De Bellis Antiquitatis

 Today's South Florida Miniatures Gamers (SMG) meeting was to learn the classic DBA (3rd editon). Member Jim, eager to introduce us to his favorite game, provided six boards and a dozen armies for about ten of us to try. The club generally does 18th century and up, so this was new to most of us. I got in two games.

The first was between Hundred Years War English and ancient Egyptians. (For whatever reason, the French weren't available.) I ended up playing Jim, which meant this actually resembled my home solo games quite a bit because he was moving about answering questions from the other players. This made the game fairly relaxing, and I had plenty of time to contemplate my moves.

Bottom: two units of knights, seven of archers, and two of 
men-at-arms on foot. Top: Four chariots, four archers, four spearmen.

My opponents:

We rolled for weather, and on a 1, the fields were wet and boggy. So much for the chariots! In the knowledge they couldn't reach me, I aimed to do an end-around of the Egyptian right with my knights (below).

What I hadn't considered was that this put them in range of the Egyptian archers. They spread out and concentrated on my commander unit, on the grounds that if the commander is destroyed and his side has lost more units, his side loses. So if your general is the first casualty... luckily the dice were with me. Not only did I win most of the roll-offs (higher scores force your opponent back, while doubling their score kills them), Jim kept rolling ones for activation, meaning he could only move one of his units.

The mobility of cavalry makes a difference however, and finally two of the chariots raced over to cut me off. By that time, I'd shot away some of his archers and had also got my knights into position to charge. I won by destroying four of his twelve units before he'd killed more than one of mine.

The second game was Indians vs. Alexandrian Greeks. My Indian army had three (!) elephants, two chariots, two light cavalry, one skirmish unit, and four archers.

I made the mistake, however, of just charging straight ahead. In hindsight, I should have chosen the option to move two of my (defending) army's units and stuck the elephants all the way on my right flank, which you can see above was facing normal infantry.

It turns out pike phalanxes can hold pretty darn well
against rampaging pachyderms.

Flanking makes a difference, too.

My own archers never got a look in, though my chariots managed to overrun the Greek war machine and then take their camp - a backline objective in every game that is worth two units. That made the game surprisingly close, three casualties to my four, which ended the round.

Several of the games were quick, enabling players to start again and try several different periods and armies during the day. And with small (2x2foot) boards and quick terrain layout, army creation and deployment, DBA and its variants are appealing for clubs like ours.

When I told him of my summer plans to run games at work, Jim generously donated one of his boards, a handful of terrain and a couple measuring sticks. (I'll make the armies with Paperboys.) Given my small tables for home solo games, and my hope of running small demos at work, these will come in handy even if I don't play DBA - though I certainly will try it again.

A 2x2 carpet square, fields, hills (that can double as forests),
a handful of lichen, and two measuring sticks.