Category: games

BBDBA Before-Action Report: Alexander vs. Darius

 JM and I have a BBDBA game tomorrow night. He’ll be playing my triple Later Achaemenid Persian (II/7) army, and I’ll be playing double Alexandrian Imperial (II/15) with Mountain Indian ally (II/2).  He has written up his plans in a blog post, only to be revealed after we play, so I suppose it’s only fair that I should do the same.

My prediction is that my pike block will walk forward slowly while my elephants mill around without enough PIPs to move, and JM’s large cavalry wing will flank me and roll up my line.  What a way to think positively, eh?

I told JM my army selection ahead of time.  Alexander will bring elephants and auxilia, giving a total of: 4xKn (gen), 2xLH, 2xEl, 12xPk, 2xAx, 2xPs.  The Mountain Indians will be led by a light horse general and won’t take any heavy foot, providing: 3xLH (gen), 5xAx, 4xPs.  The choice of armies is based mostly on availability, but I think the Mountain Indians will provide some useful bad-going support.

In response, JM has given me his army composition, which as far as I can tell is what I’ve chosen in the past: 2xLCh, 7x3Cv, 6x2LH, 9x4Sp, 3x3Ax, 9x2Ps.  On one hand, it’s the best choice given the elements available; on the other hand, I painted them all based on what I thought I’d field, so there isn’t a lot of flexibility here.

Other than knowing what I did with the Persians last time I played with them, this is as far as my Deep Thought has gone so far.  Before I play, I need to decide a few things: how to split up my Alexandrian commands, and what the commands’ missions are likely to be (depending on the Persian deployment).  JM will most likely be placing terrain, unless he wastes his 6-1 split on the terrain roll, so I am not going to concern myself with the prospect of deploying terrain, just yet.

Dividing my commands should be a bit easier for me, since I have only two armies that can combine forces with high/low PIP dice, and an ally who must act as a separate 12 element command.  All else being equal, the best divisions give each command a number of elements indivisible by three, so they must lose one additional element before they’re reduced by 1/3 and break.

Since each command needs at least 6 elements, the options are: 7/17, 8/16, 10/14, or 11/13.  Typically, large pike blocks don’t need a large number of PIPs to maneuver, they just need to run really fast.  I expect JM, with more recent Pike experience, might disagree with this assessment, but I’m going to run with it anyway; because in comparison, elephants need many PIPs to move at all and knights need enough PIPs to stay alive after the first round of combat.

Dividing commands and deciding on the strategy to use are tightly coupled.  I’d like to deploy my Pike in three blocks of four with psiloi joining them, for added maneuverability.  There’s basically nothing in JM’s army that can consistently face two ranks of pike in the open over the long haul, but he has plenty of ways to delay them and make them ineffective.  There’s no money in my pike trying to kill off his mounted wing, so if I want to win with them I’ll need to point them at the spears and push hard.  They can do a great job of delaying his mounted wing, but that would be hard to get him to agree to.  I’d also like a Knight general with the pikes, both to fill gaps and to possibly punch a hole somewhere important.

How will he deal with my Elephants?  He can either outmaneuver them, or try to delay or overwhelm them with psiloi or auxilia.  He may need his auxilia to protect the flank of his spears, and a few Psiloi to support the spears and auxilia.  This leaves him with about 5 free psiloi.  The elephants can’t kill psiloi, but knights can.  I’m inclined to face him with a block of Kn-El-Kn-El-Kn so his Psiloi can’t find safe footing against the elephants.  This will also work well against his mounted contingent, since they also don’t want to face elephants or knights.

The main question now is, how should I divide the commands for greatest effect?  I think it would make most sense to put the pikes in the larger command, but give them the low PIP die.  I think I’m leaning towards this option:

  • C-in-C high pip command with 3xKn (gen), 2xEl, 2xLH, 4xPk
  • Low pip command with 1xKn (gen), 8xPk, 2xPs, 2xAx
  • Allied command with 3xLH (gen), 5xAx, 4xPs

Unless I take some pike in the C-in-C command, I’ll drain off all the light support which will suck even more PIPs from the C-in-C.  The downside is, the pike block wants one PIP every turn; but I can maneuver them separately from the rest of the pikes since they can’t group anyway.

The allied command is quite strong against Persians.  The psiloi-backed auxilia can face some Persian mounted in the open if necessary, and can hold bad going.

I feel like Persia’s mounted wing has the potential to overwhelm mine, or occupy it and turn my flank.  He has 15 mounted, and I have only 11.  My elephants and knights are stronger, but I have a higher proportion of light horse, and they can’t coordinate their attack as well.  He’s also more maneuverable.  Overall I’ll have a shorter line with my double-ranked pike, but maybe I can extend it by strategic placement of single ranks.  I can also attempt to take advantage of terrain to funnel him and prevent him from using the full width of his army.

Most likely, JM will deploy terrain and set up 2 commands first.  I’m not going to try to guess JM’s terrain deployment, but I expect he’ll attempt to protect one flank with terrain and leave the other as open as possible for his mounted wing.

