Burton has always had good memories for John (Hickman) and I.  Before the demise of DBM, we had been to 4 or 5 years of doubles there, and other than one year where we managed to make a sow's ear out of the silk purse that can be Carolingian Frank, we have outperformed our usual selves.  :o)  Never to the extent of getting into the prizes however.  :o(  So, when we heard that they were hoping to run a DBMM event this year, we were both "well up for it".

I was keen to play with John's toys, and he had been giving the Condottieri some practice while Dave Mather was painting his Florentines, so they were the obvious choice.  John put together an excellent list, to which my only contribution was to debate the precise balance of Sh vs Bw.  The list was Venetians in Italy, based on a battle in 1509, in which the army got beaten up thanks to an impetuous performance by the general in charge of the Kn wing (in other words, he died in the battle so wasn't there to defend himself when the blame was being dished later).  Thanks to Reg Bge, Pk and massed cheap LH(I) and LH(O), the army was enormous and capable of sustaining a tremendous battering without running away.  The list was:-

CinC (Niccolo di Pitigliano, Governatore Generale delle Milizie Veneziane)
1 Reg Kn(S) CinC
12 Pk(O)
4 Pk(I)
2 Bd(O)
2 Bd(I)
2 Sh(I)
4 Bw(O)
1 Ps(O)
3 Irr Hd(O)
(2 Army Reg Bge(I)
36 ME

Sub (Bartolomeo d'Alviano)
1 Reg Kn(S) Sub
7 Reg Kn(O)
8 Reg LH(I(
(2 Army Reg Bge(I))
30 ME

Sub (Andrea Gritti)
1 Reg Kn(S) Sub
3 Reg Kn(O)
1 Art (O)
1 Art (I)
3 Bw(X/O)
10 Ps(O)
(2 Army Reg Bge(I))
24 ME

Sub (Merkourios Bouas)
1 Irr LH(O) Stradiot sub
10 Irr LH(O)
(2 Army Reg Bge(I))
18 ME

Baggage
8 Army Reg Bge(I)
16 ME

Total army ME: 124

No stratagems - the stunt with this army is the pounding that it can take.  :o)

Round 1 saw us matched up against Gordon Harrow and Stuart Whigham, using Turgesh CATs.  The most Serene Republic was up against the cool CATs.  We defended, and placed a BUA on our mid left and a pair of vineyards on the mid right.  There was a H(S) on the far right.  We deployed first with the Ps in the BUA on the left, then the guns and Bw(X), then the infantry, then the Kn in between the two vineyards, and finally the stradiots out wide.  Gordon and Stuart deployed their entire army in the 2 feet of table on our right, and proceeded to charge, in 4-5+ ranks deep of LH(S), ignoring the fact that they were coming through the vineyards etc.  LH(S) used Wb-style.  My intention had been to dismount some the LH(I) as Bw(I) (crossbow-armed LH(I)) and Ps(S) (handgunner Ps(S)) once the enemy entered the vineyards, but PIPs deserted us at the crucial moments.  We ended up with logts of fights with both sides fighting with LH with overlaps in DGO (the Vs and the H(S)) - basic starting factors of -1 both sides!  Carnage ensued of course. We lost both the Kn and stradiot commands (my part of the table) but broke one of the CAT commands in the process.

The two infantry commands (John's part) were undamaged, and with the army baggage we were still in a relatively healthy state.  We were in the process of forming a new line with the condottieri and shooters and the back ranks of Pk to face off the damaged-but-victorious LH(S) coming around our rear when time was called.  Losses were high 30s% from us and mid-30s% from Gordon and Stuart, so VPs were equal, and as attackers they scored as 13-12 draw.

The afternoon game was against Phil and Sue's Mercians, who had drawn 10-15 in the morning.  We defended again.  They placed a large Wd on their left (as we looked) flank - a really nice piece of terrain modelled so that the trees fit over the top of the troops within.  Fantastically effective.  We put various bits of terrain down, the important piece being a vineyard halfway across their remaining deployment area, forcing them to pick one side or the other to put down their huddled masses.

We deployed with Stradiots and shooters on the left, opposite the Wd, and on the right we had the LH(I)/Kn command to the fore and the infantry to the aft.  Sue deployed a massive command of Welsh Wb and Cv in the Wd.  Phil deployed a massive command of the Mercian Sp(I), roughly 8 deep, 16 Wb(S) plus brilliant Penda himself, and 3 Cv(O) on the far right of the Vineyard.  The centre was invitingly empty - but only 2 commands were apparently on-table. Penda's command was half the army and therefore the target.  John's job, therefore, was to keep Sue occupied with the stradiots and shooters, while I commanded the Pk, LH and Kn and tried to take out Phil's massive Mercian command.

