The DBA Gamer

I jumped in the car this Friday to make the trek down South to Columbus to play in the first GLADBAG Invitational Tournament and the Origins DBA Open event.  Origins is a wonderful venue (far, far, exceeding the Lancaster Host), and I hope to make it back there to compete again.

For the Invitational, I brought Polybians, hoping to try them in a tourney before Historicon; for the Open I brought Alexandrian Imperial.  I was “Power Gaming” to the hilt!  What follows below are my recollections of the events.  The first event was the Invitational.

First Round: My Romans vs Andy Swingle’s Seleucids.  This pic was taken after my Ps supported Bd 6-1′d his Kn general.  I hate to have games end this way, even if it was in my favor!

Second Round: Jenny Torbet’s Thessalians.  This one ended with me killing her general as well.  Jenny’s a great sport; at the end of the day I apologised for always beating up on her Greeks.

Third Round: Dave Welch (my new nemesis) :)  Dave was playing New Kingdom Egyptians.  I believe we played over 1/2 an hour before actually rolling for combats.  This is mid-game.  In what ultimately proved to be his undoing, Dave committed all his mounted to one flank, giving me the opportunity to send some Bd to take his camp.  Both of my games with Dave were real nail biters, Dave is an obvious contender for being one of the best players around.  Great job Dave! I believe I won this game 2C-2.  Below is a shot of one of the final bounds.  You can see there was quite a bit of maneuvering.

On the right you can see my Sp and Cv holding the flank against the onslaught of the Egyptian chariots.  In the center my blade struggle against Dave’s Bd, who got Bw support later, killing some Bd IIRC.  Up to the left, my Romans are almost at the camp.

Fourth Round: Tom Graves and his Christian Nubians.  Tom taught me that I am still a novice!  This was the only game that I lost the terrain for.  Tom wasted no time in putting down favorable terrain for mostly bad going army.  I did the best I could to protect my flanks from bad going assaults and rushed my blade line up to smash into his general.  What a disaster!  His Cv general 6-1′d my Ps supported Bd, I lost another combat to unsupported Wb in the open(!), and somewhere I lost some Sp to Wb.  Ugh!  I lost 0-4 (yikes!)

The picture above shows the hole in my line that used to be in front of his general.  Tom played Rob Runnels for the trophy, falling to Rob’s Tamil.  Congratulations to Rob for winning the first GLADBAG Invitational!  Thank you also to all of my very gracious opponents–truly among the finest players!  I went 3-1 in the Invitational: On to the Open!

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I actually got to play some DBA today! I’ve been feeling a bit rusty since the clobbering I took with Byzantines at StoogeCon, so I was nervous I was losing my mojo. Not to worry though, I racked up three wins and no losses, which always helps with confidence.

I got to use my newly painted scythed chariot for my Seleucids! First game I played was vs Polybian Roman. The chariot took out two blade elements, a spear element, and chased off some psiloi before losing on a tie to a spear element. My only other lost element was a light horse element that got a little to frisky with the Roman cav. general. All the action was with mounted in this game–neither battle lines made contact. I won 4-1.

Next game was my Gallic army vs Polybians again. This one was quick, with my Gauls overwhelming the Roman flank, supported by the chariots. My warbands got recoiled a couple times, resulting in the Romans getting overlaps on m chariots, killing two of them. However, after rolling the Roman flank, the rascally Gauls were rampaging in the ROman backfield. I won 4-2.

The last game we played, my opponent asked to use my Koryo Koreans. I have no matched enemy for them yet, so I decided to see if my Byzantines could redeem themselves. They certainly did, but I had to be sneaky. He set up as the defender and advanced conservatively. I egged him on by zooming my column of light horse (I was getting tons of pips) back and forth, daring his bow to advance. I kept him unnerved by constantly measuring a path to him camp when I rolled big pips, this made him keep his artillery so far back that it was useless. As he moved forward I was slowly moving my knights into a flanking position, covered by my bow and spear. I made a feint at shooting his spear line, but then moved them forward into the hills exposing the Korean battle line to a flank charge by my knights. He sent his general in to stop the madness after I had killed two spear and he managed to double one of my knights. During the same bound I shot-up one of his bow in the hills. Next bound I continued the assault and killed another spear. I wish I would have taken pictures, because I think this is the first time I ave seen the Byzantines behave anything like the real thing: ambushes, feigned flight, etc.  Result was 4-1.

