BattleCry 2008 - 25mm DBMM Doubles Tournament

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Well another successful BattleCry has gone by and congratulations to Karen & the AMERICA team for organising a great event, and providing the usual copious amounts of "loot" for people to take home! Also thanks to Benny (Andrew Bennetts) for organising and umpiring the New Zealand 25mm DBMM Doubles – it's always a trade off and occasionally a thankless task. The DBMM competition was thoroughly enjoyable and went really well in my opinion. Several players were reasonably new to DBMM but picked up things pretty well from what I saw, and the overall standard of army presentation was very good to excellent, and made all the games visually appealing to the greater extent. I must confess I like the new scoring mechanism in DBMM for tournament play and think it really achieves what the original DBM and it's various subsequent 'fiddles' with didn't - a balanced system that rewards winning over drawing but still distinguishes winning well from winning poorly or expensively (i.e. your own casualties degrade the value of your victory, so cherish your troops) …

German Landsknecht Pikemen from a Medieval Scandinavian army.

The New Zealand 25mm Doubles was using DBMM for the first time this year, and in addition to the normal 500AP army the Umpire had allowed an additional 10AP specifically for buying Stratagems (if you did not have an Inert CinC). So all the Armies (bar ours - see below) were 510AP, ours nominally being 575AP due to taking Caesennius.

Campbell Millar and I teamed up for the Doubles - and elected to run an Early Imperial Roman army - we chose an Eastern one as the largest Ally force I had available were Armenians, and we wanted to trial having an Inert CinC (Caesennius - who performed poorly in Armenia in 62AD-63AD - being available for an Eastern Army) while running a 'Veteran' Roman Legion who's Bd(O) could be upgraded to Bd(S). After much fiddling we ended up with the following 500AP list:

Command 1 - 96AP (38ME)
1 Reg Cv(O) Inert CinC - Caesennius
10 Reg Bd(S) Legionaries
9 Reg Ax(S) Auxiliary Infantry
4 Reg Ps(O) Auxiliary Archers
3ME from Army Baggage

Command 2 - 176AP (39ME)
1 Reg Cv(O) Sub-General
1 Reg LH(F) Equites Sagittarii
11 Reg Bd(S) Legionaries & Praetorians
8 Reg Ax(S) Auxiliary Infantry
2 Reg Ps(O) Auxiliary Archers
3 ME from Army Baggage

Command 3 - 120AP (20ME)
1 Reg Cv(O) Sub-General
7 Reg Cv(O) Equites Alares
4 Irr LH(O) Numidian Cavalry
2 Reg Art(F) Scorpion Bolt-Shooters on Mule Carts
3 ME from Army Baggage

Command 4 - 81AP (21ME)
1 Irr Kn(X) Armenian Ally-General
3 Irr Kn(X) Armenian Cataphracts
7 Irr LH(F) Armenian Horse Archers
2 Irr Bg(O) Encamped Command Baggage

Command 5 - 27AP (3ME)
6 Reg Bg(O) Encamped Army Baggage
9 TF Ditch & Palisade for Army Baggage Camp

Army Total: 121ME

Kushite Egyptians face off against Sassanid Persians.

We had some tough games, with our Eastern Early Imperial Romans, especially with Caesennius, our CinC, preferring to relax with a wine and let things happen…! First up against the Cimbri with their Gallic Allies, we were hit by a flank march from a 45ME command that included 69 Wb(O)! They used a Delayed Battle Stratagem to increase the likelihood of its arrival (in addition to an Ambush Stratagem). In our second game we faced swarms of Kushite Egyptians, who used a Guides Stratagem to find a road through the middle of a large Marsh we had placed in their deployment zone, allowing a column of Chariots to rapidly deploy against the centre of our line from the difficult going… Third game we faced the dreaded Medieval Germans (with Swiss Allies) and with Baggage(S), War Wagons, and Knight Wedges! This game was probably our toughest overall game, turning into a real slug fest all along the line and a real meat grinder – but Kudos to our 2 x Art(F) who skewered a Knight Wedge General at extreme range on about their 2nd or 3rd attempt (thank Mars for 6-1's), and our brave Legionaries who took out the Swiss Pike(S) General! In our final game we came up against Sassanid's which also turned into a bit of a grind, but in a manoeuvring sense more than a combat one (the downside of an Inert CinC)! This degenerated into a very messy battle and we struggled to contain a couple of rampaging Elephants(O) ripping through our right flank commands, supported by Cavalry(S) and (O), after initial success killing the third one but again having first had difficulty seeing off half a dozen LH(F) with our Legionaries.

Medieval Scandinavians try and hold back the Cimbri & Tigurini in a desperate night battle!

Read on on the following pages for accounts of our 4 battles and a summary of the competition result at the end (Page 6)...

Navarrese (on left) face the Kushite Egyptians - somewhere in Spain?!

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