DBMM Forum
General Category => Battle Reports => Topic started by: Barritus on December 20, 2010, 01:47:18 PM
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Well, a couple of nights ago I took on Jon W's New Kingdom Egyptians with my Eastern Late Imperial Romans. I'd slightly altered the list from the two previous games, changing the army to drop the ally command and some Cv, and adding some more Kn (X) and Gothic Wb in their place. As a result, although the army was still led by an inert C-in-C, now it was the Eastern Emperor Constantius II rather than some bureaucratic flunky.
Jon was the invader (with a two season delay), attacking the empire in autumn. Weather and time of day played no part in the game. Jon's selected terrain was a river which didn't get placed. I selected a couple of gentle hills, a wood and an area of scrubby flat. The wood was on my left flank, at the front of my deployment zone. The scrubby flat covered my right flank, while the two hills were on my left, neither playing any role in the game.
I deployed first. The C-in-C deployed on the right, with Kn (X), LH (O) and supported Ax (S) (27 ME). In the centre was the first sub-general with Wb flanked either side by supported Bd and the whole lot backed by Art (F) (29 ME). On the left flank was the second sub-general, with supported Ax (S) and Cv (O) between the centre and the wood and two Ps (S) in the wood (21 ME).
On his left and right flanks Jon placed commands of chariots, Bw (O) and Ps. The command on his right also had some Ax, while the command on his left had some Reg Bd (F) (each 24 ME I think). The centre command contained Wb (F) flanked by Irr Bd (F), and with a supporting line of Reg Bd (F) (22 ME).
The battle turned out to be a fairly straightforward advance to fight. We each gave our highest PIP dice to our right wing commands. I averaged the other two PIPs, while Jon gave his lowest to the centre. My artillery knocked over one element of Wb, but the recoils they otherwise achieved had little effect, and Jon's centre contacted mine in a single mob. His Wb destroyed a few Bd at first contact, putting me on the back foot.
On my right, the cataphracts survived some archery to contact the Bw and grind them down, while the LH faced off a couple of chariots. On my left, my Ax generally held against Jon's chariots, allowing my Cv to charge Jon's Bw. The Cv were also eventually successful in destroying the Bw. Meanwhile, Jon's Ps and Ax overran the wood, destroying my Ps (S).
In the centre, however, things got hairy fast. Within a couple of bounds Wb on both sides were attacking double-overlapped columns, and the casualties mounted. Jon's Wb broke through completely at the right hand end of my centre, but he lacked the PIPs to control them, meaning they started making their way for my baggage. One startling result was an Art element destroying the Wb which contacted it, thanks to the proverbial 6-1. Eventually, Jon was able to dishearten my centre command, while his own losses were such that he was having to fill gaps with the Bd (F) reserve.
On my right, after the loss of his Bw, Jon took a chance with some of his chariots, charging them into LH. But he lost a chariot in the process, leaving the command disheartened and nearly broken. I surrounded the remaining chariot, and charged a cataphract into the flank of his general. Both survived for a bound, during which both our centre commands took further losses.
Then finally Jon's left wing collapsed, and the ME penalty was enough to break the centre command and the army. My centre was 0.5 ME from breaking, although both wings had taken relatively light casualties. We didn't calculate the score, but it probably would have been 22-3 or 20-5.
Thanks to Jon for an entertaining game which was full of action. The game also played fairly quickly - we started after the other two DBMM games at the club, but finished before both of them.
This time the dice served me far better than in previous games. I usually got reasonable PIPs, though the centre and left rarely got enough for what I wanted to do. I was also fortunate to get a series of helpful match-ups despite deploying first. That, plus reasonable combat dice, helped me win enough combats to keep the pressure on the Egyptians. I still made some deployment and tactical mistakes. I probably didn't need to attack as aggressively as I did; I could have sat back and inflicted more pain with the artillery before Jon's Wb contacted me, and I could have arranged it so that I made the first contact in the centre. Even so, this is a fun army to use, and one that even looks pretty good too (all the figures except the artillery carts are Chariot miniatures, and I think I gave them a reasonable paint job). I'm seriously tempted to take the army to Cancon.