Ottomans at Britcon
Britcon is one of the main wargaming events in UK, and this year I managed to organize the trip to attend the DBMM tournament.
The DBMM pool is open, so for me it was a challenge to pick a competitive army, because in Italy all the tournaments are made with a period frame, to have more or less historical match ups.
I chose to play Ottoman, and after a lot of tests and tinkering this is the list played:
C1- CiC RCvS, 2ICvS, 7 ICvO, 8 ILhF, 2 IHdO - 28ME
C2- SG RCvS, 2 RCvS, 8 RBwS, 2 IPsO, 5 RLhS, 2 ILhF - 28ME
C3- SG RCvS, 4 IPsO, 4 IHdO - 12ME
C4- SG IKnS, 4 IKnS - 12ME
C5- 6 RBgI - 12ME
I expected to attack most of the time. This was good, because I started from 13 VP and could organize my battle line with the better match ups. The negative point was that the opponent would use the worst terrain possible for me and could also corner sit. By the way I liked this army and wanted to use it.
The doctrine with my list was to deliver a charge with the Serbians, supporting them with the big corps on the flanks, and using the small psiloi corps as screen and reserve. The army should start the battle outflanking the enemy, skirmishing the opponent corps, trying to gain a tactical advantage, possibly enticing the opponent to commit the reserves and thin the front line. Then the attritional action of the two big ottoman corps would start and be helped by the serbian shock action. The Serbian should deliver the coup de grace, but their attack could be hastened to not give enemy the time to get ready.
My normal deployment would be with the serbian in the center, C3 immediately behind them, C1 on the more open flank and C2 on the other flank. C3 would receive always the lowest pip dice, while C1 and C2 pip dice would be assigned looking at the tactical situation. Normally, with an open flank and the possibility to outflank the enemy, C1 would get the higher.
Planned Ottoman deployment
C3 could be aggresively used to support the Serbians as long the hordes were back near the baggage and the general not lost. Even with all 4 psiloi O dead, the corps would not be broken by a 2ME transmission, and the RCvS general would keep be operational even disheartened.
C1 and C2 generals were normally deployed in the second line as reserve, each one flanked by a couple of CvS. to deliver a charge and exploit the CF bonus should the general kill the opponent. The army wae thought to always fight with at least two lines of troops, and use reserves to fill the gap. Also when outflanking the enemy with Lh, a few light horses should stay back as reserve.
The terrain I used was the river, in attack and in defence. This because I wanted a bare open terrain, but sometime I needed a feature to restrict the bettlefield. Last but not least, a river takes not much space in a bag and this is a plus travelling by plane.
These were the games played:
Ireland - Italy test match game
I finished 3rd with 101 points. The army performance was good, it's well suited to combined arms tactics. It can rely on shock action, albeit on a limited frontage, and skirmishing. Above all it's fun to play.
Britcon it's a well organized event, and I met there a lot of nice people. It is worth to be attended.