The Monday Knights wargaming club’s Tormentus DBA competition was on last Friday. My mate Mark and I toddled along. This time I didn’t engage in my customary agonising about the army to take, or paint a new one, but I fielded my Medieval German army, which I’d put in a less than stellar performance with at Cancon.
My first game was against Lile’s Medieval Vietnamese (III/59). Sadly, because it was a nicely painted army, I don’t have any pictures of the shiny elephants and rocket launchers that I was faced with. The tournament featured pre-set terrain, and there was something large and blue toward the middle of the table. Later I found that it was to be treated as rough going, but since I didn’t know what it was I avoided going in. That meant that I was pretty limited in my manoeuvre options. I had been hoping to get my knights in amongst Lile’s auxilia. In the event, Lile’s command elephant did all my work for me. First off, it recoiled from combat with one of my elements and ran over the palace guard. In the next bound I managed to get a good overlap on it, and despatched it with psiloi supported spears. A jammy victory for me.
In my next game I faced Tyler’s Early Imperial Romans (II/56). Tyler pushed his Numidian ally light horse all the way around one flank. I sent a psiloi off to delay it, and it did for a turn, as did the camp followers. I figured that rather than chasing off after the light horse, I should just press on, but I had below average luck with my dice, and I didn’t manage to score any of the quick kills that I could have done with knights versus auxilia and blades. Although they are regarded as super troops, against foot they only have a combat factor of 3. So once your opponent manages a few recoils, the resulting overlaps mean that you’re quickly down to a 2 or a 1. In the end I lost a psiloi and a knight, so the game was Tyler’s.
My Medieval Germans face Tyler’s Early Imperial Romans.
Next up I met Ed and his Vikings (III/40). Ed had a gentle hill to stand on, and I was constrained from spreading my line out because I had a wood to my flank and there was a river (all rivers were deemed to be paltry in the competition) directly in front of it. Since Ed was staying put I felt honour bound as the owner of some knights to charge in. That didn’t work out so well, and I lost a couple of knights, as well as a psiloi and an auxilia. I did manage to kill one of Ed’s blades though. A better strategy would have been for me to faff around more and spread out, but I’m not sure the terrain and my PIPs would have allowed me to do that anyway.
My last game of the evening was against Darcy’s Vikings, on an attractive snowy table. The buildings you see in the photo were just treated as impassable terrain. This time I went for the pre-combat faffing around. Darcy and I ended up both being three elements down. The last combat was one of my knights versus one of Darcy’s blades – 3 factors to 3 with a quick kill for me. Sadly a 6-1 put an end to my dreams of victory.
Facing Darcy’s Vikings on a wintry battlefield.
Small Sagas 
Those snaky lakes were a bit confusing; they made for monster swamps! Nice not to have think about terrain, though!
Yes it’s interesting dealing with the set terrain. I wonder what would have happened if I’d found the rule about rivers being neither good nor bad going, on the night?