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In November 2004 club members John Orange, Rob Cowan, Clive Dudley and
Dave Putt attended this excellent themed DBM Doubles competition in
Pevensey. This is always a good weekend, although it is a long way
away from Plymouth! David and Rob did very well, finishing second on 34 points, only 3% behind the winners on count-back. Clive and John scored a team best of 25, finishing 6th. Here are a few pictures of Clive and John's games, taken by Clive Dudley. Unfortunately, David and Rob's Top Table performance meant that they were in a different building for most of the weekend, so there aren't any pictures of their games! The pictures here are thumbnails: click on them to see a larger
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| Game one was Clive and John's first game with
the Alans - literally! Circumstances had conspired to prevent them
getting any practice games before the competition. Their
opponents were Lee Sanders and John Hogan with Sciri,
who went on to win the competition on 34 points. Needless to
say, they started out with a nice 10-0 win against John and
Clive.
There was not a lot of terrain: a river about two feet in on the Alan right, and a few gentle hills. The Alans deployed with a large foot command on the right, knights slightly refused in the centre, and two light horse commands on the left. |
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| The Sciri deployed with knights centre and left, a Hun ally on the right, and a Dacian (?) ally in the rear. The Dacian ally started the game unreliable, so the Alan light horse mobbed the Huns in an effort to break them, and hence induce the Dacians to change sides. Unfortunately, this backfired badly when the Huns broke one of the Alan light horse commands, which made the Dacians reliable.... |  |
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| Here is a shot near the end of the battle, with
the Sciri knights pushing into the mass of Alan lancers. This
accelerated the losses in the command, since second-rank elements were
often swept away by the destruction of front-rank elements. The
large foot command was mostly holding its own, but had mounting
casualties, and eventually gave way: coupled with the broken light horse
and the losses from the knights, this was enough to break the
army. At the end, the Sciri's Hun allies and left flank knights were both close to demoralisation, so the result was closer than the final score would indicate. |
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| Game two was against Alan Waller and
Competition Organiser Eric Cruttenden with Hunnic. Terrain was minimal: a few gentle hills scattered around the field. The Huns deployed warbands in the centre, with bows and knights outside of them, and a large light horse command in the rear on a hill. The Alan deployment was a mirror-image of the previous game: Foot on the left, knights in the centre, and two light horse commands on the right. |
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| The Alan knights and light horse move forward,
to assault and skirmish with the Hunnic line, respectively. The Alan knight command, led by their C-in-C, was plagued by poor movement dice throughout the weekend: their first movement roll was 1 in three out of four games. |
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| Late on in the game: the Hunnic right flank
knights are struggling against superior numbers of Alan knights, who are
just about to charge their supporting archers. Rain had just
started, so the archers were disadvantaged, but John forgot to count
it! The archers still died, breaking the command: shortly
afterwards, the central Hunnic warbands were struck in the flank by Alan
lancers, and the resultant losses demoralised the army: 10-0 to the
Alans.
Alan and Eric went on to finish 34th, on 10 points |
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| Day two, and game three versus John Holkham and
Jim
Nicholls with Dacian. The terrain included a steep hill on the halfway line of the central sector, woods on the Dacian left, and marshes on the Alan left. This left both sides with only limited places to deploy their knights. John and Jim's response to this was to deploy them in a single rank across the front of their infantry... |
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| ...whilst Clive and John put theirs in a big
block on the opposite side of the steep hill in the centre (just visible
in the upper right of this picture). John and
Jim were a bit dismayed to discover that the Alan infantry were deployed
opposite their knights, ready to jump them if they tried to cross the marsh.
Worse, the knights were blocking the warband's path to the Alan
infantry. The Alans sent forward skirmishers to generally hold things up and get in the way of the warband and knights whilst they redeployed their own knights... |
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| ...who promptly got in a mess, largely because
of their inability to roll decent movement dice! Eventually,
John gave up trying to control them, and let them find their own targets,
which proved much more successful. Towards the end, the Dacians had two commands hovering on the edge of demoralisation but the Alans couldn't manage to kill anyone in the right commands. The Dacian allied knights spent four turns only one element away from breaking, and had four elements in trouble on the final move: miraculously, they all survived, for a final score of 5-5. John and Jim finished 9th, with 24
points. |
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| Game four, versus Barry & Derek Harman,
with Alamanni. The terrain fell well for the Alamanni, with a river, plus several hills just where they would be most useful for a strong defensive deployment. The Alamanni deployed four deep superior warband in the centre, massed archers on the hill, and an Alan ally against the river, formed in column ready to storm down that flank. |
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| The Alans lined up their knights to take it on,
in a solid mass with light horse commands at either end, with the foot
anchoring the line on a shallow hill on the right. The left flank light horse rushed up to the Alamanni's Alan ally, and caused a traffic jam by getting in the way of a column of light horse trying to cross the river. The allies then complicated the situation by rolling one for movement, resulting in the uncontrollable column of knights bursting through their own light horse and the neighbouring infantry in their effort to get at John and Clive's light horse. Then they rolled one for the combat... A few turns later, Clive's seven element light horse command had demoralised the much larger allied command, for the loss of one of its own elements! |
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| This is a picture from near the end. The
Alan lancers have crashed into the warband and archers, and are taking
losses, especially from the archers. However, the warband are also
taking losses - four at a time. Very few commands can withstand this for long, and one of the warband commands broke: shortly afterward, the accumulation of casualties on the remaining commands brought the total to the half-way mark, and the army collapsed. 10-0 to the Alans. Barry & Derek finished 27th, with 15 points. |
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| This was another really good Anderida weekend,
with all games pleasant and enjoyable. Next year's theme is 1005 AD: any army from any book, provided it is dated 1005 AD. Clive and John are considering taking the Alans again...
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This page was last updated on 12 January 2005 |
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