DBMM at Cancon 2012 - Day 3

Day 3, and it was to be a Russell-fest. After being handed a well-padded portion of my anatomy by Aaron and his Khitan, I was facing Zac and his New Kingdom Egyptians for total mastery of Egypt. I invaded, and bad terrain in the centre saw the table essentially split in two. I hadn't looked forward to this game, as I thought it would be a very tough opponent, and with an 'Inert' general, his army would be really big (although very immobile).

When I saw the terrain, I decided to mass in the open ground between the waterway (Nile) and the rough in the centre, go deep and try to overwhelm him with numbers and PIP pressure. Much dancing inhibited by poor pip rolls on a crucial occasion, and I managed to take down one command, with the moral penalty breaking another. A very bloodthirsty game, where weight of numbers locally and the ability to refocus effort using PIPs gave me an advantage. The Turcomans did break, and I lost 40% of the army all up, so an 18-7 and the True Egyptians triumph.

Ayyubids massed behind Turcoman Light Horse.

A view from the Alexandria Lighthouse - the NKE in the distance never got into the game.

Nice looking NKE - DPS I think?

OK,  game 5 out of the way, and despite giving away a lot of points, I can still make an impact in the final standings, provided I do ok in the last game. Greg Russell, who used Ottomans with an Albanian ally. I set up with the Turcomans on my extreme right, CinC in a double line, and behind him my sub. You can see the game at a crucial point below. The sand coloured bases are my Ayyubids outflanking his line behind a difficult going (narrow) river, the Ghulams pushing forward to engage his Janissary Bow, and some of my other cavalry turning back towards my base edge to head off a home run by the Albanian ally.
 

Exciting times.. my base edge is to the right..

Sadly for me, this game was notable (for me) for the number of times an extreme dice split went against me, so I managed to intercept his fast light horse and overlap with my ordinary light horse, only to then get a 1-5 split that cost me that element. Another 1-5 cost me a cavalry that intercepted the Albanians by marching into them, and there were too many 6-1 splits to remember that cost me Ghulam superior cavalry. Even when I hit his elements behind, it did nothing, even at 3-0 and 4-2. Overall, although I kept throwing the Cavalry into the Bow, I never got the dice roll (beat him by one in his bound, or two in my bound) to do any damage.

Overall, very frustrating, and I was really getting stressed when no matter what I did tactically, virtually nothing came off as I simply couldn't roll high enough to beat him. I suspect my loudly expressed disbelief at his combat dice was very unsporting. It didn't help when a little known wrinkle in the rules cost me another superior Ghulam. Eventually the 6's told and the Turcomans broke, causing the sub also to break following his losses in superior Ghulams, and game over.

At this point I had disheartened one command and taken nearly a quarter of his largest command. If I had survived another bound it would have been interesting. I was likely to have broken one command (he had his own superior cavalry exposed with a general able to make a flank attack), and the transferred morale penalty would have disheartened his largest command.

Third place overall, behind Greg & Aaron. I handed the discount voucher to John the organiser. I have too much lead already.

Anyway - 3 days of DBMM is too much for me. Too stressful, too fraught, and I don't have the temperament for it at the moment. I am going to take a break from competitive wargaming for a while, and see if I can't get my head in the right frame of mind to return to the table more relaxed and more capable of coping with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/dice-rolling.