I am guessing JM will have to deploy his mounted wing early since it’ll likely contain his C-in-C.  This will somewhat reduce my ability to bluff without being obvious, because if I leave an obvious flank open by his mounted, he’ll either have to go after it or risk a trap.  If it were an option, I’d consider placing my pikes opposite his spears but with a flank open to his mounted.  My Kn/El block would be at the edge of his spears, and the Indians further down the line.  In practice, the pikes would turn to face the flank with a narrower frontage and try not to lose, while the Kn/El pounced on his spears.  The Indians would try to turn his other flank.

This would be a risky attempt to deny his mounted flank.  But he’s much more maneuverable, and his light horse quick kills my pikes while I have no second rank bonus.  So I don’t think that’s such a good idea.

My ideas have run out.  I’m tired, my laptop battery is running low, and tomorrow night I’ll be almost as tired by the time we start.  Hopefully my thought ahead of time will be enough to let me run on intuition once the game actually starts.

I plan to publish this as soon as the game is over or maybe only after it’s started; the after-action report might have to wait a while.

Game Review: Dominion: Alchemy

Everyone I’ve played Dominion with has really enjoyed it, including Marla and even Martine.  With the proper card selection Martine (at age 6) has no problem finishing games with the full rules, and has even been known to beat grownup opponents.

The first two expansions, Intrigue and Seaside, both add a good selection of cards to the game without changing the flavor very much.  I had high hopes for the third expansion, Dominion: Alchemy, when Andy brought it over to try it out.  Unfortunately, I don’t like it very much yet.  My opinion of the cards might improve if I play it more, but this expansion is different than the previous ones and I’m not sure I like that difference.

As anyone who has read my previous review knows, the basic game play in Dominion is to use the resources in your deck of cards to buy more cards for that deck.  As you cycle through your gradually improving deck, you hope to collect enough victory cards to be ahead when the game ends.  Cards can be actions, which do things; treasure, which is used to buy more cards; or victory cards, which do nothing (but are required to win).

There are many different effective strategies, and they vary a lot based on the cards available and how you use them.  Despite these wide differences, it’s still possible to categorize the basic action strategies into two broad categories.  I’ll call them “Action Combo” and “Utility Action” strategies.

With an Action Combo strategy, you buy many action cards, and depend on playing a big tree of actions each turn in order to cull the treasure out of your deck.  Since you have so many action cards, adding a few more victory cards isn’t a big deal, so it’s not always important to concentrate on the highest point value victory cards.  Action Combo decks often take long turns and end up with a large portion of the deck in play each turn, even late in the game.

A Utility Action strategy uses a low proportion of action cards in the end-game deck, and doesn’t rely on the use of a lot of actions each turn in order to win.  Instead, the deck concentrates on acquiring many high value treasure cards, and uses a few action cards to improve the chances of drawing big hands of cash to buy high value victory cards.  In this strategy it is important to concentrate on the highest value victory cards, so you don’t dilute your deck.

It’s possible to win with both of these strategies.  It can be a lot more fun to play with an Action Combo strategy, because you get to do a lot more on each of your turns even when you’re losing.  However, I usually end up playing with a Utility strategy.  I sometimes win the game with only 4 or 5 action cards total, but with many Gold and Silver treasure cards and a stack of Provinces.

(One strategy I enjoy a lot with the basic set is to buy a Smithy and a Silver in the first run through the deck. I often end up buying Gold on the second through the deck and Provinces on the 3rd and 4th runs through.  It’s very fast, but it can stall unless you build up enough treasure and actions to get you through the clumps of Victory cards.)

In the basic set, Intrigue, and Seaside, almost all of the card effects have varying degrees of synergy with each other, but there is only one card I can think of (Seaside’s Treasure Map) which requires another specific card in order to be useful.  Even Treasure Map only requires another copy of the same card in order for you to play it. Other action cards allow you to build interesting combos, but they combine with a many other cards and almost all of the actions are useful by themselves.

The Alchemy card set is different, because of the existence of the Potion card.  Potion is a new kind of treasure. Most of the other Alchemy cards require a potion to purchase them, and many of the actions are more beneficial if you have a Potion in play (that is: if you just used it to buy something). 

Since most of the cards in the Alchemy set require a card combo in order to use them at all, it tends to push you towards using certain strategies.  In order to get any Alchemy cards you need a Potion, but once you have a Potion you need to use it enough to justify its cost (both in treasure and the space it takes in your deck) since it won’t buy you many victory points.  Overall, this expansion guides you into using an Action Combo strategy. 

Yes, there are cards available that let you trade in one card for something else, which would let you turn a Potion into something useful after you’re done with it.  But I don’t find these Remodel cards to be very useful.  Why would I buy a card I don’t want, buy another card that can turn it into something else, hope I draw them both, and then spend an action to change one into another, when I could just buy the card I wanted in the first place?  Again, the result is an Action Combo strategy.

The main problem I have with Alchemy is that it doesn’t provide very many cards that support a Utility Action strategy (with some notable exceptions).  In practice, this isn’t very limiting for me, because typically you use cards from otehr sets along with the Alchemy choices, and I can almost always find a useful Utility strategy using only those.  But then I’m not using the Alchemy cards, which makes them a bit of a waste for me.

Overall, I’d definitely play Dominion with Alchemy cards, but it probably wouldn’t be my first choice.  I do want to play more games to get used to the cards and figure out how I can use them more effectively.  I also think it’s worth it for me to play with a set that forces a combo strategy occasionally, just for a change of pace. But I’m pretty sure I won’t be buying Alchemy at least for a while, especially since Andy already has it.

