Super Seleucids

Yesterday I finished basing the Seleucid DBA army (Book II, army 19a) that Andy bought me a while back.

The army comprises (right to left) a Knight general, Cavalry companion and Light Horse:

...two Elephants and a Scythed Chariot:

...four Pike:

...and two Psiloi, plus two variants of Auxilia either of which can replace the Scythed Chariot:

I took the army over to Andy's this afternoon where he had identified five historical opponents that were selected in rolling a die.

First up was the very similarly-constituted Ptolemaic (II/20a) army:

My Scythed Chariot successfully mowed down Andy's General and a lucky roll saw my Light Horse take out Andy's.  

Andy's Auxilia killed one of my Psiloi on the hill, but my mounted troops managed to surround Andy's last Knight and kill it for the win.  Final score 4-1.

Next up were the Classical Indians (II/3a).

I tried to close up quickly as Andy had three Bow in this army, and I managed to take out a Bow and Knight on the left flank.  A couple of 6-1 rolls saw Andy kill my Light Horse and one of my Elephants.

After another loss each, I managed to break through and get my General on the rear of a Bow being attacked from the front, to scrape a 4-3 win despite a final roll of snake's eyes.

The final match was against Arabo-Aramaean (II/22f), a very different army with half of it Bow.

This was a surprisingly fluid game.  Andy's Light Horse made a dash for my Elephants but were cut off - and cut up - by my other mounted troops, who were subsequently killed by Andy's bowfire.  My Scythed Chariot made it all the way to other table edge and sacked the camp.  The final kill came by my Pike surrounding a wayward Bow, giving a final score of 4-2 for the Seleucids.

Tempting as it to now retire the Seleucids as Champions of the Ancient World, I am prepared to submit them to a potential reversal of fortune the next time I bring them to the DBA table.

Ancient Battles

 Andy and I got a few more DBA battles under our belts.  Last week we played Early Neo-Assyrian (I/25b) versus Early Achaeminid Persian (I/60c).

Andy lined up his Persians near the river I put down and advanced to the bank.  Leaving my horde behind to keep an eye on Andy's element in the fort on my side of the battlefield, I made my way towards the river.

As I reached it, I rolled a 6 revealing that the river slowed crossing, banks aided defence and only single elements or columns could cross.  As if that wasn't bad enough, Andy's 6s against my 1s saw his bow kill two heavy chariots before I even got a chance to cross.  And his superhuman horde even managed to push back another chariot despite being double-outflanked.

I soon lost my Psiloi and Blade on the right flank giving Andy a 4-0 victory.  I couldn't even kill one of the three hordes although as Andy informed as I was leaving, they don't count towards breakpoints anyway!

Yesterday we played Classical Indian (II/3a) against Graeco-Bactrian (II/36a).

I took another risk with the river and this time the river roll was a 4, slightly better but still reducing my Graeco-Bactrian knights to a feeble 1BW move as we waded through, and they never got in to the fight.

In the centre, battle was met but I didn't have the PIP dice to engage enough elements at the same time.  My elephant trampled one of Andy's bow but his Indian elephants did more damage.  Final score 5-1 to Andy.

We swapped sides for a rematch and I dispensed with the river this time.

My bow pushed up and killed a light horse.  There was a big battle in the centre with losses on both sides but elephants being able to quick kill knights gave me the edge, and after taking out Andy's general, I finally won a game with a score of 5-3.

Invading Italy

 Andy and I are trying to play more figures games.  A couple of weeks ago my Mongol Conquest DBA army invaded Italy, defended by Andy's Condotta.

The terrain was ploughed fields so James deployed across it as it counts as Good Going unless the first PIP roll of the game is 1.  Which Andy of course then rolled.  

By the time the Mongols had extracted themselves from the crops, the Italians had lined up a superior force of cavalry.  The match-ups were in Andy's favour and he rolled up all four of the Mongols.  In the meantime, James had taken a couple of elements in the centre and right flank, so Andy won the game 4-2.

Yesterday Italy was invaded even more improbably by Samurai.  Andy deployed an element in a fort which James thought he could take out early in the game.

Sadly, the dice were on Andy's side.  The three elements in contact with the fort were all able to attack, and all failed.  The same happened in the second round.  In both the third and fourth rounds, an attacking element was destroyed.  A 6-1 outcome on shooting saw James lose another element.  Finally, the Samurai actually killed a Knight, but a second 6-1 roll by a Knight killed a fourth Japanese blade to give the win to Andy 4-1.

In the rematch, James had more luck to start with, killing 2 Knights with bow fire, and a Light Horse in close combat.  Going in for the kill he surrounded a Knight with a Light Horse and his Cavalry General, but another extreme dice roll saw both of them destroyed, taking the score to 3-3.  Andy then took out another element winning the game 4-3.

This week's Rule 23 was clocking that command distance, and the terrain the General is in, does make a difference to the PIPs required to move elements.

Mongol Conquest and Yuan Chinese DBA Armies

Back in 2003, Andy and I fielded a Burmese army at Anderida.  The army had an ally in the form of the Yuan Mongols.

This 16 element command was drawn from the Yuan Chinese DBM army list but didn't have the right elements to form either a Yuan Chinese or a Mongol Conquest army for DBA.  So I painted up the extras needed so that I could field either DBA army.  I also rebased everything as my basing technique has advanced beyond my earlier "style" of painting everything green and just dry-brushing with sand.

