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Later Visigothic vs Sub Roman Army(Riothamus) - My First DBMM Battle

Page history last edited by Jonathan Smith 13 years, 4 months ago

This being my first battle against the excellent and generous Tim Child(all figures were provided by Tim), I had hoped that I wouldn't disgrace myself entirely.

 

Alas, it was not to be....

 

In addition to 3 similar commands of mixed mounted Blade and Irr Sp(I), Tim's Sub Humans also contained an Alan command and I was very concerned(overly as it turned out) about his LH(S) flank-marching me. I had a CinC's command with 5 Kn(F) and assorted Ax & Ps, another very large command of Visigoth Warband and a third command of 12 Irr Cv(O) & 12 Irr Bw(I).

 

So. I drew Defender and immediately threw down large amounts of Woods and Difficult Hills on my left to a least block one flank. Tim, seeing this as great fun, decided that he too would throw down a large hill, this time a Gentle one on the right.. I expected he would deploy Spear, with Blade in reserve, in the middle with Alans flank-marching. I was, of course, completely wrong. I had deployed with the CinC and his Ax & Ps on the left with the 5 Kn in reserve, the warband in the middle and my Cv/Bw command on the right with the Cav behind the Bow in case of the flank-march. Due to the large amount of terrain on the left, my army was scrunched up all the way to the right table edge - something which gave me no room to outflank later. When I had finished, Tim had not in fact flank-marched his Alans but had instead placed his knights where they would wreak havoc opposite my warband. He had two mixed spear/blade commands to the left of the Alans and one to the right.....

 

Immediately, I knew that there was little I could do to save the warband once they met the knights, so I pressed my Cv forward on the right-wing hoping they would do some damage, whilst hoping I would have enough PiPs to hold back the warband in the centre... This worked really well and 12 elements did indeed race across the battlefield on the right followed by their less-enthusiastic bowmen comrades and even gained the gentle hill that Tim had rather generously placed there...however my opponent is no fool and always likes to have a reserve - in this case of mounted blades - which hurriedly moved out to the right to plug the gap. And that was that on the right as my cav really didn't do very much against the blade just se-sawed back and forth....

 

In the centre however, things were hotting up as the Sub-Roman line came inexorably forward. At last I released my warband and as they moved forward, a small gap opened in the centre-left of my line.....My knights needed no further encouragement at the prospect of riding down the Irr Sp(I) & Bd(O) in front of them and raced threw this gap, only 2 elements wide. They then decided that they would do a great deal better if they extended their column to its full five knights....a grave error on their part as Tim threw his spear against my parade-ground moving knights. What happened next can only be described as gob-smacking as three of the knights' diced the dreaded 1 and their opponents diced high and that, as they say, was that. Three out of five knights dead, 6ME to the worse and only 0.5 more needed to dishearten them....which happened in due course.

 

At pretty much the same time, Tim's Alans arrived and their ensued a fearful slaughter of warband in the centre until that too was disheartened.

 

The right of the warband did do some damage to Tim's Irr Sp(I) and on my right my Kn(F) Sub-Gen did kill his mounted blade Sub-Gen oppo but by then it was all over and the Visigoth Commander conceded.

 

A couple of things occurred to me afterwards – most especially the importance of terrain setup when you’re defending to mitigate against the powerful advantage of deploying second and getting the matchups that the Invader wants. Had I deployed some rough terrain in front of my warband, it would have been much harder for the Alans to deal out the punishment that they did. Also, Cv(O) don’t do much in frontal combat with heavy infantry – even with one-rank thin blades. But Cv have great manoeuvrability and this is how they should be used. Finally, don’t allow your Kn to be charged at a standstill.

 

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