Having been to Britcon and actually spent a few groats on purchasing a copy of
V2.0 the next step was to get a game in.

So with a visit already arranged to the Tropical South(Kent) and the Kazzy of
Doom the residence of the notorious Darth Mather I prepared a DBMM 100 army to
face the the might Darth and Adrian Coomb- Hoare in a one night stand round
robin.

The theme was set as 541AD Byzantium and their enemies. Armies selected were:

Adrian - Italian Lombard
Dave - Early Byzantine(Belisarius -not Brilliant)
Myself - Sassanid Persian

My list was dead simple all irregular(full confession  below)

CinC Cv(s)           1
Asavaran Cv(s)    9 
Daylami Ax(s)       2
Levy Hd(o)            2

Total 25ME.

My mistake with this is that the General should have been regular so in hind
sight should not have had the Hd. - Moral to the story is all Sassanids are
cheating sods- well so said the other two? Every one has been telling me how bad
Irg Cv(s) are now so I thought thats the army for me. 

First game was against Adrian. I invaded and Adrian placed an SF just off centre
and a RH  to the left of that towards the corner on his table edge as I viewed
the table. I turned the table so that the SH ended on my side left corner.
Adrain deployed with 1 Lh(s) the CinC and 2kn(f) on my left and 3 Kn(f) on my
right with an infantry centre of Sp(i) and Ps. I deployed with the Dayalmi on
the hill and all the Cavalry  covering the gap between and facing the SF in the
centre, the Hd were on the front right of my line. I made an error in the
deployment zone depth so deployemnt for both sides was a little cramped.


Essentialy Adrian pushed forward along his line with the Infantry going through
the SF in his first bound I pushed forward the Hd to just short of the SF and
the Ax towards the front of the hill. Next bound Adrian had a shortage of pips
so the  3 Kn had to go impetoues into the SF while the CinC's group and Infantry
moved forward., I peeled off some Cv with the CinC to cover behind the Hd as
this was the weak flank.next bound contact adrian put his Lh into the Ax on the
hill(overlap not counting against him from the other Ax) and jumped the Hd with
Ps hard fanking the one nearest the centre and the 3 kn moved forward
impetiously again in the SF but not to contact, the Ax was recoiled and the Hd
beat off all comers killing one of the Ps.  In my bound I hard flanked the Lh
with the other Ax and killed it the main body of Cav hit the Sp recoiling two
and killing one and continued out to my right aiming to get on the flank  of the
Kn in the SF.

Not much happened in the last 2-3 bounds. The Hd went down to a combine attck
from the Sp and Kn but not before one of them recolied a Kn. In the ned time was
called we had een slow mainly due to my lack of knowledge of the rules. End
result was I lost 1 ME(2 Hd) and adrain 2 ME(LH,1 Sp(i),& 1 Ps) so 6-4 to the
Sassanids.

Second game saw Adrain and Dave square up to each other. Terrain played no part
in this game as the battle took place in a flat plain in the centre of the
table(we got the deployment zones right this time). Again Adrian was invaded he
deployed with his infantry deployed in front of his Kn so his army was in four
line essentially with some of his PS on the right wing of the Sp. Dave deployed
with a mounted front line with Belisarius in the centre flanke by Kn(f) which
were flanked by Cv(s) which in turn had Lh(s) on the outer end the infantry Bow,
Bd Hd and Bge(only Dave use Bge) behind this.  First move saw Adrain push his
mounted through the inf straight toward  the Byzantine front line with his Sp
forming column and moving off to his left, Daves first pip dice was 1(gulp!)
Dave elected to extend his right flank as he could not pull Belisarius out and
fill the gap nothing was close enough. Adrians next move saw his knights putting
the  Byzantine front line in TZ's. Dave had no choice really in his bound he
charged, Mayhem resulted, Belisarius fought the first combat killing the Kn in
contact on the grading factors(I think) the Byzantine Kn either side also killed
their Kn opponents with the befnefit of the +1 for the general winning his
combat and Adrian lost a 4th Kn to Lh I think, the lombards were now
disheartend. Adrain held his own in his next bound killing one elemnt I think
however the writing was on the wall and Dave mopped all the remaining Lombard Kn
and Lh, including the CinC for a dramatic 10-0 victory in about 25
minutesplaying time.

Final game the clash of Empires.

Byzantium invaded Sassanian territory. I placed an E in the opposite left corner
a GH almost centre and a BUA in my right corner. Dave elected to not rotate the
table.
I deployed my Cav in  2 unequal lines with the AX on the left in the outer
Zone and Hd in the rear. Dave faced off my Cav with his Bd + Ps support and 2
Bw(i) on my left with a view to expanding out to put pressure on my Ax and his
mounted faced mine in a similar formation although I had the advantage of more
numerous Cav but he had 2 QK elements in his Kn's. Both CinC's were saely in the
rear ranks.

My first move was a general advance straight forward which left my cav short of
the crest of the hill. Dave's eyes widened in glee as he thought I had bungled
placing the terrain so he surged forward to contact only to realise that the up
hill advantage only counted if his elements rear edge was ovet the crest line
which is was not(Oh how the king of kings snickered into his silk sleeves). It
was at this piont that my secret statagem came into play. My youngest daughter
arrived in the games shed and asked to join in by throwing the dice with
devestating effect, holes were ripped in the Byzantine line in short order due
to kills and recoils. In the Sassanid bound this was componded and the
Byzantines had soon lost 7ME out of a total of 23ME. My daughter was throwing
4's, 5's and 6's with frightening regularity and got very upset when she rolled
a couple of 1's resulting in the deaths of 2 Asvaran. However the writting was
on the wall and after a couple of pairs of bound following the initial contact
Belisarius was dead the Bge half destroyed and only 7/8ME of the Byzantine host
remaining a 10-0 victory to the King of Kings.

End results :

Sassanids 16
Byzantines 10
Lombards    4

A very interesting evening. Gradings will take a bit of getting used to
especially the interaction between foot and mounted - still not sure if we have
not gone to far in favour of the foot and tipped the scale in the opposite
direction , still it is early days yet.

 It hepled that the games were pretty much head to head if the Byzanines had
managed to exploit their movement advantage I doubt I would have had such a big
win as the game would have been very different, this would have made no
difference for the Byzantine against the Lombards as things went. The three
games would have been very different with 400AP armies and I think the advantage
would clearly have been with the regular army.