Stoogecon 2010

On Saturday I attended Stoogecon for the first time.  This was the second DBA tournament-type event I’ve played in.  I had a lot of fun, and hopefully learned a few “what not to do” lessons.  My goal was to win at least one game, and I won 2 (out of 6).

I don’t know if my experiences so far are typical, but my overall impression of DBA tournaments is that they’re basically just like friendly DBA gaming days, but you play more games against more people you don’t usually play with, and people aren’t quite as willing to tell you when you screw up.

There were 7 of us: Larry and Rich were running the event; Kevin, Jim, and I were also local; John came in from out of town and I’m not sure if Mike lives in Pittsburgh or was just visiting.

The first event was an open: Rich played, and Larry sat out to run things.  I hadn’t decided whether to play II/4c Warring States: Chao, or III/10 Hindu Indian, and didn’t have a strong preference.  Larry’s taunting convinced me I’d suffer less if I didn’t take the elephants, so I played II/4c.

My first game was against Kevin, who played Ayyubid Egyptians (IV/20).  I defended and placed one of my typical terrain setups: two woods and a steep hill at the corners of a triangle, disrupting deployment zones.  I deployed my spear line between bad going, with my bows to protect my left flank and my light horse screening the right.  Kevin attempted a wide sweep around my right flank with his light horse, which I repelled, and then sent in some cavalry.

He ran out of steam when he got around the hill and out of command radius of his general, but he did manage to take my camp.  That left the game tied at 4-4.  Taking back the camp was my surest way to win, but my general was out of range, so I’d need to hold out for a turn or so.

I got to the camp without losing any other elements, and the odds were in my favor: 5 to 3 with a quick kill gave me a 26/36 chance of success.  Unfortunately, the combat was tied, and play continued!  On Kevin’s turn, he killed my Psiloi, but lost the camp, so I won 5-3. 

This started a few trends for the night: I only ever beat Kevin, and all of the wide flank attacks failed.  It was also the first game I’ve played where a camp was taken.

My second game was against Rich, who played Italian Condotta (IV/61) as the defender.  This was a much more straightforward “line ’em up, knock ’em down” game.  There was a bit of back-and-forth between our bows on my right flank, but I lost on the left flank where my spears were crumpled by his knights.  Although “Diceman” had uncharacteristically good die rolls, I should have learned not to try to win against knights with my undersupported spears.  Rich won 5-2 in the end.

In the final round of the open, I played against Mike’s Teutonic Orders (IV/30).  I defended and placed a slightly different triangle of terrain.  As you can see in this picture, I didn’t learn any lesson regarding knights and spears.  The game went very quickly once we made contact: he crushed my spear and the psiloi behind it, and then an additional spear in two of the first three combats.  I managed to kill one element, I don’t remember what, but he killed one more element and I was done.  He won 4-1.

John won the open and took home an Essex Maccabean Jewish army pack to complement the Maccabeans he brought for matched pairs.

For the Matched Pairs event, I brought Later Spartans (II/5a), and Later Achaemenid Persians (II/7).  The Spartans had all the non-Spear options possible, and Persians chose 4 spears and another psiloi instead of a scythed chariot.  This time, Larry played and Rich sat out.

My first game was against Kevin again, and we played with my armies.  Kevin chose Persians, and somehow the Spartans ended up defending.  I set up virtually identical terrain to the first game we played (oops), but we ended up on different sides.  Once again, Kevin attempted a sweeping flank around my right side, to get to my camp.  But this time, he stopped too close to the woods, and I rolled a lot of PIPs on my first turn.  I sent my psiloi into the woods, flanked one light horse, and killed it (or pushed it off the board).

This game demonstrated again the difficulty of flanking attacks around terrain that blocks command.  I don’t remember anthing other than the complete failure of his flanking maneuver: I won 4-0.

The next game demonstrated that you learn a lot more by losing than by winning.  Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of this game, but I played against Larry using his armies: Athenians (II/5b) vs. Thessalians (II/5d).  I chose the Thessalians with the light horse option.  I defended and played less terrain than in my other Arable games, but still placed it in the deployment zones.

Can you see where this is going yet?

Yes, obviously: I attempted a wide flanking maneuver around the woods at Larry’s right flank.  I got into trouble when my light horse were out of command, and he destroyed most of my attacking force.  I managed to pull some of the light horse out, but shortly after our main lines clashed I lost 0-4.

 In the final round, I played against Mike again.  We used his armies, and I chose Scots-Irish (II/54) against his Picts (II/68), both with the Warband option.  He defended, and placed a long marsh and large wood opposite his waterway.  We played with the waterway to our side.  We both deployed with our infantry in the bad going and our cavlary in the open.

My first move was to send my chariots across the board in front of my infantry to try to take on his cavalry force and avoid his spears.  In retrospect, it would obviously have been better to just deploy on that side in the first place.  The rest of the game was a bit of a muddle: it ended up being a bunch of disconnected skirmishes that clashed before our main lines formed ranks, so most of the kills were attacks of opportunity and not a clash between two straight lines.  Overall I think that may end up a bit better for the Auxilia when it’s fighting against Spears, and it’s probably not unlike historical fights between Picts and Scots-Irish.