Common to both armies are six cavalry elements including the General:

The Mongol Conquest army is completed with six light horse elements:

And the Yuan Chinese army has blades, crossbow, archers and a light horse:

Both armies can swap out a light horse for a stone thrower.  These were specified as rope-pull stone throwers in the Mongol list and I found the perfect model from Ancient & Modern Miniatures with four men pulling on the ropes.  Pulling hard is strongly incentivised to avoid the stone falling onto their own heads!

Samurai and Elephants

 Andy and I had a Ronin skirmish game at the beginning of the week.

A simple scenario with two Buntai staging an exhibition fight for the Hatamoto.

James took a Samurai onto the bridge over the koi pond for a dramatic Kurasawa-style duel...

...which Andy declined, instead ganging up on the rest of James' Samurai with the advantage of an extra man.  A short and bloody battle ensued, and James could never recover from the initial loss.

We learned a few things: 

• Andy doesn't care for the code of honour that all Samurai follow ;-) 
• Once you're a man down, you need extraordinary lucky dice rolls to turn it around
• Especially when the figures all have the same stats

So the key thing for next time is to create Buntai with more variety in their Combat Points, adding ranged weapons, and to explore the addition of Ronin skills.  I've recently discovered a Facebook group for the Ronin ruleset so I hope to get a flavour of how others are putting their Buntai together for next time.

We also had a swift game of DBA - James as Alexander vs Andy's Indians.

There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing to start with but the tide turned when I did a sequence of attacks not realising that the drifting apart wing of Andy's mounted troops were supposed to be still aligned.  This resulted in a loss from outflanking, which Andy punched through and turned onto the side of the pikes, with inevitably deathly consequences for Alexander's army.

Spot the mistake!

 

No, it's not that Andy deployed his Achaemenid Persian mounted troops (left of picture) in a bog.  But that James misread the Assyrian army list and deployed a 14 element-strong army!  And neither of us noticed.  And it also made not the slightest difference.

Whilst James raced across the playing area with a succession of sixes on his PIP dice, Andy struggled to extricate himself from the bog with PIP rolls of 1 and 2.

But when it counted, Andy's combat rolls of 5s and 6s crushed James' 1s and 2s.

The Assyrians, distracted by the supposedly easy-to-kill Scythed Chariot (without realising it didn't count towards the break point), were soon minced to pieces, including James' general.  Final score 5-1 to Andy.

Camping It Up

I finished these in August but forgot to post about them.  You might have spotted that the Mamluk army I posted about a couple of months ago didn't have any baggage.  What I bought at the time was a set of tents - Mongolian yurt, Arab desert tent and Chinese tent:

And a set of dioramas - pig roasting, market sellers and campfire

My aim was a flexible set of bases that can be combined to form baggage for my Mamluks and my forthcoming (don't hold your breath) Mongol and Yuan Chinese armies.  They will suit of course a variety of other nomadic, Arab or East Asian armies, and combining two of the dioramas without a tent could be baggage for pretty much anything.

All of the tents and dioramas came from Baueda.  The exception were the market figures which came out of one of Andy's boxes of bits a few years ago!

Mamluk Egyptian DBA Army

I finally finished the Mamluk Egyptian DBA Army that Adrian bought me a couple of birthdays ago.  They are opponents for the Knights of Malta among others.  The original pack was a V2 army so I bought a number of additional figures to address the changes and flexibility required by the new V3 army list.

The Cavalry General is accompanied by four compulsory and two optional Mamluk cavalry units:

Other mounted are Turkmen and Bedouin light horse:

And the infantry comprises (from left) Psiloi archers and naffatun throwing incendiaries (which I converted from Assyrian slingers), Auxilia javelinmen and Warband ghazis (armed with swords and kite shields), an element of mutatawwi'a horde, and two halqa Bowmen.

Ready for battle!

Clash of Clans - 15 June 2017

Andy and I met this week to fight for the first time with the Samurai armies that Adrian painted for us.  The leaders of our clans first met on the battlefield to discuss peace terms but then decided to roll their aggression dice instead.

As defender, Andy (top of photo) laid our the terrain and James (bottom) decided to attack over the difficult hill and hold the banks of the river within reach of the initial deployment.

Unfortunately, when testing the river, James rolled a 6 (one of few he rolled ;-) which meant the river slowed progress and could only be crossed by single elements or columns.
 

A series of 2 PIP dice from James and sixes from Andy, meant James couldn't safely get across the river and Andy pressed up on his right flank and repositioned to hold the difficult hill on the left.

Soon Andy burst across the river in numbers and pushed James off the bank, taking casualties.

On the other flank, James started attacking Andy's Auxilia in the difficult hill - which we accidentally allowed to fight as Blades but they still started taking losses.

Both clans had lost two elements each but James left flank was in disarray and under a lot of threat from Andy.  So James managed to get in and around one of Andy's blades and his general for a couple of 50/50 rolls that would either win it - or leave him even more vulnerable.  Sadly for Andy it paid off, with rolls of 5/2 and 5/1 killing off Andy's 3rd and 4th elements, and giving James' Hojo clan the win.

A slow game as we're still not acquainted fully with the V3 DBA rules but a lot of fun.  Key learning points were:
 - a difficult river isn't a particular class of Going that means elements use their Bad Going speed, everything moves at 1 BW per turn
 - we forgot about command distance which is important when Generals are in terrain or troops behind hills
 - and Andy's Auxilia who played as Blades made us wonder when we would ever use the 4 Auxilia option over Blades, since the latter are so much better, and none of the Samurai historical enemies have Knights.  We decided we'd just agree to both use them or both not in future civil wars!