Heffalump Challenge

I've written before about trying - and failing - to win at DBA, mostly because my face-off of choice is Indian elephants versus Alexander.

So I tried again yesterday, during the club's semi-regular "open-gaming" days. Only two of us showed up, but one was Jim, whose enthusiasm for DBA is infectious. (He runs the tournaments at the Orlando conventions.) Fully aware that I'm the worst player I've ever met, I asked him to demonstrate how the hapless Indians could win the matchup, and the obvious place to start was with me as the Greeks.

I have in mind to move thru the forest along the road, then spread out.

But the elephants head straight for where I'll come out.

So I shift my pike phalanx to a position where its flank is protected.

Here, I move my auxilia towards my camp to protect it
against those cav at upper right, while my war machine
moves up the road to target the oncoming elephants.

I'm getting flanked.

I think I can handle those elephants now.

As I move to threaten Jim's flank with my horse,
Jim blocks my artillery's LOS. But that chariot
makes a tempting target...

One chariot is dead, as I start shifting to left to hold off
Jim's light troops.

Jim strongly recommended not isolating my units, as
multiple touching units can be moved with a single order.
So instead of tackling his camp, I'm using my cav as a
mobile reserve and racing them to the left.

First combat, as I stolidly march towards Jim's archers at top.
This will prove to be a mistake.

After three or four turns of trying and getting knocked back
by bowfire, I'm ready to charge, but those elephants are being ominous.

A wider view - my cav are ready to support, but the
elephants are behind them...

At this point the dice gods intervened and Jim rolled ones for his order "pips" for a couple turns - which meant his elephants, which require two pips, couldn't move. This was all that kept me alive for a while, but ultimately I still lost by unit losses (first to take four bases off the board loses). It was fairly close, but I too rolled ones (during combats, not for orders) at critical points and in a couple cases failed to win battles that should have been pushovers. DBA is more tactical than it looks to the newcomer, but it's still complex to my eyes. Perhaps if units were labeled?

I've just realized I was rolling an Indian die the entire game, even though I was playing the Greeks. That might explain our poor luck...

In other hobby news, I've been reading a couple Paddy Griffith books on WWI, I've obtained an 8th-edition 40K Know No Fear starter set to go with my First Strike box, and I picked up some plastic glue to assemble it (like the Fantasy set, it's not snap-tite) and some pastel colors for Quar skin. I should be working on the latter project, but it's a tossup at present between that and 40K.

Finally, I expect to attend Pete Panzeri's Battle of the Bulge operational game next Saturday. Should be a more impressive report. See you then!

Yet More Reading

I've been steadily working my way through the stone-cold classic comic series Lone Wolf and Cub. I started it around twenty years back and only read about a quarter - now I've found the volumes at work and on Hoopla.

There are no pitched battles in the series (as usually it is one, the anti-hero Ogami Itto, versus hordes of ninja or mercenaries), but there is plenty of inspiration for small skirmishes. Yakuza gang fights and peasant revolts are hinted at, but even for very small games there are many interesting settings as the author and artist seek exciting setpieces. Dueling from small boats, in river crossings, in snow-bound passes and at guarded road-gates, assaults on caravans and more. It's never just one-on-one (and one-sided) duels. There are some uncolored Samurai Paperboys out there... and rabbit samurai minis, too.

The other is The Bronze Lie by Myke Cole, a curious critical review of the vaunted Spartan reputation. I'm not well-versed in ancient warfare, and may pick up his other nonfiction volume, Legion vs. Phalanx, which promises to go deeper into tactics and organization. He really picks on Thermopylae and 300, with a useful thesis basically opposite that of Hanlon's Razor - "don't assume professional commanders were incompetent." IE, the Persians would have done proper reconnaissance at Thermopylae (and if they hadn't, then they had Greek allies who would have told them there was a back way around the pass). Which means that Thermopylae would not have been an exercise in Spartan valor, but a Spartan mistake.

He's also hard on the concept that the Spartans were heroes for modern society to look up to - not just because they were far less "pro-freedom" than they're often made out to be, but because they actually lost the majority of their battles, and rarely lived up to their own codes of honor. Their record of defeating other Greek states largely lies in the fact that they were the only professional force while everyone else raised armies only as needed, but they didn't need to be a good professional force - a "one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind" sort of thing. And that professional force was raised to hold down the helot slaves, not really to conquer or defend other free Greeks.

