Steve and Don at USK

[donm]

This is a copy of a post I placed on the BHGS site yesterday

Having seen all the various postings about the Usk DBM doubles and how long the DBM competition may or may not continue at this venue, I thought that some people may like to know how the AoW doubles competition went and what the future holds for the rules.

I joined the Beta Testers back in November last year having offered my services to JD following the trip to Ghent. I have no problems with the current version of DBM and played in more competitions last year than any previous year. Mainly I play 25mm as I am not a great fan of the light horse lottery. Steve Hacker joined me in the play testing and we initially decided we would concentrate on 25mm.

When my first copy of the rules arrived by email, my week was thrown into complete chaos. I found myself reading through the rules and lists at every opportunity. My desk at home was covered in my attempts to write army lists, the bin had over flowed on to the floor. I found myself logging onto the forum and posting a message most nights. Would my painting time suffer forever?

The first game went very slowly while Steve and I got to grips with the movement rates, shooting factors, cohesion tests and complex move tests, etc. We did not worry about tactics, we just charged in to see how things worked. By the end of the third game we were not looking up the basic factors, we were looking at the detail of impacts, melees, evades and routs. All the time we had the support of the forum to answer our many questions and air our opinions. The biggest surprise to me, at this point, was how well my 25mm Sassanid Persians worked (my very first ancient army). They have been gathering dust for many years.

During the Christmas break we changed to 15mm in readiness for the competition at Usk. We came up with an Abbasid army because of its mixture of armoured horse archers and armoured lancers. Bow armed cavalry shoot and have the option to evade in AoW. The mixed units of spearmen and archers, we felt, would be good against other cavalry and elephants.

The transition from 25mm to 15mm was seamless. In AoW the movement distances, etc, are the same for 15mm as 25mm. You do gain a little more room because of the different bases sizes, but the game is essensually the same. Steve and I found we were enjoying the games as much as 25mm.

We tried out many of our old unused 15mm armies in an attempt to fine-tune our army for Usk. However, our biggest problem was our interpretation of the rules. We had only played each other. Had we read it correctly or were we on another planet? Only the games at Usk would answer our question.

More tomorrow when I will try to recount the games.

Don M

[donm]

Part two to this posting is under the heading 'Usk army choice.' Hopefully I will post the games later today.

Don M