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Post by Brian Ború on Apr 17, 2023 13:56:24 GMT
How a spanish mouse led a roman cat into a trapFought at Mediterrane Klopperei (Mediterranean Scuffle) The DBA Spring Tournament at Ulm 2023 In my last battle at this years first DBA tourament at Ulm I led II/39b Celtiberians against the impressive II/33 Polybian Roman army. I had ordered my scutarii to defend the difficult ridge of hills in the east and my worthy caetrati to clear the woods in the northeast from the roman velites. While this struggle began (and those velites fought really boldly, causing heavy losses!) I wondered how I could divert the roman battle line and hamper or delay their movements. I decided to send my small force of light horses around the hill in the west, just to see what might happen. Maybe I could lead some of the massive cavalry on the roman right astray?  And, yes! Their general took the bait! All of the roman cavalry went off with thundering hoofs and my light horses turned on their heels, feinting a flight. Did the romans really think, they could catch up with them? Meanwhile the whole of the splendid roman battle line, neatly straight as an arrow and longer than a mile, turned disciplined, slowly and menacingly on the open plain to face the foot of the hills, and my caetrati had a hard time fighting off the velites. At the same time I urged my scutarii on the ridge to reach its end, and to throw a wedge between the roman hastati on the plain and the fighting velites. And little by little the velites were overcome. At the same time confident of their seemingly easy prey the equites moved on and on.  Finally they came in a column around the southeastern hill, their general leading. And bam! My cavalry general rode through the gap to attack him frontally, my light horses turned swiftly on the spot, a unit of scutarii came yelling down the slopes of the hill, and together they rolled up the flanks of the equites. So in one moment I had finally defeated the roman army on both wings while their massive centre stood there on the plain, unscathed, aligned like on parade, and their weapons still glittering in the evening sun. This has been up to now my funniest battle! What is yours?
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Post by Baldie on Apr 17, 2023 16:16:41 GMT
I could tell you a tale of something stupid that I have done in nearly every game I play and thus give my opponent a chance to slaughter me.
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Post by Brian Ború on Apr 17, 2023 17:43:50 GMT
I could tell you a tale of something stupid that I have done in nearly every game I play and thus give my opponent a chance to slaughter me. Ah, do you mean something like I did yesterday? Like fighting an elephant with warbands in two ranks trying to give rear support?  My gauls simply vanished ... |
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Post by Baldie on Apr 17, 2023 18:33:57 GMT
I have had an elephant general recoil into another one of my elephant's before
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Post by stevie on Apr 18, 2023 8:07:55 GMT
It think Brain has used the wrong title for this thread. It shouldn’t be called “the funniest battle”, but “the funnest”… …i.e. a battle where a pre-conceived plan works out perfectly. It reminds me of an actually historical encounter: The Battle of the Hellespont, 321 BC. Following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, Perdiccas became regent, but he was not popular, and the Macedonian Successors split into two factions; the ‘centralists’ under Perdiccas who wanted to keep the empire together, and the ‘separatists’ who wanted to carve-out their own independent kingdoms. Eumenes (a Greek) was assigned by Perdiccas as the new governor of a recently reconquered Cappadocia, and he had to scrape together a II/14 Cappadocian Army to prevent Craterus (a famous and well respected high ranking Macedonian general) from crossing the Hellespont into Anatolia with his II/12 Alexandrian Army (using mercenary 4Ax Peltasts instead of the elite Hypaspists). Eumenes knew that his lowly 3Ax warriors stood no chance against 4Pk, so he refused his centre and advanced with his numerous mounted on both wings. Craterus foolishy did the same, leaving his 4Pk slowly plodding forwards, only to be beaten on both wings by the more numerous Cappadocian mounted, and himself being killed, before the foot even came into contact. Seeing both wings were defeated, the Macedonian Pikemen surrendered, but they soon deserted to join Antipater, another separatist general. (What was it that they used to say in the TV series “The A-Team”?…
…oh yes: “I love it when a plan comes together”.  ) |
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Post by Baldie on Apr 18, 2023 8:26:51 GMT
It think Brain has used the wrong title for this thread. It shouldn’t be called “the funniest battle”, but “the funnest”… …i.e. a battle where a pre-conceived plan works out perfectly.
