DBA - Byzantines vs Franks

For our last club night before Christmas we played a double-sized game of DBA, with one of the many flavours of Byzantines taking on one of the many flavours of Franks. Both armies had 24 elements and were simply the base 12 element armies doubled.

The Byzantines claimed a moral advantage on the grounds that they had God on a stick.

There were ploughed fields on each flank, which turned out to be muddy. This left the cavalry on both flanks a little hindered. However both armies still plodded through the mud on the Byzantine left to try and gain an advantage.

On the Byzantine right things were a little more cautious.

The Byzantines got the upper hand on the left.

But things were still cautious on the right.

Meanwhile the Franks advanced slowly, with a pile of blades in the centre and a load of knights on their left. The Byzantines were content to wait it out, peppering the advancing Franks with archery that did little more than slow them.

A charge right down the line - the fight was on!

The Byzantines fell back, losing some of their cavalry and giving the Franks a breakthrough.

The Byzantine cavalry was somewhat disadvantaged against the Frankish knights.

In the centre, and on the other flank, the Byzantines gave ground slowly, but without losses. Their double-depth bow elements proved surprisingly resilient, give that they were up against blades.

The Byzantine left was actually scoring plenty of kills, and the Franks were a single element away from breaking, whilst the Byzantines were still only just about halfway there. That changed in a single bound when the Franks got their act together, destroying two double-depth elements and one of the Byzantine commanders to claim the victory. And he captured God on a Stick.

In fact this was a surprisingly close game, although it was mostly down to Geoff commanding the Byzantine left flank. I had the right and failed to inflict much damage on the Franks, before losing a pile of stuff in one bound. I did forget that psiloi move three base-widths, not two for most of the game, which slowed down my cunning flanking move by a turn or so. That's what I'm going to blame it on. Peter commanded the Franks single-handed, and just kept driving forwards, which seemed the best tactic under the circumstances.