I killed off his light horse, and failed several attempts to flank and kill his general.  In the end he beat me 4-2.  It was an interesting and hard-fought game whose outcome was never obvious, but we also both made mistakes and suffered from them.

Jim won the Matched Pairs event and took home an Essex Later Polish army pack.

It was still early, so we threw together a triple game of Knight armies using allied commands on a 2×5′ board.  On our side, John was on the right flank facing Kevin; I was in the center facing Jim; and Rich was on our left facing Larry.

We basically just lined up some useful matches and pushed ahead. Kevin’s command broke first, but that’s just because John’s knights were running the fastest.  I managed to kill off 4 of Jim’s elements in the middle when we clashed, and that ended the game because he was the C-in-C.

This was a very straightforward lineup: there isn’t as much subtlety in BBDBA style games when you have three allied commands instead of variable command sizes.  I continued to learn that I don’t find double-depth knights very useful.  I did inadvertantly learn a useful tactic against them, however: if you aim bows at their front corner, they won’t necessarily have enough room to contact you due to their extreme length.

This was a good day of DBA, I’m glad I attended it.  I enjoyed facing opponents and armies I don’t usually play against.  Thanks go to the Stooges (Larry and Rich) for organizing this shindig and providing a full day of meals (donuts)!

Review: Rome at War

Rome at War is a series of tactical wargames produced by Avalanche Press.  They’re set in the Ancient period, and provide scenarios for many battles betwen Rome and her enemies. I picked up Rome at War: Queen of the Celts on discount online a few months back, and finally had a chance to try it with Frank on Saturday.

Queen of the Celts provides materials and scenarios for Rome’s battles against the Britons.  The game is available with two different versions of box art. The version sold in stores uses a family friendly image of a sword and shield.  If you order online you could also choose the “pinup edition,” depicting a topless Boudica rolling into battle on her chariot.  I expect the reason mine was on discount is that they didn’t sell too many copies of this box.

The Avalanche Press website has a useful document on learning to play Rome at War in 5 minutes.  It takes more than 5 minutes to read, but both this guide and the rulebook are fairly clear, and the rules aren’t complicated.  The game should play in the advertised 60-90 minutes once you’re familiar with the rules.

Most of the mechanics are not out of the ordinary.  It uses an area map with cardboard chits representing troops and leaders.  In combat, each side rolls a number of dice equal to their (modified) strength, and 6’s are counted as hits (step losses) on the enemy.

I enjoyed the command system. It provides some random ability to control your troops, but it’s not as limiting as the systems used in Command and Colors, DBA, or Warmaster. The C-in-C has a control radius to control other leaders, and those leaders have a control radius to control troops in their formation.  Out of command leaders have to roll when activated to see if they control their troops, and out of control troops have limited movement capabilities.

Formation activation is also variable: each player can activate a random number of formations per turn until all formations have been activated, or until each side fails to activate any formations.  Usually all your formations will have an action each round, but you have to decide which ones are most important, and which ones are most important to happen first.

However, some aspects of the game are a bit weird, or don’t work as well as I would have liked.

The map boards in this game have mostly square areas on them.  I say “mostly” square because they’re divided by randomly wavy lines that divide the board into roughly, but not exactly, square areas.  And, the game uses “long units” to represent larger units such as Roman legions and auxilia, and large groups of “barbarians” (the winners write history again, of course).  These are rectangular chits that aren’t allowed to stack with anyone except a leader.

The odd rules come out of the combination of the rectangular chits and oddly shaped board areas.  Long units have a front facing, which determines which areas are to their front, flank, and rear, and you have to place the chit on the board so it’s facing in the right direction.  However, the chit must also actually physically fit in the area where you’re placing it, without overlapping the sides.

The net effect is that some of the areas in this seemingly empty field can’t actually fit a long unit in one direction or the other (or sometimes both).  I’ve seen some boards from other Rome at War games that have more terrain, and I can see how the rules can be used to good effect: linear hills, cliffs, and other obstacles can striate the areas and provide clearly defensible positions that make sense as long unit placements.  But on this game’s wide open plains, the rules just feel like arbitrary punishment for standing in the wrong spot.

Another minor gripe I had was about combat.  On your turn, each of your units can assault one adjacent enemy (but it’s not required).  When one unit is fighting against three, the fight is one-on-one in one player’s turn, but three-on-one in the other player’s turn.  The effect of this rule is to encourage the player to try to use historically impossible maneuvering techniques to slide around the end of an enemy’s line in order to temporarily outnumber them for one turn.

The movement rules prevent blatant abuse such as a legion flanking another legion in front contact, while allowing more historical tactics such as flanking by light infantry or allowing cavalry and chariots all the way around to the rear of an end unit.  But in some cases it felt like the best tactic would have been to shuffle the line sideways each turn to gain an overlap on one end while not suffering on the other (until next turn, at least).

The other aspect that didn’t feel right were the victory points.  These vary by scenario, so it’s possible other scenarios would work better, but we had to track victory points for every step loss taken by every unit on the board, as well as remembering to reduce VP if a unit recovered steps.  It felt like a lot of bookkeeping, maybe there’s an easier way?

