Saturday 2 September 2017

Big Battle Mediaeval Germans v Hungarians

Been a long time since I posted anything for DBA, yet I have played a few games, just forgot to photograph them. My main beef with DBA (apart from the godlike, tactical shenanigans and the bizarrely stunted and stretched armies to get equal sides, and the games dependency on a d6  which leads it to having more importance than your tactics, and...) .... Actually, I stopped playing for a few years. I could not get around the importance of  rolling the right dice at the right time. Is that how an army commander thinks? Nah!

Still, sometimes, if I want to play with other people I have to be willing to shuffle my army on to the table and subject myself to DBA. Now there's a lot of very smart and knowledgeable people out there in DBA land, so the problem must be me. But my whizz of a bff suggested using cards - 24 cards / 4 sets  of 1 to 6 for each player, shuffled and drawn blind into a hand of three. Use a card -  draw another straight away. And what do you know, it seems to work. Lose a card when you lose a third of your army, lose a card when you lose a commander.

Does it sound strange? It did to me at first, but after a couple of games I noticed something - the game was so much more  fun - you can plan! And sometimes you can carry out a plan! Instead of thinking about the tricksie moves,  you can think tactically about your army, conserving your better cards for a critical phase instead of leaving it to the die. And did it slow us down. No. Movement was as it should be, there were plenty of 'bang... you're dead!' moments and well... damn , I just had a great time. 

So,  here's the battle report for the double trouble, Hungary v Germany grudge-match.

Anthony's Hungarians

Sadly, my photos do not do justice to the immaculately painted Hungarians. There's some lovely heraldry in there, shame liveries can't stop arrows :)

Deon's Germans

I've always been a sucker for arty, so this is Mediaeval Germans  (C) I think.  A full allowance of war wagons, mercenary crossbows and pike make for a stodgy but painfully pointy opponent.

 

Here's the set up above -  Germans with a river to their back; no retreat and none needed with the war-wagons. The Hungarians had the high ground and they were welcome to it.

 



Above - Hungarian light troops  come out to play. I give them little chance of upsetting the German plans. (There was no plan!)

Below - The German light troops  stepped aside to reveal the artillery and  the Hungarians having misjudged the  distance found themselves blasted into submission in short order. With the German light troops now front and foremost the Hungarian light horse and knights are quick to pounce, crashing through the  unfortunate hand-gunners and then the knight follow up,  ploughing through an unlucky unit of crossbows.



Above - On the right - Hungarian knights (the C in C's  I think) crash into German pikes and in the centre the combined fire of the war wagons and artillery frustrate the  rest of the Hungarian knights.
 Germans seen from the Hungarian side of the field -  notice the German handgunners sneaking around the back of the enemy C in C on the left ?
Below -  The Hungarian knights continue their relentless (unsupported!) charge, wiping out more hapless crossbow and  thoroughly trashing the arty party.

Now severely over lapped, the Hungarian days are surely numbered?


The melee seen from the German perspective.




Above  -  The Hungarian knights are repulsed and their CinC is badly shot up, causing him to back up into the cruel arms of the waiting enemy hand-gunners. Boom! and  the Hungarians are down. The Germans can't believe their luck - much of the enemy failed to engage and whilst it was scary to see the Hungarian knights ploughing through the ranks, nothing lasts forever and the Hungarians finally  ran out of luck   high cards


Thanks for stopping by ;)