The Balkans 1370 AD :: What Are The Odds?

Yesterday we re-ran John Davies’ Balkan campaign but this time at 400 points.  John brought along a deck of terrain cards he’d devised.  The three tables were quickly laid out to three cards drawn from the new terrain deck.  I’ll be posting the deck online later this week but for now I want to write about the match ups that arose during the day.

At MAWS lots of the DBMM players arrive in pairs; they tend to be regular opponents who are also travelling buddies.  So when John picked the sides for campaign he made sure that these pairs were split; one on each side.  So far so good but it didn't quite work out as planned.

I was commanding a Serbian army on the Ottoman team. We looked at the table layouts and decided who was going to play where in the first round of games.  The Catalan team had obviously done the same and, would you believe it, all the regular opponents were due to play one another!  Not good.  This was quickly solved by the team captains rolling a dice and the loser rotating the players by a table.

The second round was due to see the top scoring players play off and likewise down the rankings.  Amazingly, all the regular opponents were playing one another again!  The campaign is supposed to generate games against unfamiliar opponents. After yet another switcheroo the second round got underway.

At the end of the day’s games the Ottomans emerged victorious for the second time.  The games played much better at 400 points so we’ll probably stick with this.  Afterwards John was talking of extending the campaign to eight players.  Perhaps this will make it easier for people to play fresh opponents.  After yesterday I wouldn’t bank on it.