I’m generally not as concerned about the quality of game components in wargames like these, as long as the game is worth playing and the components don’t get in the way.  Queen of the Celts comes with two counter sheets, but most of the counters are different strengths of only a few units.  Combined with limited ability to stack counters, this means the board is definitely not counter-heavy.  The counter art is very high quality, with printed images of actual units of guys on them.  I’m quite happy with the counters.

There are three maps, printed in full color on glossy but thin paper.  They’re big enough, and I don’t mind the thin paper so much, but the quality of the graphics on these is pretty horrible.  Terrain effects are pretty close to a “flood fill” effect in the areas that have terrain, and they don’t look realistic at all.  The marsh looks like someone pulled out all their eyelashes and stuck them on a scanner, and the hills look worse than the average DBA hill, which is saying something.  They’re obviously all done on the computer, by someone without any map making or drawing skills to speak of.  On the scale between “usable” versus “pretty,” these maps are so far to the “usable” side that the lack of prettiness makes you not want to use them.
 
Overall, I’d say that Rome at War is definitely worth playing again a few times, and compared to watching a movie I’ve already gotten my dollars per hour out of it.  However, I don’t expect I’ll be buying any more games in the series, and I don’t think I’ll be playing this in a year’s time.  I definitely prefer Command and Colors: Ancients, even though I can’t win that game to save my life.  Rome at War: Queen of the Celts gets a 6 out of 10 on my boardgamegeek.com rating.

DBA at Legions, Friday April 2nd

I think the Stooges will have a bit of a shock on Monday; the DBA population at Legions seems to have almost doubled in a month.  I suppose in the long term view… most of us noobs will probably stop playing in less than a year anyway.

Tonight I made it out to Legions again, and got 3 games in against JM and John.  I played my Hindu Indian (III/10c) army all night, because I hadn’t had a chance to play it since I painted it: 3xEl (gen), 2x3Cv, 4x3Bw, 2x2Ps, 1x3Bd.   My overall impression is that I really like this army; but I was playing very deliberately, so games took longer than I’m used to.  I’m not sure if it’s the fact that it’s a new army to me, but I’m not sure it’d be a good choice for finishing tournament games on time.

My first game was against JM playing his Athenians (II/5b).  I was defending.  I placed a good sized central rough ground and two mostly insignificant corners of rough and woods.  My initial deployment was based on an idea I had (always a dangerous thing):  If I alternate bow/elephant units in a line to end up with a line of 7 elephants/bows, my two swaps can place a block of 3 elephants anywhere along that line.

JM deployed most of his spear to one side of the bad going, with his bad going troops towards the center.  I swapped my elephants to his spear side, and ended up with most of my slow bows on the denied flank opposite.

Most of the game was spent maneuvering: I advanced my bows and psiloi towards the center to take the bad going, and he maneuvered elements in front of my elephants to try to improve his chances on that side.

He tried very hard to face my elephants with his non-spear elements, but that requires a lot of help to succeed.  Yes, psiloi and light horse quick-kill elephant… but at 2 to 4 the psiloi have only a 1 in 6 chance of actually doing it… while I have a 9 in 36 chance of doubling the psiloi and killing it.  With light horse it’s even worse.  You need to have overlaps for that to be a winning proposition.

It was a very tight game, and a lot more interesting than we expected it to be.  I think I won 4 elements to 3. 

Next, my Hindu Indians faced John’s Early Egyptians (II/2a).  That’s a nice little army: blades, bows, psiloi, and a horde for good measure… apparently Egyptian hordes like hanging out in camp. 

I was the attacker, so he had to place a waterway.  He placed two smallish rough grounds in the center of the two quarters opposite the waterway, and I ended up playing with the waterway to my right.  He didn’t do a littoral landing.

He deployed with most of his bow next to the waterway, blades in the middle, and a group of bows and psiloi in the bad going.  I faced my elephants against his blades, my bow against his bow, and my cav/psiloi against his bad going troops. 

This was also a long, tight game and I barely pulled it off.  His bows were winning on my right flank, while I had some initial success on my left flank.  When the center clashed I was eventually able to kill a fourth element and win 4-3, but it had all of the back-and-forth of a hoplite battle, with his psiloi-backed blade (4) against my elephants (4).

I liked the element composition of his Early Egyptian army enough that I bought the other Essex army pack Legions had on hand.  It should be very quick to paint up after my Mongols are finished.

After a break while John and JM played, I faced JM who was playing Alexandrian Macedonians.   He attacked, and I set up rough/rough/woods in a triangular pattern.  I depoyed on the point of the triangle and he deployed the edge opposite.  My elephants ended up on my left flank opposite his pike block and mounted, and my bows and cavalry were opposite his artillery and bad going troops on my right flank.

We were both dancing around a lot: it took a long time for my Elephants to wheel around and turn the flank of his Pike… talk about a slow motion train wreck.  On the other side, his artillery was a real nuisance, mostly due to my hesitation in committing to attack it: my bows danced around at the edge of his range for a long time.  When I tried to maneuver my Cavalry in to charge, he brought up his bad going troops to delay me.  While I killed his Auxilia he brought some pike in from behind the Artillery to delay the Cavalry further… that should give an indication of how long this was taking.