There is unfortunately a lot of speculation (understandable given the paucity of sources that weren't centuries out of date). But there's still plenty of food for thought in this one.

I've also bought a second 2x4 table, enabling me to play larger battles without my unwieldy piece of plywood. The VBCW ruleset Went the Day Well has fairly short ranges and may work alright on a 4x4 table, as should Bundock and Bayonet. Maybe a game for Sunday?

Pilum at Canusium

Played an Ancients game today with Mark Ritchie, whose Tactical Combat rules are now available on WargamesVault. (I'm vaguely thinking of using or modifying it for VBCW, as it's a ruleset our local group have become very comfortable with.) The rules we used today were instead the hex-based Pilum/Firelock, which we used to play a medieval Polish game last year.

This battle was Canusium, fought betwen Hannibal and Marcellus in southern Italy in 209 BCE. It was just the two of us - most other regular members are in Orlando at the Recon convention this weekend. (I intended to go, but one of my cats has developed a refusal to eat anything but fresh food, so I can't leave her alone.) I took the Carthaginians, partly to see if I could be successful with elephants for once.

Scenario and forces.

The field of battle.

The Roman forces. Leaders are the ones with purple-spotted tags
at front - there are lots of them, the advantage of the legions.

Setup. Romans along the line of the river, Carthaginians
on the flanks.

My left. The tilted base in the center indicates hill carpet-tiles
under the felt. Slingers in the woods.

My right, with elephants.

My infantry slams into his cavalry. Not good - cavalry double
their dice rolls against foot troops. As a reminder, pipe-cleaners
denote hit-point loss, and yellow caps denote failed morale checks.
Two fails or 6-8 HP eliminate a base.

My heffalumps hit the Roman left. Unfortunately, they have very
good morale and it takes time to knock them out unless they roll
boxcars on morale. This actually happened twice, but that's not
all that useful when they had 20+ bases!

A special unit - flaming pigs to terrify the elephants. A
tactic I hadn't heard of.

Slowly stomping the flank (and the occasional pig) flat.

Closeup on Roman war machines and commander.

Closeup on the town of Canusium.

My left is battering itself into insensibility. At lower left a
unit is attempting to rally off its yellow cap - indicated by a
white cap. Hannibal has not got stuck in, because he only
has a leadership radius of two hexes, and is trying to keep
the slingers on-side.

My right is also winding down.

Ultimately, three of the elephants were driven into a rampage. An incredible roll by the pig-handler managed to kill one before it crushed him. With the pachyderms thundering off into the distance, I lost 19 points to 13  (1 per lost base, with occasional additions for commanders). But I did have the distinction that for the first time since Mark has run this scenario (including yesterday in Orlando) all four Carthaginian commanders survived.

The rules, particularly the Combat Results Table, are remarkably simple, and this was a fun, fairly quick game. I'd be happy to play it again. Though, as usual, I have no grasp of tactics... Till next time.

DB Oops

 Participated in a small club tournament yesterday. De Bellis Antiquitatis was so popular last time that it went off swimmingly.

Game one was between Romans (me) and Carthaginians (my opponent). 

While he was new to DBA too, he had the advantage of familiarity with the troops and tactics. So, for example, he was sanguine when I assaulted light cavalry with my heavy, knowing they could just run away. Our generals met on the field, and mine was flanked and thus eliminated when he lost, ending the game quickly.

In my second game, the sides were reversed:

I discovered that light cavalry could move multiple times in a turn, and raced mine in an end-around hoping to reach my opponent's camp. Didn't go too well. Both of us being inexperienced, we asked for lots of help with the rules and ended the game without a decision.

My third game was nearly a repeat of one from last month, Playing Classical Indians with elephants again, I managed to avoid running them onto Alexandrian pikes this time, but was badly compressed by terrain and never got many of my troops into action.

In the meantime, my opponent's light cavalry took my camp, and I didn't realize I could try to take it back until near the end of the game.

So, having ended up with approximately three points over the course of the tourney (the winner amassed 25), I received the coveted Snake Eyes award:

As usual, the conversation and food were the highlight of the day. We had a potluck, and there were favorable comments on the overstuffed sandwiches I brought from my favorite deli. I picked up a copy of DBA 3.0, some more terrain (including a sandy sheet I will use for the Fort Wagner scenario), and was gifted with a small selection of Spanish Civil War figures by one of the members. Post to follow. Happy gaming!

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.