John sent some Stradiots on a raid into the rear of the Welsh command (assisted by Sue getting a series of low PIPs) only to fail miserably once he got there, succeeding only in turning Sue's Cv around and then getting his raiding party annihilated.  Luckily, he had foreseen that that was a possibility and only sent a few brave souls to their doom!

The LH(I) advanced against the wall of Sp(I) as a screen, while the Kn went wide and the Pk came up behind the light horse.  Phil responded by bringing his Wb(S) out from behind the Sp(I) in a column, but was hampered by the vineyard and again low PIPs.  By the time the column was getting into action, they were being hit front and flank by Ps and LH and Sh and it all got quite messy.  The flank march turned out to be a delayed arrival of a Wb(S) sub (Penda's "idiot son"  :o)  ) leading 4 Sp(I) and some Hd(O), and they arrived just in time to prevent the Condottiere Kn positioning for a charge into the rear of the Sp(I).  Nonetheless, fairly swiftly the Wb(S) fell, and when Penda and a few Sp(I) went too (Penda ending up fighting surrounded, giving me an image of him standing on a pile of dead, Conan-style), it was game over.  We had taken a few losses, but not many compared to our vast total ME.  I think we had suffered 10-12 ME lost, so less than 10% for a 25-0 victory.

End of day 1, we were in second position on 37VP, some considerable way behind John Fletcher and his Navarrese who had amassed 47 in the process of crushing the Teutonics and (rather surprisingly) the Siamese.

The teams gathered again on Sunday morning, and John and I found ourselves in the unaccustomed position of top table.  John Fletcher was joined by John Saunders for Sunday, so there were 3 Johns around the table, and I was designated an honorary John for the occasion!

John and John were very keen to deploy second, so of course the dice were having none of that and they had to go down first. The terrain had fallen such that they had a pair of RHs on the left (as we looked at it) and mid left of their table, and we had a GH on our right.  Foregoing the opportunity to wedge themselves into the hilly corner, they anchored their left flank (looking from our side) on the middle hill, occupying it with Ax(S), then extended a vast line of Bd(S) dismounted Kn backed up by Irr Sp(O) and Ps, behind which was a command of Irr Kn(S) and (O), and out on the right was an English Free Company of 10 Bw(S) and a couple of Bd(S).

They were clearly planning on making a game of it, so we obliged, placing the Pk in position to charge the Bd(S), supported on the left by the artillery and on the right by the Condottieri, while the far right was the Stradiots, lurking behind the hill.  The plan was to redeploy the Bw(X) and their Kn(O) over to take on the English, and hope that the Pk and Kn(O)/Bd(S) could do the job against the Bd(S).

Things started well, with the English unreliable.  We steamed forward, careful not to get too close to the English.  That's when it all started to unravel.  I have never seen elements die quite so effectively.  John Saunders' dice were consistently just what was required to kill our elements.  In 4 years of playing DBMM I have never seen an unreliable ally activated by the enemy losing 4 more elements than its own side.  I have now - on first impact (by the Navarrese), they lost all the easy fights but suddenly swung it around and kill 4 elements of Pk with overlapped (or double-overlapped) Bd. We suffered 4 losses to nothing on the opposition side, and the English were in the game.

Meanwhile, the Navarrese Kn had massed on the right wing and were coming full steam ahead.  The English general surged out in front of his Bw and cut through an element of Bw(X).  The Stradiots charged down the hill and pushed back the Kn, but nothing more.  The Kn charged back, and we started to bleed.  We counter-charged and took a couple of Kn down.  A dismounted condottiere 6-1ed the English general, and he was dead - a chink of light as by now the infantry centre was disheartened, and almost immediately broke.

By this stage we had lost our largest command. The Stradiots were in trouble.  The Condottieri and LH were trying to regroup and the Bw(X) weren't quite sure what they were doing.  The loss of the infantry had more or less cut us into two sections, and the Navarrese were barely scratched.  We were scrapping for the odd VP, and it was regarded as a major moral victory that we had 10% of their army and therefore 2 VP in the bag.

I pulled back the Stradiots with 6 PIPs.  John chased them down, marching into contact with his Kn(S).  We fell back again, but were running out of flee/repulse room.  However, John had over-extended himself, and despite being disheartened, high PIPs enabled some of the scattered stradiots to get into the rear of the enemy Kn, by now charging downhill.  2 more Kn went down, and the enemy general also found himself surrounded by Bw(X) and dismounted Condottieri. We broke back, with both the Navarrese Kn and the English going down.

Things were desperate now.  Both sides had generals in fights, both sides were 1 or so ME off breaking their armies.  There were at least four seperate fights in the last pair of bounds which could have broken one or both armies, and then finally John's army broke.