Eventually my bows decided to suck it up, stand in a line, and charge, but while I was trying to find alternate solutions I got a bit lucky with shooting rolls: I only lost one bow against his artillery. If you start out doubling someone you only have a 1 in 4 chance of still doubling them after the die roll, so it wasn’t insanely good luck, just enough luck to stay alive.  That was my only element lost this game, I think.  Eventually I maneuvered my blade in for the kill, and the tide turned.  It was getting late, so JM charged with his Pike and I ended up getting 2 quick kills, and winning 5-1.

If he hadn’t charged I probably would have, and it wouldn’t have gone much differently.  I think I spent too much time obsessing over his artillery instead of just charging it.  It would’ve helped if I remembered it was only 2 against foot in close combat…

Overall I really enjoyed playing the Indians.  I like elephants, they’re scary.  I like bows as well.  I don’t like artillery, it’s scary… though maybe I’d like it if I was standing on the other end.

DBA Summary: Miniature Warfare

This is just a quick summary of the single DBA games I played at Miniature Warfare last Saturday, before I forget.

First, my Spartans (II/5a) faced JM’s Athenians (II/5b).  The terrain didn’t play any role in the battle.  I took 9x4Sp, 1x4Ax, 1x2Ps, 1x3Cv option, and he took 8x4Sp, 1x4Ax, 1x2Ps, 1x3Cv, 1x2LH.  JM deployed double ranked spear, and I deployed a longer line of single rank spear since he had a greater flanking force.  Hoplite battles are pretty fun in DBA, and this one didn’t disappoint.  He advanced his 2LH on my right flank and I was able to pick it off with a spear and psiloi.  After that, I won mostly with good die rolls, and because my longer line was able to turn his left flank. I lost a few elements, I don’t remember how many, and won by killing 4 elements.

Next, my Mountain Indians (II/2) faced John’s Nikephorian Byzantines (II/64).  I placed terrain, too much bad going in fact, and this one took a while.  The terrain an deployment attempted to funnel his troops towards my Elephant.  In the end, he carefully and deliberately pulled me out of the bad going and killed me.  Although I intended to try to learn how to play the Mountain Indians, I don’t think I learned enough about how to play them correctly.  I think I needed less terrain, and needed to use my Psiloi-backed Auxilia out in the open against his mounted a bit more.

Next I had a break while JM and John played Nikephorian Byzantines versus Alexandrian Macedonians; there were 3 DBA players there almost all day, so usually someone was sitting out.

Then Jim cleaned up his Napolean’s Battles and we played DBA: his Ariarathid Kappadokian (II/12) against my Warring States Ch’in (II/4a).  I wanted to learn how to play with Warbands.  Instead, I quickly learned how not to play with warbands: I lost double ranked 4Wb stands against his Aux on a 6-1 split, and the rest of my force quickly dissolved after that.  We tried to play a follow up game but time ran out an I eeded to leave in the middle.

BBDBA: Later Achaemenid Persians vs. Ghaznavids

(Updated below.  Discussion of my choices is happening here.)

Steve, JM, and I played BBDBA at Legions on Saturday, before the Miniature Warfare event.  Steve brought III/63(b) Ghaznavid, (1002-1186AD), and I played my II/7 Later Achaemenid Persians (420-329BC) again.  With almost 1500 years between these armies’ historical dates, this battle is more anachronistic than the Ghaznavids fighting against Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division.  Let’s hear it for fantasy gaming!

In my previous BBDBA battle, the C-in-C (me) was demoralized immediately after deployment.  This time I wanted to be more prepared, so I thought a bit more about dividing my commands and initial deployment.  The Persians’ low aggression means they usually set up terrain and deploy first. My goal was to find a flexible way to divide my commands, and to have a plan for setting up terrain and deploying my first two commands against an army with superior cavalry.

My army composition was the same as last game: 6x2LH, 7x3Cv, 2xLCh, 9x4Sp, 3x3Ax, and 9x2Ps.  That time I divided my troops into heavy foot, light foot, and mounted. However, with one huge psiloi backed spear command, I had few deployment options if I wanted to protect its flanks.  I could only protect one flank with bad going troops, which either left the other flank open or left the deployment of my third command too obvious.

This time, I used more combined arms in my commands.  My high PIP command had 3x4Sp, 3x3Ax, 2x2Ps, 2xLCh (gen), and 6x3Cv. Mid PIP was 6x4Sp (gen), 7x2Ps.  Low PIP was 6x2LH (gen), 1x3Cv.

With more light infantry along with the spears, they can anchor one or both flanks in bad going or against another command.  The combined arms high PIP command gave a lot more options in one location on the board, and is better at dealing with unpredictable threats. This is important when you deploy first.  The low PIP light horse command may seem foolish; in fact the evidence suggests it was foolish since it didn’t live long enough for me to see if it could be effective. But my thought was that this command could act as an independent flanking force or bolster my high PIP cavalry force, whichever I needed most.

For deployment, I wanted a plan that would allow me to avoid what happened last time: the enemy’s superior cavalry in two separate commands ganged up on my single cavalry command and took it apart.  I decided that to counter this, I’d use a deployment that led the enemy to believe they could use this tactic easily, but then deny its effectiveness.

The first image shows our initial deployment.  I’m on the bottom of the board.  I deployed a steep hill and a wood on one side of the board, to effectively split it in half.  On the other side I used a central wood to anchor my flank.  The road played no part in the battle or my plan.