In that case then No, No I have not got an example I can remember |
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Post by Brian Ború on Apr 18, 2023 9:50:01 GMT
It think Brain has used the wrong title for this thread. It shouldn’t be called “the funniest battle”, but “the funnest”… …i.e. a battle where a pre-conceived plan works out perfectly. ... (What was it that they used to say in the TV series “The A-Team”?…
…oh yes: “I love it when a plan comes together”. )No, no, definitely "funniest". The LH action was in the beginning not a concise plan, I admit, but merely an idea, a kind of test.  (And there's some reason that my nom de plume is Brian and not brain.  ) |
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Post by stevie on Apr 18, 2023 10:10:01 GMT
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Post by stevie on Apr 18, 2023 11:23:18 GMT
My ‘funnest’ game was at the “Steel Warriors Tournament”. (See fanaticus.boards.net/post/46312/ ) This was an unusual competition, as the main idea was to bring the worst army that you could think of, which you never had to command yourself (although several players brought quite strong armies, such as Late Persians with lots of Hoplites, and Macedonian Successors with lots of 4Pk). As it happened, John Saunders brought the same I/63 Paionians as myself, with exactly the same composition: 2 x LH, 1 x 4Ax, and 9 x Ps, and the last battle of the day had me commanding HIS Paionians while he had to use Paul Murgatroyd’s II/31j Aitolians: 2 x LH, 4 x 4Ax, and 6 x Ps. I ’won’ the aggression roll, and picked the open area for my deployment, leaving John with all the terrain in his deployment area to the North. Now I knew that with so many Ps I had nothing to stop his 4Ax… …so I devised a ‘cunning plan’ as Baldrick from Blackadder would say. Seeing that my opponent had placed all his 4Ax on his left wing, with LH in reserve, I placed ALL my forces in columns on my left wing, with NOBODY on my right. John then frantically spent all his PIP’s rushing stuff to his right wing to counter me, leaving few or no PIP’s to move his slow 4Ax forwards. The result was just as I wanted…my LH against his LH, and my Ps against his Ps… …but I had reserves in case something went wrong, while he had none. It turned out that I didn’t need to use my reserves, as a lucky kill punched a hole in his hastily formed right wing, and I flanked and rolled-up his line. And he had nothing in reserve to fill the gap. The final score was 4-0 to me, and his 4 x 4Ax never even got into contact. Mind you, it was the only defeat John had that day, and he still won the tournament with 26 points, Paul Murgatroyd was second also on 26 points, while I was third with 25. But I did win a prize for bringing the worst army, which nobody could win with.  |
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Post by paulisper on Apr 18, 2023 15:57:44 GMT
I did say the Aitolians were pretty, but they couldn’t fight for sh@t… 🤬💩🤪
P
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Post by Brian Ború on Jun 6, 2023 10:30:05 GMT
Dino Attack
Now I had a first fight between my HoTT armies of Dinosaurs and Humans (rulebook , p. 65), and, boy, this was much fun.
At first the human general took the risk and attacked the monster Archaeopteryx straight away with his fighter aircraft, and he was lucky! Now the aircraft would harrass the dinos from behind. And really, the first dino behemoth came tumbling down. Even the infantry (Hd) performed better than expected, suffered only minor losses, until both tank teams made a deadly mistake.
They chased off a band of Velociraptors and some bigger carnivores, straight into some desert dunes, and got stuck in the sand! Soon both teams were destroyed by those monsters.
Meanwhile the jeeps (rd) made a good job with air support and knocked out some other Behemoths and carnivores, while a hero in his white pickup truck held the dinosaurs in check on the right wing.
Up to now, little by little, the human army slowly had gained the upper hand, but then, right on the edge of victory (only 1 AP missing), disaster struck hard and without mercy: the giant brontosaur (Bh gen), broke through, trampling and chasing the panicking infantry onto a hill, the human general became overlapped and was slain on the spot by the tyrannosaur!
The army stood frozen, completely stunned (PIP throw of 1) and the dinos continued their bloody chase of single infantry units.
But the soldiers stood their ground, even fought the Brontosaur off the hill, and the white hero truck killed another behemoth. Now the last two dinos, the bronto and the tyrannosaur fled from the battlefield.
The dinos lost 16 AP, the humans 10.
Somehow I've got the impression, that HoTT is much better balanced than DBA...
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Post by stevie on Jun 6, 2023 10:51:17 GMT
What an exciting to-and-fro knife-edge battle Brian!
As for play balance…hmmm.
HoTT doesn’t have weak utterly useless Auxiliaries it is true…
…but the DBA 3.0 side-support for Spears is a stroke of genius.
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Post by Brian Ború on Jun 6, 2023 20:53:23 GMT
What an exciting to-and-fro knife-edge battle Brian! As for play balance…hmmm. HoTT doesn’t have weak utterly useless Auxiliaries it is true… …but the DBA 3.0 side-support for Spears is a stroke of genius. Meanwhile I had another battle, now between humans and Them!O.k., I handled the radioactive ants not so well, and low pip rolls made the telepathic ant magician quite useless. To cut it short: the ants simply vanished in a very unbalanced battle...(And the humans had chosen two teams of shooters instead of four infantry.) |
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