last Sunday we had a 3-round, 200AP themed competition in Dublin. The theme

was "Fury of the Northmen" including Vikings, Normans and the Northern Crusades.

I took Dublin Viking Raiders, 842AD. This was my fist Ancients army,

painted up for

7th Ed so despite some more "obvious" army choices in the theme (CvS etc) I was

determined to use them. Unfortunately due to work and other commitments I didn't

get a chance to playtest the army but how hard could it be, right? :-)

My army was:

C1: 1x Irr BdF CnC, 7x I BdF, 4x I AxO, 1x I WbS, 4x I BtsS 1x I BgeF

- 18ME/5.5/6.5/9.5

C2: 1x Irr BdO SG, 10x I BdO, 2x I AxO, 1x I CvI, 1x I BgeF - 18ME/5.5/6.5/9.5

C3: 1 x I AxS Norse Irish AG, 2x I AxS, 6x I AxO, 2x I PsS, 1x I BgeF

- 12/3.5/4.5/6.5

Army 48 ME/ Break 24.5

This worked surprisingly well (in a themed event, I'd be terrified in an Open):

* The low aggression means you are more likely to get to use the

waterway/Bts.

* Only fight with the AxO/Ps in command 3

* Basically C2 holds the centre while C1 tries a short hook via a

naval landing/assault along the beech

* Deploy Sea/C1/C2/C3

* Even a couple of Ax are very useful in each HI command to give

you some elements that can flank enemy for 1 PIP when lines break etc

Game 1 vs Johan Herber (our Swedish visitor - a real Viking!) using

Norwegian Viking.

Johan had 4 commands - a Bge command, 2 commands of BdO/I and 1

entirely waterbourne command of 5 BtsS - eek, I was out-navaled!

Johan invaded.

There was a sea on my left (placed by Johan) and a large scrubby

hill/promontory then a flat gap about 10 elements wide and then

another scrubby hill.

The battle mainly consisted of me hanging back in the centre with my

single-depth BdO facing his double-depth BdO/I line while I tried to

envelop

him on both scrubby hills with AxO/BdF on the left and AxO on the

right while in turn I was enveloped by his naval command on my left. I

didn't fancy

a naval fight with lower numbers given that naval are now basically

1.5ME when you lose them so I beached my Bts but then found that

Johan's

Bts could march into their rear - oops! Luckily I had already

disembarked most of my crews. There was one amusing moment where he

vaporised

all but one of my BtsS, advanced to the beaches after combat and was

promptly assaulted by the disembarking crew of my remaining BtsS

who QK the beached Bts! On the left hill I was doing OK, on the right

his Bd were beating off my superior numbers of Ax, this is a fight

that has

changed a lot from DBM. However it did prevent him just steamrollering

me in the centre. His line actually got very broken up trying to deal

with my

envelopments so I was closing in there (plus his landing force was

closing in on my Bge). At this point it stopped - all that maneuvering

with Irr

armies was quite slow! I had lost one command, he was 0.5 ME from

losing one and we both had a few other casualties 14-11 to Johan. I

think it

is fair to say that Johan had quite a lot of good breaks surviving my

assaults and if we had even rolled some more dice I am sure I would

have

got the 0.5ME I needed but them's the breaks. A very nice game against

a very nice opponent and my most extensive use of the naval rules to

date - I learnt that Bts treat moving backwards move as in DGo!

Game 2 vs Seamus McKenna with Khazar

BAsically 2 commands of 4 CvS, 3 CvO and 1 command of LHS/CvS...

Oops, I had been ignoring these types of army in favour of the more

"typical" dark ages fare. I really didn't have any plan to deal with

this sort of

opponent but I was glad I'd minimised the BdF! I invaded and was

surprised to see that Khazar has S in its terrain list so I opted to

place my

Sea. In retrospect I would probably have be en better with a couple of

patches of DGo - Phil BTW could you please clarify in v1.1 what

happens to the

ME of naval (or other troops) who cannot deploy, are they lost, are

they still part of the command but unkillable, or ???

Anyway hmmm, CvS monster. My army was not quite wide enough to stretch

the whole board and only had very minimal reserves. The typical

thing to do would be to hole up against the Sea, turn the board using

the naval while the Cv S deploy far away from the Sea, pick their

point

of attack and rip me apart. I then had a brain-fart and decided I was

still playing DBM and would get to deploy 2nd and move 1st...so I

decided

that I'd try to stretch the board with minimal reserves and rush at

the CvS to pin them down and deny them the ability to pick their point

of

attack. Of course then Seamus moved 1st, oops! However the power of

CvS kinda went to his head and he decided to frontally charge

my Bd0 approx 8 wide of CvS. I only had 3 elements in reserve. 2 AxO

and 1 CvI. Despite this in my turn I advanced to follow through my

plan of pinning him in place. I advanced my naval/C1 beside the sea to

outflank him a bit. Then he crashed into me - I out-rolled him

consistently along the line. This continued for a couple of bounds and

my fragile reserves were enough to stem the tide. Of course

he started to lose the odd CvS to my counter-attacks and the gaps in

his line were filled my CvO. However my Irish allies were holding/

wrapping around the flank of the LHS at that end of his line. Only a

few losses required at 2ME each. Net result 25-0 to me. Certainly

lucky, he

basically only made 2 break-throughs in my BdO line and I was able to

fill them both. One more break-through and the result would have

probably been reversed.

Game 3 vs Richard Aynsley with Eastern Forest Indians

Great, a bunch of BwI. Richard's army had been optimised to take on

the more obvious choices available in the theme, unfortunately

a lot of people took HI anyway. This game had the additional insult of

starting with Dazzle in his eyes. The battle was fought between

a river and a sea with Richard filling the space with 3 ranks of BwI.

I was cautious to go in narrow to avoid being shot to bits. This

meant that I got one command but had a lot of hacking to do to get at

another command. In fact I was only one ME off breaking my

C2 by the time that the game was called so I was lucky to get a 15-10

out of it. I spent a lot of time faffing around on my right flank

with the Norse Irish that really achieved nothing except distracting

one of Richard's commands. Naval shooting can now kill (unlike in

DBM) and boy are BtsS good at chewing up BwI that can't shoot back at

them! I really like this change as naval shooting always

seemed under-powered in DBM to me. However its wierd that Ps flee from

naval shooting, unlike other elements that are killed.

Anyway a very enjoyable event, I finished 3rd for which there was no

trophy but I did get one for highest placing Northman army

so I was v happy with that - especially as I used a "dog" rather than

looking to CvS etc (I did that in the last comp and it did

me no good! )