Cannes 2006 DBM tournament report
Having crawled out of the venue, we stumbled along a windswept seafront attempting to clear our heads. There was only one solution – Pizza. We accepted gratefully and moved onto the afternoon session….
Game 4
2 near-identical armies relying on Cv (S), Bw & Bd in the last game. Another matchup-tastic setup – but this time I was defending. The terrain fell appallingly for me, with 3 of my 2 half-sized pieces landing in the corner where my waterway and village were placed – and so they were discarded, unable to fit at all onto the field of play.
The Chinese were then able to deploy second and manoeuvre (first) almost totally at will, with a substantial skirmish screen protecting much the table and removing part of may army from play. I had initially deployed much of my infantry to the rear, more in a sense of "erm, I don’t know what to do, maybe this will buy some time" rather than with any coherent plan in mind.
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My Map (click on it for a full size image) |
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With the bulk of the Chinese deployed to the right – and in commands often smaller than mine – I decided to jump out of my initial redoubt, and attempt to sweep away the skirmish screen of LH facing me by the waterway, and wheel onto the exposed flank of the Chinese CinC's command whilst trading blows on my right.
Initially this seemed to be going very well – the LH screen was falling back to just beyoned 601 paces each turn, and there was little the Chinese Cinc could seem to do to extract himself and his command from my approaching Guards.
However the Chinese had reinforced heavily on my right, and soon I was at a distinct disadvantage here, as Lh managed to clear the rough ground to threaten an envelopment, and bowmen and blades ganged up on my 2 smaller commands. This started to hoover up pip dice from my left, and as in the Roman game, the combination of 2 commands of Lh was proving difficult to close with, as I was unable to both advance and expand in order to muster more front rank elements than they were combining to effect.
My CinC’s command was now in amongst the Chinese CinC’s infantry, and light horse were mounting a desperate series of daring raids forwards to prevent my bowmen hammering the Chinese general.
However as waves crashed on the sea wall in the gathering storm outside, my Guards were also being dashed against the Chinese lines, spectacularly but with little lasting effect.
As this battle raged and my CinCs men pushed on, the Chinese were starting to turn their right flank through weight of numbers – only held up by the valiant 15.5 command again. A complex face-off between bow, blades and cavalry swirled, with 6-1’s providing the only breakthroughs – but the Chinese were slowly gaining the upper hand.
Then a series of dreadful pip dice turns for the Chinese gave the Egyptians hope – but as is always the case, dreadful pips were followed by heroic combat dice as the Chinese repulsed everything that was thrown at them.
The Chinese Generals bullet proof vest and secret service bodyguard was proving a sound investment as he survived multiple shooting attempts throughout the ensuing turns, as my CinC’s command pressed onto the general-killing goal, only to be picked apart by forces coming in from either flank. Suddenly what had looked like a sure fire winning situation had been turned around - with the Chinese Generals command within half an element of demoralization, my CinC’c command cracked!
Both armies, hamstrung by tiny command sizes, were now teetering on the brink – and both decided to go for the end zone with s series of Cv & Lh vs bowmen combats. Tragically for the Egyptians, the Chinese bowmen proved more resilient than the stripey-hatted North African peasants, and the army collapsed 3-0, just 1 element short of a victory for Egypt….
The Technical Stuff - Post Match Analysis and Hammy-tastic Graphs
Summary of the Weekend
Another fantastic weekend on the Cote d'Azur only mildly disrupted by us all being struck in Nice on Sunday night when a massive thunderstorm (pictures here!) forced the cancellation of pretty much all flights out! Big thanks to Franck Brock & Philippe Ippolito for organizing both the competition and, where necessary, also us non-francophones !
I ended up coming 10th out of 34, and was within a whisker of winning both games I lost, so not too bad I guess !
The Charge of the Gardes was worth a mention as a cute extra bonus for the competition - you had to nominate 3-8 elements of your CinC's command as "Gardes", and keep track of who they personally killed - and when they personally were killed also! A bit of extra fun, that actually made me more aggressive in some of the games with my 4 Bd (F).
