11th November, Tarrington

The Society of Ancients UK DBA League 2018 Round 1: the Tarrington Scramble

 

Back at Tarrington after missing a year ... for the start of the new DBA League season.

Tarrington is a scramble and I took Mongol Conquest.

The reasoning behind that decision - and everyone's - is to be the subject of a forthcoming article for Slingshot ... but generally, here's how it works: 

... the army you take will be put into the scramble.  You will play against in the first round and with it in the last.  Otherwise it will be randomly allocated to other players and you will have something else from the mix.

So taking an army that you know well but which doesn't give your opponent too much of an advantage would be good.   Many players look at it as an opportunity to take something interesting but normally uncompetitive.  Some see it as an opportunity to set the others a challenge ... or two ..

So in addition to my Mongols, I got to play with ...

Pictish (Barbarian Conspiracy) ... Carolingian Frankish ... Skythian ... South Welsh ... Alexandrian Imperial ... 

That's a great mix for one day's wargaming I think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was nice to finish with the Mongols - who had done rather well during the day - up against the Macedonians, whom I had already surrounded and beaten with Skythians.   We had worked out a plan by now.

The Macedonians are, you would have thought, quite a good army ... but came bottom in this particular test.  My fault, to some extent ... they played 6 games and I lost with them and beat them twice.  It is the luck of the draw sometimes.

A great day was had by all.  Mark won, the Mongols came runner up in the army stats and I finished about half way (played 6: won 3; lost 3) - a universal thumbs up to the Scramble format.

29th October, Portsmouth

The English DBA Open hosted by PAWS  

There's almost no gap these days, and in a couple of weeks we'll be off to Tarrington for the start of a new UK DBA League season ... but here we were down in Portsmouth for the English Open ..

 

Take any army you like and play 5 games in a period defined group (where the cut offs depend on what armies people take) ... after which the top 4 go through to a semi and a final to make a champion.  The rest will play a plate competition if desired.

The final rounds are from a theme with armies supplied by PAWS ...

I'm working on my African armies so took Blemmye ... much like Nobades but with Auxiliaries as the combat infantry.

 

Grasping at a sense of place, I took the Cecil B Demille camp and terrain gear for these latter day Nubians.  I guess the monuments should all be half-buried in sand.

I got 5 good games on the DBA die rolling roller coaster ... and won 3 of them ... just enough to get into the top 4 on count-back (actually I won the game we had played) ...

Apologies for the missing picture ... I played Andalusians, Zanj, Lithuanians, French and a Scandanavian with German ally (so Art + 2 WWg!) ...

 

 

Here are the options for the finals ... we picked secretly our order of preference in seed order ... I got my top choice (Thebans with an 8Sp Gen!) and this served me well in the first game. 

 

I think Colin was using his extra cavalry to negate my infantry sledgehammer whilst enveloping my flanks.  Anyway it looked like it might take a few moves to achieve it so I bundled in as quickly as I could.  The Thessalians barely got better than 2 pips so my plan worked.

 

I was less fortunate in the final ... Martin's echelon attack looking vulnerable but caught me out at the vital stage ... also an attack on the camp bounced off with no effect (so was a waste of pips when the pips and the element would have made a key contribution elsewhere*) - so in this game my plan did not work.

 

Martin, the outgoing League champion is therefore the new English Open champion.  Well done and fully deserved.  Thanks indeed to all concerned.

 

Not everybody was there but we were able to present Mark with the League winner's shield and Tamara received the Junior version a couple of days later.  Again, congratulations to our worthy winners.

 

That was 2016 -17 ... Wow!  it flew by.  Thanks to Bill at PAWS for all the admin.

Thanks to PAWS for hosting the Open and to the Society of Ancients and Magister Militum for sponsorship.  Click the links in appreciation.

The final scoreboard will appear here when updated from the weekend.

*why are psiloi no good at ravaging camps?  Don't ask me - it seems a bit unbalanced perhaps...