La Forbie Refought

The Guildford Wargamers played Ironbow again on Monday night. In a scenario ‘inspired’ by the battle of La Forbie in 1244, an Ayyubid Egyptian army led by Baibars (Andrew D), consisting mostly of Kwarismian mercenaries, took on an alliance between the Ayyubids of Syria (Dave) and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Daniel). I (Andrew F) umpired and generally criticised. Although the Christians provided the majority of the troops on the allied side, it was Dave, as al-Mansur of Homs, who was C-in-C.

The allies deployed with the village of La Forbie and some scattered olive groves on their right. Into these constricted areas they packed all their Frankish foot – 8 elements each of sergeants and crossbows. Two commands of knights, one secular one Order, (with a few Turcopoles) filled the centre, then a command of less-than-useful Syrian foot, al-Mansur with a single unit of 4 Ghulams under his own command. On the far right wing a command of irregular Turcomen was under an Nasir Dawud of Kerak.

Three DBA Games

I played three games of DBA last night.

David Hewkin and I have a long history of playing DBA together, but neither of us have played much for a while. For old times’ sake he brought two of his hardy perennial armies: Late Roman and 100YW English. I brought some recently painted biblical sort-of-Syrians and a bunch of identikit High Medievals.

Our first game was therefore Syro-Caananite against Late Imperial Roman. The Canaanites invaded and found (not at all to their surprise) a steep hill in the middle of the board, two good-sized woods in opposite corners, and a compulsory road exiled to the very edge of the board. They attacked with one wood in their right rear and the other in their left front. The Romans put a single psiloi in the wood on their right, their infantry (mostly Auxilia and another Psiloi) in the centre and their mounted (mixed Knights, LH and Cav) on their right.