EW DBM Tournament Third Round 2016 Game Report

EW Third Round 2016 Game Report

Today’s game was my third round game in the Essex Warriors Annual DBM Tournament.

I had elected to use Low Countries because it was a new army, I had not used it in anger before this year and I wanted something totally out of my comfort zone to test my skills and ability.

After my second round defeat I was drawn against Paul Brady’s Feudal English.

Our armies are unchanged from the first round games as the tournament follows the usual BHGS format of four rounds but fought over the course of the year rather than over a weekend. This allows players to make full use of the all day Sunday we have to play and means they get to play in a tournament which otherwise most of them would not have the chance to.

Paul’s army consisted of four commands organised thus:

C1 = 20 E/18.5 EE/6.5 D [25% = 5 EE] CinC

C2 = 15 E/17 EE/6 D [25% = 4.5 EE] Sub general

C3 = 20 E/17.5 EE/6 D [25% = 4.5 EE] Sub general

C4 = 14 E/13 EE/4.5 D [25% = 3.5 EE] Welsh Ally general

Army 69 E/66 EE/33 B

My army was as before:

The Low Countries have an Aggression of 0 compared to the the Feudal English Ag 3 with both armies being in a Cold Climate. We both elected to invade in the Summer.

I rolled Ag 0 + 6 = 6 which made me think I was going to be the invader. Paul then rolled a 1 to confirm this. The difference on the roll was a 5 which luckily meant there were no weather effects as it was 07.00 hours and I was the invader. Because of the way DBM terrain works based on available options on the defenders army list I decided to place a Rd and 2 x 1.5 FE of entirely steep hills to break up the table and give me something to try and anchor my line on. Paul then placed 3 x 0.5 FE Marsh and a single 0.5 FE bare gentle hill. Being a mainly infantry army I was seriously worried about ending up being outflanked on both sides because of the superior number of mounted Paul had access to in his list.

The terrain fell reasonably for me and allowed me to give some thought to a plan of attack. Paul placed his baggage and then I placed mine along with the TF fortifications in three separate groups As the list checker I knew what each opponents army list consists of so I always make sure they have a copy of my list as soon as we have arranged to play our game.

We then wrote out our command deployments. I deployed my CinC’s command across my front to take advantage or its ability to occupy the TF and the steep hills and deployed my two infantry commands slightly to the rear either side of the centre of my position.

Here are the armies as deployed before we started the first move.

I pushed forward as fast as possible with the aim of taking out his isolated commands in detail before Paul had a chance to moved his left flank commands knights forward around my open flank.

My knights were in the way so I had to push them over to the centre with a view of trying to take his Welsh ally in the flank but Paul was also advancing forward with his his foot archers against Guildsmen knights in my centre so I decided to dismount the knights as Reg Bd S are much more resistant to bowfire than Reg Kn I are.

I had a pair of mounted crossbowmen with were able to interfere with Paul's advance and allowed me to slow them down as I withdraw them into the gap between my left flank artillery redoubt and the pikemen.

It was at this time Paul rolled a 1 on his right flank command which meant that he could not hold it and because it was less than a move away from my infantry he could not move his full move. He elected to move his three right most knights forward their full move and let the other two go impetuous [this included his sub general for that command in the second rank.] He also moved over a single Cv element from his CinC command to try and protect his exposed flank.

This allowed me to push forward and contact the leading knight in my next turn with my Planconmen in two ranks supported by my Guildsmen pikes. I then killed the leading knight and this also destroyed the sub-generals element behind. I had already killed another knight which meant this command had now lost three elements including his general so Paul had a 50% chance of saving it on his next PIP roll. Paul then rolled a 1 which meant the command immediately broke and had to flee towards his baseline. This unlucky result meant Paul had lost a total of 17 EE in this command plus a couple more for the other commands out of the 33 I needed to break his army. [see below]

I then pushed forward with my other pike command into his small Welsh ally. The Welsh spearmen are tougher than I realised because of being Irr Ax X which meant they fought three deep but counted as Inferior to my pikemen. I eventually took out two elements from this command before he managed to turn my exposed flank with his Welsh ally general who then recoiled away from me.

Paul then let his CinC knights go impetuous and burst through his own archers who immediately fled to the rear and hit my pikemen frontally. I recoiled all of his knights and advanced to close against his remaining archers and using my superior combat factors and PIP swapping between commands started to peel off some of the archers and knights each turn.  In a couple of turns I had taken out sufficient elements to break his CinC’s command and with it the army.

One funny thing that happened, as far as I was concerned was that over on Paul's far left flank he advanced his Flemish Mercenary knights across the front of a pair of my artillery in the TF and I ended up firing at the rear element from behind its flank and rear with two Reg Art I which meant the CF was 4 v 2. This meant all I needed to do was beat the knight elemeent to force it to turn round and then recoil itself into the rear of the knight that had been leading it in the column and doing this resulted in my taking out two elements of knights.

It was a hard fought game and Paul had his fair share of bad luck and poor PIP dice which allowed me to take advantage of some of his minor deployment and combat errors. Had he been luckier with his combat rolling in the struggle between my pikes and his Welsh it could have easily turned into a defeat. We played for about four hours and I won 10 -0. We are using the BHGS scoring system which converted to a 31-1 Victory. I lost a total of 4 EE in the army and destroyed 14 of Paul's EE due to a combination of close combat and distance shooting.

I learnt a lot more about how to use this army and I am looking forward to fighting Andy’s Teutonic’s in the final round.