DBMM Forum
General Category => Battle Reports => Topic started by: Barritus on December 03, 2010, 12:24:36 PM
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Well, last night Karl and I had an entertaining and interesting game. I fielded Late Imperial Romans while Karl had his trusty French Ordonnance, at 375 points.
I opted to invade in summer, and won a tied aggressor dice roll, meaning I now invaded in autumn. The only terrain pieces to go down were four gentle hills (two in Karl's deployment area, and two others of no note) and a wood on the right of Karl's deployment area.
Karl deployed first, with Swiss allies on his right, a command of Bd and Bw on a hill with some Ps and Cv in the centre, and a command of Kn (S) with Bw (I) and more Cv on his left. A very compact force.
I fielded a western LIR army from Africa, led by the Inert Barbatio, and including Moorish allies (using the Numidian list, as specified by the list book). I deployed the C-in-C on the left with a command of supported Auxilia, Cv and LH (O), for a total of 24 ME. On the right, facing the French knights, was a sub-general with supported Legionarii, artillery carts, LH (F) and Kn (X), for a total of 30 ME. I also took fortified baggage. Flank marching on the left were the Moorish allies - LH and Ps (11 ME) and on the right the second sub-general with another command of supported Ax, Cv and LH (18 ME).
The weather result was mist. But thanks to a tied deployment dice roll, the battle started at 1pm, meaning the mist had cleared. However, to help my flank marches arrive, I used the Delay Battle stratagem, meaning the battle didn't start until 4pm. Sunset was at 6pm.
Moving first, Karl exploited high PIPs on the first bound to essentially swap the Swiss and Kn. The Bd/Bw line simply sat on the hill and waited, and the Ps headed for the wood. On my left, I moved the Ax towards the wood as well, followed by the Cv. On my right, I slowly advanced the legionaries and their embedded artillery.
Karl advanced his Kn towards my Cv and C-in-C, and managed to destroy my C-in-C just as the Moorish allies arrived (5th bound), and in the subsequent combats I lost a few more Cv, to a Kn and Cv on Karl's part. Meanwhile, on my right, the artillery knocked over a Bd and a Bw, but could only push the Swiss back a couple of times.
Finally, after 6 pairs of bounds, the sun set and we had an hour of dusk. The fighting soon diminished, although the Swiss took advantage of my advance to overrun an artillery cart. I was able to knock over a couple of Cv trying to threaten the flank of my legionary line, and also sent a couple of legionaries into the flank of Karl's Bd/Bw line to no great effect. Finally, Karl was able to destroy a LH element in the C-in-C's command, breaking that command. After playing a pair of bounds in complete night, we decided to end the game, as it was getting late in the Real World.
In case you were wondering, the second sub-general's flank march never arrived. Despite four bounds with a chance of arriving on a 5 or 6, and two bounds with a chance of arriving on a 4, 5 or 6, he failed to make it before sunset.
Thanks to Karl for a good game which introduced me to a few rules I hadn't run into before. I don't know what the score was, but Karl was definitely ahead on points.
Two questions arose in play.
Firstly, Karl had a column of Pk pursue after combat. The front corner of the Pk column hit the flank of a Cv element of mine which was part of a group. On reading the Pursuit and EMTLU rules, we assumed the column pivoted around so that their front edge hit the Cv's flank. Was this correct?
Secondly, I hit the flank of Karl's Bd/Bw group (two ranks) with a Bd, turning the end two elements. The following bound, I hit the flank of this pair of elements with another Bd element. The combat was a draw. In his next bound, Karl wanted to hit the flank of my flanking Bd with a Bd element of his own. He didn't have the PIPs to move the Bd element, so couldn't make the move (out of sight of general). At the other end of the group was Karl's C-in-C (it was night). So what Karl did was a group move, turning the line 90 degrees into column, using the C-in-C's extra PIP to pay for the move. This allowed the lead Bd element to contact my Bd, forcing it to turn to face. We couldn't find anything in the rules preventing a line-to-column turn from ending in close combat, although I'm fairly sure it wasn't allowed in DBM. Is such a move legal?
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Pursuit into contact would normally trigger an EMTLU, correct.
Turning line into column and ending in contact appears to be legal.
It was not legal in DBMM 1.0, but the relevant part of the wording was dropped.