This past Saturday I made the trek into enemy (Steelers) territory (Pittsburgh) to play in StoogeCon, which was organized by the Pittsburgh DBA community, and sponsored by Legions Games. It was great to see the guys from PA, meet some new folks, and see some fellow GLADBAGGERS : Zeke, Mike, and Jenny. There were two tourneys, one Open, the other was Book IV (BOO! HISS! I hate Book IV!). I took the II/9. Syracusan: 1Cv Gen, 1Cv, 6Sp, 1Wb, 1Art, 1Ps, 1Lh. All Mike’s Models. This gave me a chance to show off my new Littoral Greek camp:

You can’t tell from the pic, but I used Renaissance Ink’s (extra fine grade) flocking gel for the water (it dries clear), then the course grade for the shore. The ships are 1:300 scale Penteconters.  Jim Kasper’s Sea Peoples camp inspired me.

I went 3-1 in the open tourney. I faced the only kind of army I feared (blade) in the first round: Sea Peoples, commanded by the implacable Mike Demana, who whooped me 1-4.

In this shot you can see how Mike took good advantage of my pip lock that occurred when I attempted to move a column of mounted between my main line of spear and my reserve line. Notice my pip-dice score…

A little later and Mike has double-enveloped me. Notice my general fleeing through the woods! My psiloi also had the same idea-what a disaster! Mike is an awesome player and deserved the win. This was the first time I’ve ever gotten to play him.

My next match was close to being historical. I played against Jenny Torbet’s Thessalian Greeks (an army I had considered bringing).

Here is a shot of the situation after a couple bounds. I had a steep hill to my left and gentle hill on my right, where I managed to shuffle over some spear later on to make my stand. Jenny whacked my warband with her auxilia pretty quickly, but I managed to get around the flanks while holding the hill with my spear. I managed a win: 5-1. Jenny got her revenge in the next tourney!

Next up I played Rich Fisher and his French Ordonannce. This battle was over on bound two, where I eked out just enough range to shoot his knight general with my artillery. I took some razzing from Larry on that move, but hey, I was using an army that Larry had chided me for, saying: “Syracusan? Oh, you’re brave.” So with that in mind, my general commanded his men to unleash hell, and popped the general with a 6-1, winning the game: 1G-0. I believe the picture below shows Fish’s roll (Photo by Rich Baier):

Next up, I played Kevin Serafini who was going on very little sleep to come and play. This game was very casual, as we debated how a double Littoral landing would work. I opted not to land, but Kevin landed his knights on his right.

Unfortunately, Kevin let my artillery creep up on his general. The first roll was 6-1 in his favor; I cursed the irony of it and prepared to get stomped, but I believe Kevin got pip-locked and I managed to set my sights on his general again. I rolled a six! Kevin rolled with his dice cup and lifted it slowly, I saw him groan as he revealed a 1! The Syracusan artillery crew definitely earned double rations!

I ended up tied with Larry Chaban for second place, separated from from first place winner Mike Demana by only 3 points. I was really happy with how I handled the Syracusans in their first tourney outing.

The Book IV tourney was an utter disaster for me. I went 0-4 with my Kommnenan Byzantine (b) army I had previously gone 3-1 with. I’ll post a couple shots below, but for the main part I was so out of it that I forgot to take mental notes or many pictures. I was mostly killed by shooty stuff; I just didn’t have an answer for it. I also could not get my Lh around the flanks. My bow killed only 1 element ( an aux), and I think I was also a little hesitant to commit my knights. Proper deployment also eluded me, including a crazy alternating deployment that had Mike Demana scratching his head. By the end of the day I was simply crashing my elements into un-winnable fights. I actually apologized to Mike D. for my bad playing. I lost to Rich Baier, Jenny Torbet, the Noob (can’t remember his name), and Mike Demana. Everyone played well, and it was a pleasure despite my horrific results.

Rich’s “cheater” Anglo-Normans, preparing to slaughter me.

Here are some other shots of player’s games:

Mike Demana and Howard West.

Zeke and Kevin’s battle on the beach.

I’d like to thank everyone involved for a great day!