I deployed my two rightmost commands first.  My psiloi-supported spear line has a block of psiloi on the left flank to take the wood and protect that flank, and three psiloi-supported auxilia on the right.  I deployed my cavalry behind, in a position meant to entice a cavalry attack and suggest I might place my third command on that side as well.

If I remember correctly, Steve’s army had 5 elephants, 6 bows, 3 auxilia, 6 spear, 3 light horse and 3 psiloi; that would leave 10 cavalry.  Steve and JM’s deployment went mostly according to my plan.  They placed the bulk of their cavalry (most importantly their elephants) on the far side of the wall of bad going.  This allowed me to more effectively avoid and pester them.  Their bows and auxilia were set up to take the steep hill, and their right flank was primarily foot with some linking cavalry.

I placed my light horse command on my far left flank, in position to harrass their relatively unprotected spear line on that flank.  My plan was working so far, but it hadn’t survived contact with the enemy yet.  I intended to win on the left flank, and not lose on the right flank by denying it.  It felt inefficient to “not lose” with my high PIP command, and this might have been a mistake.

As an aside: In many tactical discussions in the Fanaticus forums, it is emphasized that you need a clear plan, simply stated; and that in BBDBA each command should have a clear mission it is capable of achieving.  However, my understanding of what such a plan looks like has been elusive.  In this battle I formed a clear plan, so as an example I’ll state it:

The Plan: My overall plan was to deny the enemy on my right flank using the terrain to delay and confuse, and to attack on my left flank and turn the enemy’s line.  The high PIP command’s mission was to delay the enemy and prevent their passage through the wall of bad going.  The mid PIP command’s mission was to advance towards the enemy in good going, secure the woods on the left flank, and attack.  The low PIP command’s mission was to turn the enemy’s flank.

My first moves on the right flank were to consolidate my position.  I pulled my dangling cavalry back to deny the flank, while advancing my Auxilia into the woods, intending to fill the line with my cavalry from the rear.  Here, it turns out I made a mistake: according to a recent thread on the Fanaticus forums, you can’t form a column with elements that are currently in bad going.  Oops!  But Larry disagrees with that assessment, so I can probably get away with it in Pittsburgh… besides, I think my poor maneuvering in the woods caused me to use more PIPs than I would with single element moves anyway.

In the center I advanced my spear, and I was aggressive on the left flank. I advanced my psiloi to control the woods, and ran my light horse around them.

Unfortunately, my right flank became messy quickly.  I was able to avoid the elephants, but my decision to bolster the front line with cavalry turned out to be a bad idea against Steve’s bows.  I lost the cavalry in front of my C-in-C, which was also blocking reinforcements from coming in from behind.  Luckily Steve was also split into several groups, and had a hard time maneuvering his mounted columns through and between the bad going.

The center was somewhat split up by my spear trying to cover for the lost cavalry, but it was advancing steadily on the left. On my left flank I was doing much better. I got around JM’s flank and forced them to redeploy their psiloi, and put my general into position for a 3-3 quick kill against JM’s spear. Unfortunately, not only did I not kill the spear, I also didn’t recoil!  Cue ironic foreshadowing soundtrack.  Now you see it…

… and now you don’t.  With his one PIP command roll, JM flanked my 2LH (gen) and killed it.  Doh!  This decisive die roll demoralized my low PIP command.  The only part it played for the rest of the game was for the lead 2LH element to ZOC one psiloi and keep it out of trouble for a few turns.

I managed to survive a lot longer than I expected after this, and actually felt like I had a chance for a while, but it ended up being a battle of attrition.  I made some progress on the left flank, but it wasn’t killing as fast as my right flank was dying. 


On the right, most of my losses were my light troops in the woods.  This allowed some of Steve’s cavalry through the wall, where it helped JM’s cavalry against my spear. He finally got around the southern end of the wood with some of his elephants, but as you can see here he had a real command nightmare: elephants in 4 separate groups, with at least one group of elephants and two groups of cavalry out of command range due to the terrain.  Although this is what I hoped would happen, I didn’t plan on spending as many elements to do it.

In the end, my high PIP command broke due to the loss of its sixth element, and the game was over.  I had killed 3 elements in their low PIP command (breakpoint 4), 3 in their mid PIP (breakpoint 5), and 3 in their high PIP (breakpoint 5).

Overall I had a lot of fun, it was a tense and tricky game throughout.  I consider it a success even though I lost, because:

  1. I was able to formulate a clear, well defined plan
  2. My terrain placement and deployment effectively supported the plan
  3. My feint on the right flank worked, in its basic principle
  4. I didn’t think I was going to lose immediately after deployment was finished

On the other hand, I made the same mistake several times, and suffered heavily for it: I am not very good at ensuring that I have space to recoil when I make an attack (as evidenced by the Ax and Ps in the woods in the last image: the psiloi was my last element lost, killed by a simple recoil result).  I’m good at seeing when other players are poorly positioned, and I know when to take advantage of it… but I can’t seem to protect myself adequately.

I’m more excited to play BBDBA than I was after my previous game, but I clearly need a lot more practice with single DBA tactics as well.

Thanks for the great game!

