BW Designs

Here's a write up that I found I had done for a competition in July this year. It was a DBMM (15mm ancients, 400 point games), in canberra ACT oz.

The weekend was good fun, even though my match practice was shown to be sadly lacking.

As a rough guide if your not familiar with DBMM terms this list below explains things when reading the following terms are the key

Kn =knights

Cv = Cavalry non knight or Light horse mounted

Lh = Light horse (cloud of dispersed cavalry)

sp = spear armed heavy foot

Ps = Psiloi (cloud of dispersed light infantry)

Bd = Blade (heavy infantry with er blade)

Ax = Auxillia medium infantry ( loose formation infantry)

Bw = Bow armed infantry in closer formation than Ps shooters

Bg =baggage (important for army morale)

reg = regular trained troops (do what they are told quicker you hope)

Irreg = irregular untrained or poorly trained troops

S/O/I/F being grades superior, ordinary, inferior and fast.

For wintercon I decided to run Lusignan Cypriots, a long time favoriteof mine, for no other reason than I'm the only person I have ever seen that uses them.

command a

reg kn s sub gen

6 irreg bw o

8 irreg sp i

4 reg bd o

4 reg bw o

8 irreg ps o

command b

reg kn s sub gen

8 irreg lh s

6 irreg ax s

4 irreg bw o

command c

irreg cinc kn o

7 irreg kn o

5 irreg lh o

6 hd 0

command d

6 baggage

stratagies

scout

feigned flight.

as I live in the middle of nowhere I don't get to play much maybe 3-4 games in

the last 5 months or so, so an untested list.

Over the weekend the list played ok but due to the cinc having too much to do,

it was handicapped a little when I had to redeploy.

game 1 Lucy attacking siamese my commands deploying b a c

terrain woods, hills and scrub scattered around the edges.

the siamese deploying in a large steam roller in the centre.

against pauls siamese, paul explained that this was his second game ever of mm

so it was a relaxed game while we went through the rules. The game ending up

with the lh s lined up to charge the mass in the rear of the blob, the ax s

killing off the left flank, the knights and lh o killing off the ax and blade on

the right . In the centre the bow had killed off a few ps, enough to give me a

14-11 by the end of the round.

game 2 Lucy attacking pre feudal spanish. my commands deploying c a b

terrain woods, hills and scrub scattered around the edges and a hill on my side

near the centre.

Gerry's spanish deployed in four commands knight command,foot command with blade

bow, A grenadine? ally and a cav lh command.

I started by messing up my setup, and spending the rest of the game trying to

get out of the hole I had dug for myself with the knights.

The game finishing up with the knights killing off the opposing knight command

the foot command not doing much just covering the flank of the knights with a

few of the ps and coming of the hill to pressure the infantry. The lh command

took on two commands and made a few kills on both the ally and the opposing lh

command. When the opposing knight command broke I think it killed off the ally

and the cav commands who where by this time disheartened.

game 3 Lucy defending against caroling franks. my commands deploying a c b

terrain a sea down my left flank, a wood near the center line on the left flank

, a scrubby hill pointing towards me in the centre (both on the franks side) and

a scrubby hill on my centre right flank.

The winter attack by the franks was delayed by two seasons until summer, then

the time of the attack was delayed until 8pm at night. We gfought in daylight the next day.

The franks set up with a knight command behind the wood, the allies warband on

the projecting hill then the other knight command and the ally light horse

command on the right flank.

My first pip dice were 1,1 and 2 for the first couple of turns.

On the other side the FLDT (Frankish Line Dancing Team) went into action with

columns shooting of into different directions to load up against my right flank.

My knight command desperately trying to deploy to my right but in the end

getting caught with most of the knights to the right of the the hill but some

pinned by the hill and the slowly advancing warbandmoving along the ridge. The

lh from my knight command had by this time managed to pin the end of the enemy

knights behind the wood to stop them redeploying on the other side of the hill.

My foot command sneaking some ps almost to the other side of the table to help

my LH against the enemy knights. On my right the Lh s launched a charge on the

opposing LH and lost most of the fights but one. This was enough to use my Fiend

Flight and slow the enemy down for a turn or two. There was then a huge scrum

for a few turns me piling on the pressure but slowly loosing to the superior

numbers and unable to feed anymore elements to the right side of the table.

Time called with my knight and lh commands looking pretty sad, but hanging on

Just.

poor setup, poor terrain selection and good play by aron. Aron manoeuvring his

knights very well. 11-14 to Aron.

game 4 Lucy defending against Gregs early crusaders. my commands deploying b a c

terrain a sea down my left flank, a wood near the centre line on the left

flank,nothing else really playing a part in the battle.

Greg rolled for his delayed command (which came on, on the third or fourth

bound)

After I had set up, Greg deployed in the far right corner from the sea. angling

his spear backed up by ps, then bow between the knight column and the spear.

Then an allied knight command in colum and his byzantine light horse ally on the

flank.

My first turn I spent much like the rest, redeploying to meet the flank march of

the fourth command (knights bow spear) and putting pressure onto the on table

spear knight command without activating the unreliable knight command.

I lost a few knights to the flank march but my overlapped rear ended cinc was

able to throw off his attackers and then kill his opponent before his command

broke to the attentions of the byzantine and crusader knights.

The light horse command marching across the field to take out all the enemy bow

on the flank of the enemy knights and to kill a few knights. The commander of

the infantry command marched up with his regular infantry in support of the LH

command and the flank of the knights. My infantry commander on the last turn

killing a knight to brake the enemy cinc's command on the last turn and last

dice roll to end up on 6 points each with a 13 /12 to Greg.

Greg had a plan that worked well, and I tried to box him up in his corner.

I'm not sure how things would have gone if the game had gone on further, Greg

wasn't far from my baggage but my infantry and lh were in good positions.

Interesting weekend, a 2400km drive and yet another night attack (I am oh so

over them) and a list that wasn't the best.

Thanks to all my opponents and congratulations to Aron for a well deserved win.

If anyone has an idea on how to make the list better inspite of my leadership, I

would love to hear it.

Cheers

Chris.