"The Woeful Battle of Nechtansmere Refought" Topic

In between Football finals (well done Hibernians!!) I managed to get in a DBA refight of the Battle of Nechtansmere (or Dun Nechtain) today. This is how I got on: link

I also had a couple of rules questions, if a kind DBA expert could please take a look!

As far as I can see no cavalry provides flank support.
Only solid foot can give or receive flank support and only a few types (Spear & Solid Bow receive, Spear and Solid Blade provide).

This should make the Saxons tough if they can get out of column.

Spear don't pursue so the flank support element would not have to answer this question unless storming a BUA.

Cheers
David

Columns are also quite dangerous for the owner if the enemy catches them in combat. Assuming neither is an elephant (which is a fairly safe assumption in Dark Ages Britain) an element that must recoil due to a bad die roll can only push back or recoil through ONE element. So if a column is three or more elements, the lead element dies instead of recoiling. (fig 20f).

You talk about the matchup of fast pike versus spear. We recently played a campaign in the same period and wediscovered that the fast pike of the Picts are indeed terrifying, but not over powering. I think your hypothetical combat scores calculation of 6 versus 5 may be wrong.

An element of pike is a base of value of 3, and with a second rank of pike behind give a grand total of 6. Facing them, the spear are a base 4, with another spear in side support that gives 5. But I think you forgot that in such a case, that supporting spear also gives an overlap, reducing the combat to even 5s. Admittedly, if a big group of six pike, three wide two deep hit a shieldwall of five elements of spear, then that 5 vs 5 only applies to the end two combats. The centre combat does give an advantage of 6 vs 5 to the Picts.

Also, don't forget in a match of fast pike versus spear, which are always solid, in the case of a tied score, the fast troops are always pushed back by solid troops. Seems to happen more often than you'd think, and over time makes a difference.

Throwing some psiloi in front of those Picts' fast pike is always a good ploy. Not only does it break up their attack, but pike do not get second rank support against psiloi, nor are psiloi overlapped by corner to corner contact. And the absolute worst that can happen to the psiloi in frontal contact only against pike is that they flee.

I'm a bit puzzled here. There is reasonable evdence that the Northumbrians and Picts both had cavalry at ths battle. The Aberlemno stone very likely celebrates the Pictish victory and clearly shows mounted combat. Interestingly the helmet on the supposed Anglian figure(s) closely resembles the York helmet.
The Anglian king had set off to punish the Picts and reassert dominance so probably had a small, but elute and all mounted army. It is possible that some of the English were mounted infantry at the battle and some were operating mounted . It is extremely unlkely that peasants or some wide levy of low status manpower accompanied the expedition. The English were surprised to find the Picts ready and waiting and were amost certainly outnumbered, but were high quality troops. The Picts ability to face off the Anglian cavalry with a formation of spearmen would seem to be central to the victory as it is highlighted on the Aberlemno stone.

@ Trierarch & Tony S,

Thanks very much for your help.

Spear don't pursue so the flank support element would not have to answer this question unless storming a BUA.

I phrased this wrongly. I meant an overlapping element rather than a flank supporting element. i.e. in the PURSUING paragraph, is an overlapping element counted as a close combat opponent or not?

@Tony S, you are quite right of course. In the game the Picts tended not to suffer from these overlaps by using their Light Horse and Psiloi to engage the flanking elements of the shieldwall (if that makes sense), to avoid that very thing. It happened in this came because the English were outnumbered, it wouldn't happen in most games, I imagine.

I'm a bit puzzled here. There is reasonable evdence that the Northumbrians and Picts both had cavalry at ths battle. The Aberlemno stone very likely celebrates the Pictish victory and clearly shows mounted combat. Interestingly the helmet on the supposed Anglian figure(s) closely resembles the York helmet.

As I mentioned in the notes, the scenario has the lead English element, as "Mounted Infantry"; now I guess we would use the DBA list and choose the optional Cavalry element and perhaps bend the list to allow that to be the general's personal unit. For this game I went with the warband though. The scenario already has a bunch of Pictish cavalry involved. The next time I do this, I will do as you suggest and get rid of the levy element, and subsitute some more spearmen, or perhaps some extra cavalry.

Thanks very much for your thoughts.