Update: Some caveats and thoughts after some of Steve’s feedback:

  1. I had a plan, but I don’t claim it was a good one.  I did lose, after all.
  2. Steve and JM deployed mostly as I hoped they would, but I don’t know what my response would have been if they hadn’t.
  3. I don’t think my Cavalry deployment was very good.  I think my high PIP Ax/Sp line could’ve been done better as well.
  4. I may be better off with more 4Sp and less 3Ax.  I may be better off with one or two SCh instead of 2Ps.

Game Review: Small World

After hearing the Small World review on the d6 Generation Podcast, I picked up a copy. This is a solid, interesting game.  But since there are better choices to play on game night, I expect I’ll usually end up playing this one with the kids.

I would definitely recommend listening to the d6 Generation review for more details, but I’ll summarize the game play here. Small World is a basic area-control game with a humorous fantasy theme. The world is populated by elves, dwarves, giants, and other fantasy creatures, but there just isn’t enough room for everyone to live side by side in peace. 

The game uses a different map depending on how many people are playing, so the world is the correct size for any number of players from 2 to 5.  Game play is simple: collect your troop tokens, leaving one in each territory you control; and then place them on new territories to take control of them. Each territory requires 2 tokens for the space plus one for each troop or passive fortification on the space.  If another player’s tokens are removed, they lose one and replace the rest as reinforcements at the end of the turn.  This population displacement mechanic makes it clear that this is a civilization-building game, and not a wargame.  At the end of each turn, you gain victory points based on how many territories you control.

There is no randomness during game play. The only randomness is in the mechanic that also generates the game’s replayability: the races and special abilities.  At the start of the game, 5 races are turned up, along with a special ability for each.  Both the race and the special ability affect the number of troops required to capture a territory, the availability of passive defenses, and the number of victory points awarded for each space.  For example, Commando Wizards have the “Commando” special ability, which reduces the number of troops required to take each space by one; and the “Wizard” special ability, which gives an extra victory point for controlling magic spots on the board.

There are quite a few different races and special abilities, and they’re randomly combined.  This produces many different combinations of game effects to choose from each time you play.

The game mechanics are simple, there is no randomness to speak of, and no hidden information is used during game play.  The current VP total is hidden, but best left secret until the end of the game anyway.  There is minimal reading required, mainly to figure out what each race and special ability does, but even if not all players can read, it’s fine to have one person explain things to the others.   And the game only lasts about an hour, plus or minus 20 minutes.

For all of these reasons, this makes an unexpectedly good game for youngsters.  The recommended age range is 8+, but Martine and her friend Levi have played with no problems at age 6+ (first grade).

I expect there’s a bit more strategy to explore in multiple plays with adult opponents and higher player counts, but I think this game will come out more often with the kids except as a short duration filler game with adults.

Miniature Warfare 2010 at Legions

On Saturday, there was a historical miniature wargaming event at Legions: Miniature Warfare. 

The organizers had about 5 games scheduled before the event, which were available for anyone to walk up and play. There were two or three Flames of War events, a Sharpe Practice scenario in the Napoleonic period, an American Civil War scenario using Brother Against Brother, and a Sword and the Flame game.  At the last minute they added Jim Naughton’s game, a Battles of Napoleon scenario; and a modern Disposable Heroes game.

Unfortunately the organization and publicity wasn’t ideal.  Many folks came out and played pick-up games, including the normal Saturday gaming crowd, but the scheduled games didn’t seem to have a lot of attendance; some weren’t even run due to lack of players.   

Steve, JM, and I got there before the event started, and started playing BBDBA (battle reports are forthcoming for the DBA/BBDBA games). After that, Steve and JM played a small game of DBN while I checked out some of the other games, but I wasn’t as interested in some of them as I thought I might be.

I wanted to see what Sharpe Practice looked like, since it’s billed as a skirmish scale game.  It was still a lot more figures than I’d want to paint for Napoleonics, and they were 28mm.  I think in this case “skirmish” means it has a 1 man to 1 figure scale, but you still need a lot of figures/men to play a game.

The Sword and the Flame scenario looked really interesting, but not enough players showed up to actually run the game, and I was there long after it should’ve started anyway.

I pushed lead for a few turns in Jim’s Battles of Napoleon game, but there wasn’t much action on my end of the board, and I was planning to stop when JM and Steve were finished.  Unfortunately for all the Napoleonics players looking for new opponents, I’m still not very interested in this period.  I’d play a DBN event because I like those rules, but I still have no interest in painting for the period.

When the DBN game was finished, Steve left.  I played DBA with JM: my Spartans vs. his Athenians.  Next was a slow game of DBA with John: his Nikephorian Byzantines slowly extracted my Mountain Indians from their fortified positions in the woods and steep hills.

Then, John and JM played DBA with Byzantines vs. Alexander the Great. I looked around at games and products for a while, and when Jim was finished with Napoleon’s Battles, I played DBA with him.  Our second game was cut short when I needed to leave.

I feel like I might have forgotten one of the games I played; it seems like not enough games to fill the space.  Unfortunately much of the day there were 3 players for DBx games, so one of us just hung around during many of the games.

Overall it was a fine day of DBA, but unfortuantely we didn’t participate in the non-DBx games very much.   I suppose that’s not a downside if we weren’t interested in the games, though.  I think the best result was getting more historical gamers in the same room at the same time.  For future events, I think in order to succeed the event may need to be more strictly separated from the open pick-up gaming going on at the store concurrently.