| In November 2003 club members John Orange, Rob
Cowan, Clive Dudley and Dave Putt attended this excellent DBM Doubles
competition in Pevensey. This is always a good weekend, although it
is a long way away from Plymouth! This year, both teams took the same army -
Mu-Jung Hsien-Pi (Book 2 list 61), although the compositions of the two
forces were quite different. Here are a few pictures from the
event.
The pictures here are thumbnails: click on them to see a larger picture |
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| John and Clive face off against their first opponent - a third Hsien-Pi army, led by Derek Bruce and Richard Lovie. They got off to a poor start, but managed to pull back a 5-5 draw, which they were glad to get! |  |
| Another view of the same game at deployment. John deployed the large light horse command on the right flank poorly, allowing the opposing light horse to slip past them. Reserve light horse and foot archers from a neighbouring command were able to plug the gap, but only just. |  |
| Game two saw John and Clive matched against a Parthian army led by Rod and Kevin. It all looked good after deployment, with the Former Ch'in allied cavalry double-ranked opposite light horse, their Auxiliary infantry opposite half their number of inferior Auxiliaries, and the main block of double-ranked cataphracts opposite a smaller number of single-ranked cataphracts... |  |
| ...but it all went horribly wrong at the first round of combat. John lost 7 out of the 9 elements needed to break the C-in-C's Cataphracts, and Clive lost 6 out the 7 needed to break the right flank light horse command. The Former Ch'in cavalry failed to win any of their combats against light horse, despite starting two factors up. During the opponent's bound both of the damaged commands broke, leaving them just two elements required to break the army. Needless to say, that didn't take long. |  |
| John and Clive next faced a Tibetan army, commanded by Paul, Ian and Fred (sorry guys, that's all John wrote down) Here is one end of it, and very formidable it looked, too. |  |
| By comparison, the Hsien-Pi deployment looked a bit sparse, largely because a significant portion of the Former Ch'in allied infantry was hiding behind the hills. |  |
| This shot is about half-way through the game. The large light horse command (bottom of picture) had wrapped around the end of the Tibetan line, and then stalled through lack of movement points (total PIPs for 3 turns: 4). The Former Ch'in ally's auxiliary infantry had been intent on attacking the rough hill defended by a handful of psiloi, and then falling on the flank of the Tibetans, but now couldn't get through the light horse. Eventually, the main cataphract block and the spearmen smashed the command in front of them, and the allied archers and the light horse did enough damage to the commands in front of them to break the Tibetans. 10-0 to John and Clive, and they were up to 15 points. |  |
| John and Clive's final game was against a Kushan army led by John Holkhan and Dave Tanner. This started well, with the Former Ch'in ally breaking a Skythian allied command, but went downhill from there. The large light horse command on the left flank once again rolled a string of ones for movement at a critical time, and found itself in trouble, with enemy cataphracts bearing down on them. |  |
| Some of the double-ranked cataphracts tried to take on the
mixed spearmen and archer formations (Bw(X)) that formed a large part of
the Kushan line (since they seemed a softer target than pike blocks or
elephants!) and died horribly (in pairs) as a result. On the last
turn, two of the Hsien-Pi commands were close to breaking, and if combats
had turned out differently, they would have lost 1-9.
As it was they survived the combats, ending with a 6-4 win, and a total of 21 points. |
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| Just to prove that Rob Cowan and Dave Putt really were there, here is a shot of their second game. I've got no idea what they were fighting, except that it seems to have a lot of cavalry, light horse and archers. Note the large block of cataphracts under David's elbow. Rob and Dave did very well, ending on 23 points, despite a 0-10 defeat in the last round. |  |
| Here's a shot of a game between two Chinese(?) armies (one of them possibly Ming) with lots of artillery and war wagons in evidence, all nicely painted. Some of the models had been self-cast by the owning player. |  |
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This page was last updated on 12 January 2005 |
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