Battle Report - DBMM Tournament/League Round 3

So last night we played the last round of the DBMM league at the club. I had to take my Post Mongol Samurai up against some Ancient British. The British army is mostly made of warbands, which quick kill blades on their turn but get quick killed by blades on the blades turn, and chariots which count as Cavalry Ordinary. So I was thinking that it would be a pretty even battle, but I wanted to get my Cavalry fighting the warband if possible.

The terrain all ended up on my side of the board with a nice steep hill in the middle. There was a bit more terrain on the right flank, I had to deploy first, but in this game you have to draw a map showing where you plan to deploy your army. I decided to put my cavalry on the right hoping Duncan would guess that I would put it on the more open left and have his their leaving mine to fight his foot. I then put the superior bow which is in that command on the big hill and all my foot on the left.

As it turned out Duncan had drawn his map with two big lines all across the board with the Infantry in the front and the cavalry in the back, so he would get to basically recat to my deployment meaning my choice was actually meaningless. In retrospect I should have kept my foot back.

I had the first move and brought everything forward which is what you see in the picture above.

Duncan did the same with his troops. On my tur I put my pikes into combat against the warband, the blades were to far. I was hoping to do some damage while they couldn't qick kill me, but no luck on that although I never lost anyone.

My cavalry never had the orders to do much.

The British then attack all along their line and the combat really starts. I lost a couple of samurai foot but nothing serious and no cavalry. My bow units started to kill some of the British who were slowly climbing the hill, these guys turned out to be quite effective sitting up there.

In subsequent turns the battle continued with us trading a few blades for a few warband depending on whos turn it was, the bow continued to kill, and the cavalry not much happened.

Unfortunately at this point we discovered a big mistake, the warbands don't just kill the front rank of foot when they win on their turn, they kill 2 ranks deep. So at this point it stopped being a close and interesting battle and my line suddenly exploded, and the chariots started to flank around my cavalary and I started to take losses their as well.

So here we are at the end of the game a turn later, my foot has been badly mauled and are broken, breaking my army, and although the bow has killed allot of warbands they got into combat and killed a few of them, this was enough to almost break my cavalry command, but not quite. I had killed 20% of the British army thou which was enough to dishearten the warband command.

So it was at least a halfway interesting battle, I wish I had known how over matched my blades were against the warband at the start I think I could have refused that flank a bit and made a much different battle. Basically blades have no chance against a big bunch of warband unless you have something else to disrupt their battle line first.

Thanks;
Mike