DBA on a rainy Saturday

Bob and his daughter Jessica came over for a playdate today, Jessica played tea-party with the girls and Bob and I managed two games of DBA. Bob brought his eastern Franks (7 knights, 4 spear and a psiloi) and I faced him with my beloved Dacians (Cavalry general, 2 blade, 2 psiloi, 6 warband and a light horse). This match-up is brutal for one side, depending on who gets the terrain. Bad going favours the Dacians, open terrain favours the Franks. Fortunately for me (good fortune being a major theme for me today) I was defender in both battles, so we fought on a board dominated by big blobs of steep hills and forest.

Starting positions, Dacians are west, Franks east.

Bob concentrated his deployment in the north corner and tried to run the north flank,

Bob's schwerpunkt in game 1, preceding the ill-fated steep hill climbing expedition

then he ran into a steep hill full of warband

The trap- don't do it Bob!

Two knights died horribly in the jaws of the terrain trap, then I ran out of pips and Bob skillfully reversed out of the trap and reformed in front of his camp.

A tactical withdrawl that Rommel would have been proud of

I eventually caught up with him and formed up, I drew one knight forward with my light horse and the knight eventually died flanked, then fortunately for me his general ended up with his butt against the board edge when he filled the gap in the line and he died on a recoil.

The second game was dicier, similar deployment, but Bob managed to run a schwerpunckt down my flank and a knight actually reached my camp- at this point in the game the score we 2:2 and he had a chance to win the game with a +3 to +3 attack on my camp. He rolled a 1 to my 5 and it was basically game over. Bob played well, but rolled poorly. But he was a wonderful sport about it, and the cursing was modest.

Good run for the Dacians today, they now have 10 wins to 3 losses. I don't understand how this army ranks as one of the big losers all-time in the DBA stats tables, I think they are very tough on their home turf and they have some nice punch (knight & blade options) to go with their warbands.

DBA is a funny game, I reckon the outcome is determined by one third terrain, one third tactics, and one third capricious dice. If this was true, even the best players probably only win about 2/3 of the time since they cannot control 2 of the 3 factors, they can only play good tactics and hope for terrain and 6s. Today, terrain and 6s were in my favour. It's not always that way. But chance is a tremendous attribute of the replay value of the game, because this is what keeps it interesting and guarantees that no two games are alike.

I think I'll poll this. Which of the three do you think is the major factor determining DBA outcomes?

- the army's fit to the terrain
- tactics
- dice

Who says I'm bad luck?

Big batch of Brits done and dusted

I just finished a big batch of British Peninsular infantry and Rifles for Black Powder. They make up 6 battalions of foot and 2 battalions of rifles:

The rifles are the Italeri 1/72, not bad, good variety of poses:

And the foot were the new Hat box set, these are really very nice, comparable in quality to the French set I painted earlier:

I'm getting close to having the order of battle for Vimiero done. I still need a regiment of light dragoons (ordered metals since cannot find plastics with Tarletons) and to paint up another regiment of French dragoons.

The other thing on my to-do list is a Persian army for HOTT. I have been looking for an excuse to paint a 1/72 Persian collection up, and Wall got me onto the idea of playing HOTT. I think my first army will feature a behemoth (war elephant) some scythed chariots (knights) cavalry (riders) and lots of bows (shooters).

Italian allies for the Punic Wars

This week I finished off a box of Italian allies for the Punic War (1/72 Hat). This set has quite a nice variety of poses and shield types. It also gave me the opportunity to finish off a bunch of shield transfers for Greeks and Romans.


I struggled with the decision of whether to make the stands varied in appearance, according to shield type, colour, etc:
Or whether to make them more uniform, so that each stand represented forces from particular area:


I dunno, what do you guys think? I think I like the variety style basing for these troop types, whereas for Romans or Napoleonics I prefer to keep more uniform pose composition on each stand.

