Friday DBMM Yuan Chinese and Javanese

This Friday past I was able to escape from a house full of teenage girls and head down to the club for a little 350 point DBMM.

Nicholas had set up the game and provided the Javanese forces while Ben brought his Chinese and Mongols to the table. Thank you to both for bringing some very nicely painted troops for us to play with. With the armies selected, the next step was to assign sides. Given my inability to handle horse, I, Pat, teamed up with Nick on the Javanese side and Patrick went with Ben on team Yuan. (Yes we get confused too.)

Next up was rolling for the battlefield. The terrain picks were a good assortment of woods, hills and marsh. The dice were fickle, and with the exception of one small wooded hill on the Javanese left flank, it all wound up crammed into the right side of the table leaving the centre wide open - perfect for ravaging horse.

We split the Javanese into three commands. A light command of horse and foot was tasked with holding the rough country on the right. Two roughly similar commands of bow and warband covered the centre and left. We set these up one behind the other to give us two lines of bow on the left and two lines of warband in the centre. Nick took the front line and the right and I took the second line.

The Yuan were also laid out in three commands. The Mongol horse on their right, a mixed force of blade, bow and artillery in the centre and a mixed light force on their left opposite the rough terrain. Ben took right and centre while Patrick took left. Both armies were pushed up fairly close to the centre line. I must apologized because being focused on my own troops, I didn't pay much attention to what was going on in the rough terrain.

The game opened fairly conventionally. Nick and I pushed forward across the board as did Ben and Patrick. Ben pushed his horse forward on our left hoping to flank and disrupt the bow line. Nick was able to adjust his line and caught a couple of bases of Mongols in range. One was the general. The option was to take a high probability shot at a base of troopers that would break up the line or take a much riskier shot at the general. Nick went for the general and he went down.

In the centre, we got a couple of moves in with the warband blocks. Then I rolled a 1 for pips and in they went. Nick let his go as well, leaving two lines of heavily caffeinated Javanese charging into artillery, bows and blades. On our right, Nick was able to push his lights almost the whole way through the rough going and he and Patrick began fencing with Lh and Ps.

In the centre, the Chinese man-powered artillery punched holes through the oncoming warband while bows nibbled away at the edges. The blades braced for impact. Ben's leader-less horse were able to harass the edges of the warband block but ultimately pip starvation meant that they fell under Nick's bow and broke.

As I said above, I am not sure what was happening in the rough on the right but Nick retired 4 or 5 dice that night so I suspect it was bloody. The centre saw the warband sweep away the artillery and get stuck into the blades. Going sponno freed up pips to protect the flanks and keep the front rank gaps filled in. A good thing too since the co-mingled warband lines were four deep in some spots. Casualties were heavy, but being only 0.5 ME meant that the warband had considerable staying power. Finally holes were ground through the Yaunline, a second command broke and the Yuan were driven from the field.

A great game with some great gamers.

DBMM Mongols and Chinese battle

Last night saw another epic battle with George and Pat L's Chinese taking on Marc and my Mongols. We had four commands plus baggage. Three were mixed Cv and Lh and the fourth was made up of 8 hordes, a Cavalry general and four Lh. Marc took the first two commands with the Cv(S) and I took a mixed command along with the Hd.

The Chinese set up first with a group of artillery in the centre flanked each side by Bow(X) and with their horse on each wing. We responded with our three horse commands set out in line 1-2-3 with the horde command behind the centre and the baggage behind that. Pip dice were assigned the same way. Our cunning plan was interesting. Marc set up his first command opposite the Chinese right wing Bow(X) and his second command facing the artillery.

"What's your plan Marc?" I asked
"Going to charge the artillery" says Marc.
"Sure about that?" says I
"Yep" says Marc

Now Marc is an experienced gamer and an intelligent guy overall but he does have a preference for Viking and Orc (Charge! and the casualties be damned!) armies and this was only his second game of full on DBMM. So I didn't press the matter.

What we wound up with was pretty much the completely wrong way to deploy a Mongol army - In a line across the board allowing all the Chinese to fight and more importantly to shoot if we got close enough. Marc is not to blame as I knew better. Actually I was kind of curious to see what when his horse hit the artillery. If they survived, they would have torn a hole through the Chinese centre.

The Chinese moved first as I recall, pushing their horse out on each flank and advancing the right flank bow. We responded with some monumentally good pip dice from Marc. He pushed his left flank command forward, lining up to clip the edged of the Bw(X) and take on the Cv in his area and advanced his second command to just out of reach of the artillery. Meanwhile, I pushed my Cv command forward with their Lh component prancing deep around the Chinese left flank. The smattering of Lh connected to the Hd command also moved forward.

With 300+ points on each side, the game took us almost 4 hours to complete so I'll spare you the gory details (not that I remember many). On the right, my intent was to push forward to protect the baggage, and wipe out George's horse which should have been achievable. Instead,  I got tangled up with George's horse command. I pushed the Hd cavalry forward in support taking a bit of a risk due to some nearby Chinese bow. That shooting combat came out to a 6-2 roll in George's favour, costing me a general. The rest of my dice rolling was similarly dismal*, and George as usual managed to thwart my every move. This cost me the other command breaking both my commands.

On our left, Marc re-thought the Battle of Balaclava deployment and instead used the Mongol's mobility and his high pip rolling ability to move his right command back behind his left into support of his attack on the Chinese right wing. My understanding was that his combat rolling was also abysmal, but at least he killed some Sung. In the end, my two dead commands coupled with Marc's losses were enough to call the game.

Despite the dice rolling of doom, it was an enjoyable game. Many thanks to Pat L for hosting (Did I mention there was a cheese board? This is high class gaming for sure)  and thanks as always to George for bringing his toys for us to play with.

*I normally don't blame the dice in place of my tactical errors but this time, I don't think I killed a single Chinese element even with double overlaps or hard flanks.