Well, yesterday I played my first game of DBMM v2, against Tim. Tim used Later Bulgars, and after some dithering I decided to go with Morean Byzantine (my version of the list was from December 2009, but I doubt the list has changed much).
Rather than the killer version of the 14th or 15th centuries with Kn and Albanian LH, I went for the army of 1262 - the initial Byzantine incursion into the Peloponnese with Turkish allies. I wanted to experiment with some rules and tactics I hadn't tried before. And anyway, if Morean Byzantine looks like an appalling competition army, the strength of DBMM is in historical match-ups, so I wasn't too worried at facing the Bulgars. After deployment I changed my mind...
Anyway, my army (375AP) was as follows:
Command 1
General
4 Reg Cv (I)
8 Reg Bw (I)
6 Irr Ax (O)
2 Irr Ps (O)
(2 Irr Bg (O))
18 ME
Command 2
Sub
3 Reg Cv (I)
15 Irr Bw (I)
3 Irr Ps (O)
(2 Irr Bg (O))
18 ME
Command 3
Sub
1 Reg Cv (I)
4 Irr Ax (O)
2 Irr Ps (O)
(2 Irr Bg (O))
10 ME
Command 4
Ally (Irr Cv (O))
2 Irr Cv (O)
6 Irr LH (S)
12 ME
Command 5
6 Irr Bg (O)
10 PFs
1 gate
1 tower
Stratagems:
Ambush
Delay battle
Betrayal
Concealed Command
Scouts
My tactics as hopeful defender were to place a fortified BUA containing the baggage on a difficult hill, and hope to get it into my deployment zone (a pretty good chance), and use that to Delay Battle, then do a double flank march with commands 3 and 4. I'd otherwise try to place as much concealing terrain in my deployment zone as possible, in the hope of Concealing the C-in-C's command, in which case I'd use command 2 as a delayed arrival. Therefore the best possible result would be not deploying any troops on the table. If that didn't work out, I was happy to place commands 1 and 2 on the table, and find a use for perhaps the Ambush stratagem.
I took five stratagems because I figured they'd be more useful than further poor quality troops. Betrayal in particular was intended to help the flank marching Ax and Ps break into fortified camps.
As it was, I was the invader, giving me automatic use of the Delay Battle stratagem, but at the cost of not being able to use the fortified BUA (only available to defenders), so my baggage had to sit in the open. I chose a scrubby hill and a marsh for my terrain, each 1 FE, and they ended up on the left and right hand sides of my deployment area, neatly covering my flanks. Tim, not surprisingly, chose two open fields, and they ended up on his base edge.
The deployment dice meant I had to deploy first, and the weather result was strong winds, blowing from over my right shoulder. The time of day was after sunrise, so I was able to activate the Delay Battle stratagem.
I deployed command 1 on the left, with the Ax on the hill, the Reg Bw in a single rank, and the Cv behind. Command 2 was on the right, with the Irr Bw in two ranks, the Ps poised to enter the marsh, and the Cv again in reserve. Command 3 was flank marching on my left, and command 4 on my right.
Tim's right wing and centre both consisted of a screen of Irr LH (S) with more LH and some Irr Kn (F) in reserve. The left wing, under the C-in-C, instead featured Reg LH (S) plus the Irr Kn (F), and added some Irr Sp (I), some Ps and a Bw. He had no baggage.
It was at this point I was glad I had to deploy first, because I feared I might have been tempted to try something silly, instead of sticking to my plan. My plan, such as it was, was to advance the two on-board commands to restrict the space available to the Bulgars, and to squeeze them with the flank marches. The Bw were intended merely to break up the Bulgar line, in the hope that lone elements would charge double overlapped onto the Bw, with the Cv available to fill gaps. At 0.5 ME each, the Bw are admirably expendable.
Well, as they say, if at first you do succeed, try not to look too surprised. Command 3 arrived in my first bound, and command 4 in the next bound (I'd used the stratagem previously with Early Crusaders, with dismal results you can read elsewhere on this forum). Tim advanced most of his troops, but detached some LH on each flank to face the new arrivals. At the same time, the shooting of the Reg Bw (I) was remarkably effective - knocking over one LH in the first bound of shooting, and another LH and a Kn in the following bound.
Tim's right wing made first contact with the Bw line, and was everywhere defeated. A couple of LH which strayed towards the Ax were also swallowed up, and the flank marching Cv destroyed another LH element. Within a couple of bounds, Tim's right wing was disheartened.
However, I'd been careless with the infantry of command 3, keeping them away from his LH, and leaving the mounted elements vulnerable. In the course of a couple of bounds, the command lost the Cv and then the general, enough to break it.
Meanwhile, on my right wing, the Turks were causing a bit of mayhem. The only (S) elements in my army got held up by a lone double-overlapped Ps, but otherwise were able to knock over a couple of LH left as speed humps. And once the stubborn Ps was destroyed, the rest of the Ps and the Bw soon followed.
In the centre, however, things got a bit ugly. Tim's centre command got LH into the Bw of both commands 1 and 2, and went straight through them, and I didn't quite have enough Cv to cover the gaps. I counter-attacked with what I had, however, and managed to cause a few casualties to the command, which turned out to be quite important.
On my left the Ax and Cv combined to knock over a couple more elements to finally break Tim's right wing, and the 2 ME penalty was just enough to dishearten the centre Bulgar command. It probably helped the sub-general of command 2 survive when struck front and flank by Bulgar LH, and certainly made it easier to knock a few more LH over and push the centre command to the edge of breaking.
Victory was within reach, but it required a risky move - committing the C-in-C to combat against a double-overlapped Kn element. Unfortunately the Kn survived to be only recoiled, and Tim had a last chance of his own. A lucky shot by one of my Bw destroyed an element of Tim's centre command, but Tim's Kn got back into combat and killed my C-in-C. This was enough to break command 1, and the 2 ME penalty was enough to break command 2, thus breaking my army. As Tim's army had also broken, the result was mutual demoralisation.
A very entertaining game for which I have to thank Tim. And probably a historical result, too - Byzantines and Bulgars destroy each other, and leave the battlefield to the Turks!
In general I found version 2 of the rules to be easier to use than version 1, with many explanations easier and more logical. Particular examples were the rules covering baggage, marching into contact, spontaneous troops and the effects of being disheartened. The cross referenced pages are a great help too. The grading factors make (S) a little more vulnerable and (I) a bit tougher - several times my Bw survived only because of changes to the grading rules - but they're still complicated and hard to remember. And it took us several minutes to find the rule which says which direction the defending army is facing.
In summary, the rules are better and the game was a lot of fun.
