
Well since that was so quick, we played another.
GAME TWO
As David was having fun with the Welsh and just getting the hang of warband he stuck with them. I took the Norse Irish… just for… well… something different…?
FORCES
Norse IrishIII/46
1x Auxilia General
7x Auxilia
4x Psiloi
Welsh III/19a
1x Cavalry General
9x Warband
2x Psiloi
THE GAME
This game took place entirely on one half of the table. The table was pretty even – difficult hills in opposite corners and woods in opposite corners… Not that I was terribly concerned about either with the Irish… I was all Auxilia and Psiloi…
The Welsh first move was to secure their position on the hill.
Two moves on and my line of Auxilia was at the base of the hill, the Psiloi, who had been kind of left behind were maneuvering to the flank in an attempt to swing round and cause trouble on his flanks.
Anticipating this the Welsh sent down their own skirmishers to deal with them.
Skirmishers skirmishing on the flanks…
I’m not sure if I’d noticed it in previous drafts, but on the read through earlier in the day I noticed that an element with a flank edge less than one base width from the table edge, as these are, is counted as overlapped… interesting.
It helped do in these Psiloi.
Finding himself outnumbered four to one and potentially being overlapped on both sides, the Welsh skirmishers retired…
The following bound I scored five PIPs so up the hill we went!
It was a bit of a bloody mess… but ultimately the Irish took down two of the Welsh Warbands – we quickly discovered that sitting on a difficult hill is a great strategy against Vikings (Blade), English (Spear) or Normans (Knights)… doesn’t work so brilliantly against the Irish (Auxilia and Psiloi) who were able to maneuver and turn flanks…
Here’s one of those funny things in the rules.. I’d sent this Auxilia out to guard against the General turning around and flanking the flankers… In fact I was able to go far enough to catch him in my Threat Zone – thus keeping him from galloping to the other side of the hill and relieving the flanked warbands there and scattering those annoying Psiloi…
Now The whole threat zone thing reads: “An element… in an enemy TZ with no part of another element in its path, can move only: (a) to contact the front edge or overlap such a TZ-ing element, (b) to move straight forwards towards or to become more lined up and parallel to is without contacting it, or (c) only directly to it’s own rear…” Now, as it’s “own rear” is facing the Irish Auxilia here… is his ONLY option to ride towards the Auxilia…!? He can’t gallop away?! What am I missing…?
As it turns out he did turn about and contact the Irish Auxilia… and it didn’t work out to well for the Irish…
The Irish Warband that had pursued a recoiling Irish Auxilia the previous bound (and found themselves overlapped on both sides) was destroyed and that was the end of the game.
Again fast and fun.
Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:
I hope to get in another couple games later in the week with John and/or David again… stay tuned for those reports. Or perhaps now that I’ve got the space cleared I could get in a couple games with the kids some afternoon or another?
Should also finish up some Greeks over the next couple days. After these two games I'm pretty fired up to get some more Spear elements finished up for a Greek Hoplite army!!
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