We had taken one hell of a pounding, but then that was what we knew that this army could do.  We had been on a true DBMM rollercoaster, in one of the most exciting games I can remember.  Looking across the table, we seemed to have a lot more element stacked in the dead pile than left on the table ... 40%+ casualties, 2 out of 3 surviving commands disheartened, but the enemy broken - 15-10 to us.

Because of John and John's lead from day 1, the positions remained unaltered, and they carried a 5 point lead (57VP) over us (52VP) into the fourth round.  They played Jim and Mike's Ottomans (3rd with 44VP), while we took on Andy Parkin and Tim Kohler's 5th place Sung Chinese (38VP).  (We had already fought Gordon and Stuart's CATs, who were lying 4th on 40VP.)

A quick shufty through the Sung list showed masses of Irr Bw(X/O), some Bd, some WWg and some Ax(S), with a chunk of Reg Cv(I).  Right, dismount all the Kn as Bd(S) thought we - nothing to fear there.  There was a large chunk of terrain midway across the right table edge, and not much else to speak of.  The plan was to refuse that with the LH(I) and stradiots and attack everywhere else with infantry.

The Sung deployed as a massive line of Bw(X), with a centre of very attractive WWg(O) and Bd(I), Ax(S) in reserve and ready to swing through the terrain on the right.  All as expected (albeit only 2 large combat commands, so very durable).  The surprise came, however, when they deployed their reserve of massed Reg Cv(S) and a couple of firelance Reg Kn(F).  Whoops! Perhaps the LH(I/O) and Bd(S) aren't quite as secure as we had hoped...

Nevertheless, a plan is a plan is a plan, so we thought we'd get on with it and see.  The Bd(S) advanced through the shooting of the Bw(X) and WWg, and eventually made it into contact.  Only to bounce, and bounce, and bounce.  John's Bd(S), who had intended to support the flank of the Bw(X) and Pk, were delayed as he remounted them due to the threat of the enemy Kn(F).  John's Pk pushed hard and also eventually got into the Bw(X) on his side of the table (taking a lot of casulaties in the process), and bounced.  On the far left, an artillery duel was taking place - our Art(O) and (I) vs Andy's 2 Art(O), and at various moments both sides had their artillery suppressed and taking shooting at 4:2, only to outdice the opposition and the brave gunners get their weapons loaded and ready to go again.  Eventually we lost both our pieces, but the action kept us all amused.

On the right, I had completely misjudged the length of my Bd(S) line, made worse by losing the end element of Bd(S) on a 6-1 shot (shot at by two elements of Bw(X) - the only way I could actually suffer casualties).  I suffered a similar loss from a WWg ((S) doesn't count to shooting by train).  Being overlapped, I was struggling to get many elements in and was basically restricted to fighting the enemy WWg and Bd(I) rather than the line of Bw(X) I had hoped to chop up.  I killed a couple of Bd(I) and a WWg, and near the end a Bw(X), but things weren't going to plan.  The one shot at glory, when I could have really opened up the enemy line after the first breach, bounced out again and then Tim filled the hole with his Cv general.

On the left, a breach suddenly appeared and John's Pk began to ruthlessly expand the gap in the enemy line.  However, at only 1 ME per DBE, it takes a lot of casualties to break a line of Bw(X) and we ran out of time over on that side.  By the end, the Cv(S) were breaking out into my stradiots, having initially been penned in jammed up against their own infantry.  There was a crisis moment when my stradiot general was in combat against a Cv(S), both sides overlapped - 2(O) to 2(S).  The dice-gods smiled and he survived (and ran like the blazes next bound!).  Time was called with us ahead on points - 14-11.  I suspect that another bound or three would have seen John break Andy on his wing which might have won the game for us (I had finally disheartened the infantry on my side), but things could also have fallen apart on my wing and (as always in DBMM) catastrophe was not entirely out of the picture!

We had had two wins (a big one and the tightest of squeeks), a draw-draw and a winning-draw, so given the positions going into round 4 I was hoping we might have managed 3rd.  That's when Jim bounced up to me and announced that he and Mike had defeated John and John's Navarrese heavily and, working out the scores, it looked as if Jim and Mike and John and I were tied for first.  Since they'd had the big win in round 4, they'd got the tie-breaker of more ME caused in the final round.  And then Jim and Mike realised that they'd had another command disheartened, and they were a point below us - sportingly accepting the late change with very good grace, leaving John and I in the somewhat unexpected position of winning our first full weekend-long competition!

Everyone I spoke to had thoroughly enjoyed themselves.  The weekend was a great advert for the Burton event, for doubles and for DBMM itself.  Roll on next year, albeit that the prospects of a successful defence of the title are likely to be dim.  ;o)