The Society of Ancients UK DBA League 2018: The Midlands DBA Open
Or ... Timur and the lads go to Derbyshire ...
I was very pleased to complete the Timurids for this tournament. I have various bits of Turkish/Arab/Nomad troops loosely allocated to such a project for years - actually I think originally it was an Armati project. So a jumbled box of unpainted figures with a mental note saying 'Timurid'.
(2018 Midlands Open ... Simon and David C man the command desk)
... and they did OK so no lame jokes.
(the DBA army of Timur Lenk - or Tamburlaine as we said at school)
It's a 'medium power' army, reliant on 6 cavalry elements (5 + Gen) ... it's 'special' tweak is that it can have an elephant.
The elephant seems to die in most battles - ity's real value being that it sucks in a lot of enemy focus ... they're all bothering about the beast while your cavalry set them up and kill things.
Sometimes it works. Here are my 6 games:-
The first two games were random vs players you had not played before ... thereafter 'Swiss Chess'.
Apologies for the poor picture of the Rajputs game. Not sure what happened there (but I included the photo for completeness. Paul M's Hindu Rajputs are a splendid army and doubtless will feature on the DBA Yahoo site so give them a visit.
I did just a bit better than average. I won things like this:-
(do or die vs Patrick's Lydians)
So the Lydian Kn Gen is overlapped and reared ... my Cv Gen is not overlapped but has an enemy in edge contact (4 v 3 to me but neither of us can recoil)
We both did our best ... 6 plays 6! So the Lydian Gen goes down and the Timurids take the game. Well, as an idea, it worked ...
Here's some scores ...
1 Arnaud Marmier (Tamil), 2 Martin Smiith (Tamil), 3 Tony Green (Lydian), 3 Martin Myers (New Kingdom Egyptian), 5 Scott Russell (Late Tang), 6= Craig Allen (Ariarathid Kappadokian) and Phil Johnson (Palmyran), 8 Colin O'Shea (Zanj Revolt), 9= Paul Murgatroyd (Hindu Indian) and Tamara Fordham (Italian Condotta) ... that's the top of the table (well done Tamara, on breaking into the top ten!)
The rest of us followed ... Phil Steele (Timurid), Richard Pulley (Palmyran), Patrick Myers (Lydian), Graham Fordham (Early Achaemenid Persian), Mark Skelton (Wu), Keith Murphy (Italiot), Tim Kohler (Late Achaemenid Persian), Philip Donald (Late Roman) Keith Brown (Mongol Conquest), Simon Wilson (Early Polish), Reese Bettison (Later Carthaginian), Baldie Storey (Ancient British), Dale Needham (Norman), Tim Rogers (Alexandrian Macedonian), Rob Rush (Hatra), Nick Wright-Carter (Post-Monol Samurai), Tris Gale (Marian Roman) and Andy Wheeldon (Norman).
A splendid 28 players in all.
(well done Arnaud and his Tamils!)
For those of you fascinated by such stuff ... there were 2 each of the Tamils, Lydians and Palmyrans ... the Tamils coming first and second, with one of the Lydians in third.
But otherwise it was a wide spread of army selections. Everything from Chinese to Ancient Brits.
In addition to a prize for the winner, Simon made an award for the highest scoring 'weaker' army (based on a ratio of the scores you got to the total fighting factors of the army you selected) - Craig won that with his Kappadokians - and an award to the newcomers who gamely toughed it out with those of us who have been round the block more times than we can remember. Well done to all of them.
And here we all are (thanks to Alison who assumed camera duties) ...
I will do a feature on the Timurids in a few days.
Excellent day out, Simon .. great event!
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