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.

It was immediately clear how rusty we were. The areas of bad going David set out were too large, leaving his numerous mounted no room to fight. I was able to swarm the central hill with my superior numbers of Auxilia, whilst attacking the single Psiloi on the Roman right with two of my own. My third Psiloi and chariots held the Roman mounted at bay. The Canaanite Auxilia broke through the Roman lines, their lone Psiloi in the wood died, and things began to look dicey. David briefly contemplated a suicidal no-recoil move with one of his blade on the steep hill, before settling on a brave but slightly-less-suicidal version with enough room to recoil.

Suddenly, his dice caught fire.

With high pip dice, David was able to re-order his lines on the right and centre, whilst his mounted snaked through the constricted gap between hill and woods by sneaky single-element moves to attack my chariots. A single LH faced off my Psiloi with a carefully placed barker. With high combat dice he was able to inflict casualties on my Auxilia and Psiloi. Suddenly I was three elements down, and my own pips dried up. It turned out that David’s carefully-placed LH was not quite carefully placed enough. I was able to contact him with my Psiloi whilst retaining at least half a millimetre of the element’s rear corner in the Bad Going. Alas the dice failed to co-operate with this cunning trick of mine, and the next bound David brought another LH across to kill the Psiloi and end the game.

For the rematch, I rebadged the Canaanites as Kassite Babylonians, meaning lower aggression and no Blade. Despite the lower aggression, I invaded again. David set out the same terrain, but each piece was slightly smaller this time, so that his mounted had plenty of room to operate. I advanced my Psiloi and Auxilia to envelop his left flank, which was based on Blade and Psiloi, but David’s dice were still on fire. His pips averaged about 5.2 across the whole game and he was able to put together a complex shuffle to catch my Psiloi in front and flank whilst advancing his mounted on the flank and Auxilia on the central hill. My army fell apart on contact and the game ended 5-1.

Giving up on these flimsy Biblicals, I shifted to a nice solid Medieval German (the (a) list with dismounting knights) whilst David took another of his old perennials: the 100YW English. I won terrain this time and set up a largely open field, with some woods right at the edges of the board. We lined up opposite each other as Barker intended. David’s lone Psiloi advanced into a small wood on his left flank, and then retreated again in the face of two elements of mine. My line swept forward, cheesily dismounting the knights facing Bow, whilst keeping the others mounted. David kinked his line in two places, but the dismounted knights did not fear to go in against kinked Bows where the odds were +2/+4. What with knights fighting knights, Bow shooting against spears, and kinked lines, both sides were soon broken up into numerous single elements or groups of two elements at most, and the scope for manoeuvre was small. Once the blade were in contact it was only a matter of time before casualties began to be suffered. The fire in David’s dice was well and truly over by now and his pips were never high enough to regain control of the battle and get his bow out of contact. So I finally got a win.