Thursday, January 14, 2010

Asiatic Greeks to retire

Played 2 games of DBA against Mark last night, my Asiatic Greeks versus the dreaded Thracians. This time I pledged to retire the Greeks when they lost their next game.

After carefully counting Mark's elements, we played the first game with Greeks as defenders. This gave me open terrain and a littoral landing. The Greeks should top Thracians in open terrain, and had the hoplite line grinding forward for most of the game, but couldn't get kills. I thought this should have been over early, but it ended up a close win 4-3.

Second game put the Thracians on defence and Mark covered the board with bad going. This is pretty hopeless for a hoplite army since they are outfought and outmanoevered by auxilia in bad going. I tried to hold a valley on my right with 4 elements and run a march column down the left to enlilade and take his camp. Early in game Mark blundered his general into an open position in the middle of the board (taking a page from my book) and gave me a chance to close the door on him 4-2 and snatch an early win, but wouldn't you know - I rolled a 1 to his 4 and lost an element in the recoil. Bloody hell! He rolled the rest of the holding force up in the next couple of turns and the hoplites have to go into storage for a while. Along with those miserable dice....

As much as I love the way hoplite armies look, they are pretty hopeless fighting in bad going, they are slow and they lack any quick kill capability. It is an uphill world for them. I think I'll play Hittites or Sassanids for a while for a change.

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