Godendag 2012

Twelve DBM teams at Richard Bodley Scott’s Godendag event this year – two fewer than last year. An interesting mix of armies, with a trend to massed infantry – huge numbers of pikes and warband in some armies. But the winners were French Ordonnance who relied on manoeuvrability plus hitting power, rather than a steamroller.

There were four teams from SELWG and, coincidentally, Russ King and I played them all. All four games were interesting, exciting and very sporting.

Russ and I decided to try something different and used Palmyrans with a large fortress, The idea was to garrison the fortress strongly with Bd(I), Bw, Ps and artillery, deploy only a few LH (including a 4-element Arab allied command), and flank-march with the two strike commands. These had Kn(X) cataphracts, plenty of light horse and lots of bows.

We put the plan into effect against Middle Imperial Romans in the first game. The invaders placed a road and steep hills, which covered much of their right flank, but we continued with our plan which nearly worked. The Romans held the hills with auxilia, kept their strong force of legionaries stationary in the centre, and prepared to meet our flank march on their left with their mounted command plus artillery. They evidently had no intention of attacking our fortress, or even chasing the light horse. The first flank march arrived on the Roman right. The infantry faced off the Roman auxilia, who stayed on their hills, while the cataphracts and light horse galloped across the front of the immobile legion towards the other flank. Two turns later the other flank march arrived with devastating effect; archers took some loss from artillery but soon closed and destroyed two Art(F) elements. Light horse pinned the Roman mounted troops and cataphracts, some from the opposite flank, beat cavalry – assisted by a shower of arrows. One large Roman command broke, but the Romans scored a late equaliser by killing two Arab LH and breaking our allied command. Ended 5-5, with the Palmyrans on the front foot.

The second game was against Early Imperial Romans. This was similar except that the Romans also had a flank march – Arabo-Aramaean allies with huge numbers of Bw(I). These chased one of our flank-marches on, and the Palmyran force was at a hopeless disadvantage, destroyed to a man in return for fairly light casualties on the Aramaeans. Our other flank march inflicted damage on the Roman cavalry, and there was now a battle-line across the width of the table, facing to our left. At the start of the last bound it appeared that no commands were in danger and the game looked to be timing out at 4-6 – but a disastrous run of low dice resulted in 5 bow elements dying against single-ranked auxilia, breaking a Palmyran command so we crashed to a 0-10 defeat.

More Romans on Sunday morning, this time Late Imperials, and we invaded so the fortress and artillery didn’t appear. Without its walls our C-in-C’s command looked very weak, but in the event its Bd(I) and Bw(O) performed well. The Romans had a block of Wb(O) which faced cataphracts in our left-centre, with the legionaries to the left of the warband and a large mounted force plus auxilia on the Roman right. The auxilia, Ax(O), were aimed at a patch of rough going but we deployed our Bd(I) there and promptly advanced out to fight in the open. The main action was on our left, where the Bd(I) defeated the Ax(O) and our LH supported by archers beat the enemy mounted troops. That Roman command broke, but our C-in-C’s command was left one element from breaking and needed to stay out of trouble. The warband defeated our cataphracts, whose survivors retreated, and advanced against a mass of Bw(I). Our archers shot well and destroyed 5 of the 12 warband elements, whose flanks were threatened by LH when the game ended at 6-4.

Finally we defended against Early Armenians – Cv(S), Kn(F) and Kn(I) plus lots of Ax(O), Bows and LH(F), with a Hun allied command of 10 LH(S). We decided not to flank-march and deployed defensively with our right anchored on the fortress. The Armenians manoeuvred to attack our main line with their knights while swinging round our left flank with cavalry supported by light horse, with a force of Ax(O) aimed at a handy patch of rough going on our baseline where we had 10 Bw(I). The cavalry met a line of cataphracts who handily defeated them, assisted by arrows from our Bw(I). The Armenian general, rashly in the front line, was hit in the flank by Bw(I) and killed. That command broke and the flight of the numerous light horse left the Ax(O), from a different command, unsupported. The hapless infantry were cut down by cataphracts and light horse. In the centre the Armenian main attack went in and our cataphracts and Bw(O) decisively defeated Kn(F) and Kn(I), then destroyed numerous Ax(O) to break another command. Won 10-0.

One of the best weekends’ gaming I can remember.