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...