6th Annual HMGS-GL BBDBA Tournament

This past weekend I headed down to Columbus to play in the 6th Annual HMGS-GL BBDBA Tournament. John Loy of GLADBAG put on a great event, and it was great to play with some new folks. What was also great was that we had five people from Cleveland make the trip, with my DBA mentor, Jim Kasper, taking the Early Bracket with his Syracusans! Congrats Jim! Jack “The Butcher” Sheriff took the Later Bracket, and overall win. I’m sure that made the drive worth it! Congrats to Jack, well done!

I took Antigonos Gonatas as my army (composed entirely of Mike’s Models), and armed with great advice from WADBAG member Dave Schlanger, I set out to conquer the opposition!

Game One
My first match was against John Lawitzke and his Numidians. What a nail-biter!

This is a shot early in the game. In the foreground is an entire command of light horse headed towards my low pip (and smallest) command. My men’s mission: hold the flank…

The end game. As John told observers, it’s closer than it looks! As you can see, nothing is left of my low pip command, only the general remains, and the middle (my C-in-C) is encircled, but on the far right my mounted shock force is one kill from breaking John’s C-in-C. In the next two bounds he breaks my C-in-C and I break his. This game really went down to the wire and it was a race to the flanks on both sides, with both C-in-C’s demoralized, John won, since he killed off more of my elements. It was a great and memorable game. Thanks John!

Game Two

My next game was against Dennis Lockhart and his Late Imperial Roman East w/ Visigoth Ally. This was another nail-biter. I lost terrain this battle, so I set my mounted shock force (high pip) across from his blade line, my C-in-C (mid-pip, with the Wb) across from his Wb, and my low pip (6Pk) on the right. His final command that he placed was all mounted and placed them as a reserve between his other two commands, thus making my low pip command useless. Much of the early action was my 2xAx and 1xPs fighting his 2xPs and 2xAx in the bg on the far left. My warband totally rocked this game, breaking all of his Wb! My mounted also wreaked havoc, but things got bad when I lost the battle in the bg to my left and he sent in his knightly reserve. At this point, I had broken two of his commands, but his C-in-C was insulated from the fight, and once I lost my mounted wing, I couldn’t break the C-in-C. So I had to kill half his army… Things got really terrifying when my Wb started to lose fights against demoralized elements, and eventually got themselves run down by knights.

I was watching victory slip away…

Eventually he got to my camp, which I had been blocking by selectively letting certain elements flee and others hold. At this point he had killed 3 elements from my C-in-C’s command; taking my camp would demoralize me and I would lose. I had killed 17 elements of his, just one short of winning. His knight attacked my camp-he rolled a 1…time slowed down as my dice rolled across the table…a 6! The score was 4 to 8, doubled! DEAD, DEAD, DEAD! Ahem, sorry, it was pretty exciting. What a great game, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat! Thanks to Dennis for putting up one heck of a fight, and giving me some hair-raising moments!

Game Three

My final match was against Joe Merz playing Han Chinese. I won’t really explain the set-up, since it’s pretty plain to see from the photo. One big deployment change was that I used a waterway to shorten the board depth, since it was taking way too long to get to the enemy in my last games. Of note, that is psiloi supported spear facing off against my knights and jumbos-tasty (2-for-1)! Oh, and that is light horse charging my pike on the left flank-not so tasty…his bow are in the center from my C-inC’s pike command-ugh! My warband went to town again clearing out the bow from the bad going, while my mounted shock force took out the heavy foot in good going.

Predictably, Joe broke my pike on the left flank (killed the general w/ a bg sneak attack!). I managed to kill off 18 elements rather quickly though. The highlight for me was chasing an element of Chinese bow across one third of the table with a single element of warband, mere millimeters from the front of my C-inC’s pike line, screaming DIE, DIE! Eventually, the Wb rolled well, butchering the hapless bowmen to the astonishment of the phalangite onlookers. Joe suffered some terrible rolls, but was a great sportsman and a pleasure to play!

There you go, 2-1 in my first singles BBDBA tourney. Thanks to John Loy for a great time!  Thanks also to Dave Schlanger for helping me with strategy.   Here are some extra pics:

Jenny Torbett’s Teutonic Order vs. Mike Demana’s Picts

Dave Zecchini’s Ptolemaics vs . Jim Kasper’s Syracusans