After a weekend hiatus visiting the dinosaur museum in Drumheller

My girls sharing an ice cream with T-rex

I managed to actually finish my 1/72 Carthaginian army for Impetus. The last elements were the Spanish (all Hat):

There are 3 elements of scutarii (FL with javelins)

Scutari in close

3 elements of caetrati (SK with javelins)

2 elements of cavalry (CM)

And here is the lot of them

I am now working on rebasing and repainting my Republican Romans. They are getting a spruce-up with some VVV shield transfers. This was one of the first 1/72 armies I painted. I would eventually like to develop a map campaign for them.

Dacians first blooding

Dacians won 2 and lost one against Thracians today. First game, Mark tried to outflank me with his cavalry then ran out of pips in a bad position and got picked off. Second game, very early on my general led an advance into the Thracians, but because he is warband, was forced to advance ahead of the main army. He got killed (doubled) on a 4-3 counterattack ( I rolled a 2 to Mark's 6). I was very cheesed off, but got it back in the third game when Mark outflanked me, then rolled three consecutive 1s in combats costing him 4 elements and his general. Wow. DBA is such a stochastic game. I reckon even the best players must lose 1/3 of the time to cruel twists of the dice.

Lessons learned?
- warband are great for getting in contact and making overlaps, but the mandatory advance can pull you out of position and leave you vulnerable to counterattacks.
- a warband general is deadly to both sides.
- Dacians have some good hitting power, but can be outmanouvered by Ax armies in bad going or cavalry armies in good. This is a tricky army to play well.
- Roll 6s. Don't roll 1s. For real.

Dacians for DBA

This week I completed a 15mm Dacian DBA army (II/52). The figures are from Old Glory and they are not bad. I like some of the animation and I think they look the part. The army consists of 1 x 3Cv or 1 x 4Wb General:
1 x 2 LH:
6 x 3 Wb:
Warbands in close, the shield transfers are from venividivici:
1 x 3Bd, these are of course the falx-bearing Bastarnae: 2 x 2Ps:
and the last element is either another 3Bd or 3Kn or 2Ps:

I would likely field either the Bd or the Kn option, and I like mounted generals (3Cv) so in either of those configurations we have an army that can fight in bad going (8 elements of Wb and Ps) and in some good going (Cv, Lh, Kn, Bd). With Ag:1 Hilly it means more often than not, we defend hilly terrain.

This will be my first try at a bad-going army, we'll see how they fare. I am a little concerned that they will fall short of beating either a mounted army in good going or a better configured mountain army with lots of Aux, so this could be a hybrid that doesn't work. On the other hand, it should have some chance of winning no matter what.

Scott and I completed our WAB campaign last night, and what a strange finale it was. In the past few games Scott's large Norman knight unit had it's way with my warbands, so I decided to counter by fielding a single warband of 64 warriors to absorb the blow and flank it with nobles and viking pirates with 2-handed axes to close in for the kill. I also tooled up my king with a steed and 2-handed axe to challenge the Norman Comes to a duel at the beginning of the battle. I reckon that could have gone either way, similar stats but he had a lance and heavy armour on warhorse against my highland pony and thrusting spear, but I also had 3 wounds to his 2. If I went first, I would probably win, but if he went first it could have been tight...

In any case, Scott declined the challenge which gave me d3 (rolled a 3!) points to use towards battle resolution in the game.

This photo shows the Norman Comes with his minstrel (singing Brave Sir Robin, I believe) declining the challenge to face Chief Angus McLovin

These 3 points hung over Scott's head like a cloud for the rest of the battle, proving to be decisive. Basically, his large knights circled my large warband and would not risk a charge. In the meantime, my vikings and nobles chased his other units all over the board getting brutally pincushioned by bows, slingers and crossbows.

They went thataway!

I eventually forced a small unit of his knights off the board (fleed a charge too far) and ran down another unit of foot knights that fled from my vikings (fleed a charge not far enough) and that was enough points for a Scottish win.

Hooray!

But really, it was kind of a non-game. Scott never had a winning position to launch a charge (with the -3 outcome differential sitting over his head) and I never got a decent charge chance. The battle that wasn't, we never fought a melee.

Next up: 15mm Dacian DBA army on the bench in preparation for MayDay.