Thursday, August 23, 2007

Dbmm Sassanid vs Late Roman

Game at Stephens on Tuesday 21st

I used Sassanid a Regular version and Stephen used Late Romans with Inert General (not strictly historical match-up but close). Romans invaded with very little terrain (couple GH O and E none of which had any effect on game except a large M on Stephens left)). Romans had 4 ArtF Carts in centre vs my 2 Ele and CvS so I held these back (ie lowest die) to avoid shooting and advance on both flanks with CvO/CvS Cmds. My left Cmd was badly outmatched with my LhF facing LhO and my Cv faced by 6 elements of KnX ! On my right I faced a mix of AxS and BwO backed with PsO. I had a Cmd of Nomads outflanking on my left. My left advanced into tteth of enemy and my LhF killed 3 oppossing LhO :-) CvO held up the KnX. On my right I manouvered vs the Inf and took a couple of recoils from Bows but no losses. The Roman Legions backed by Ps and the Arty advanced towards my centre. Things continued reasonably favourably on my left (except Arabs wouldnt appear) and on my right my Cav got to grips with Ax/Bw. The movement of the Arty stopped them shooting but they were coming into range.............
On my left things went downhill as KnX QK several CvO/S disheratening my Cmd. On my right despite totally out manouvering the Romans I could not kill the Bow (despite overlaps and no room to recoil !). Ofcourse Arty then killed an Ele and I was forced to charge into the Bd.
My left Broke just as my Arabs arrived. As it turned out Stephen had a smaller Arab cmd outflanking on this flank which I chased onto the table. On my right I still could not damage the Roman Inf ! Centrally it was a stalemate as I could not kill the Inf nor they my Cv.
But.................isnt there always.............. by now my left had broken so I hurled the Arabs into their counterparts and of course I managed to lose the combat and then watched as Stephens s Arabs then killed my Ally and broke his Cmd this loss with other broken Cmd and accumulate losses losing me the game..........again............

Yet another fun game with plenty of exciting combats. But I had nothing to really deal with the massed KnX (Ele deploying first meant they coul d avoid them) who after slow start ate my Cav.................

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Field Of Glory game

Playtest game of FOG today using the generic Punic army lists in Beta rules (Romans vs Cathaginian)
Set up etc all smooth and plausible with exception of lack of non-deployment on flanks (a gift for corner huggers). Game phases worked fine and all mechanisms worked ok with any queries relatively easy to sort out. Romans are awesome (lots of Heavy Foot of Superior status with Armour and both Skilled Swordsmen and Impact Foot !!) able to take on foot and/or cavalry.
But....................
Boy o boy does it take ages to get to grips in FOG ( multiple wheels etc are nightmare to measure) so micro-management orintated (Competition bias shows thru) and so much dice rolling to achieve any results !! game rather lacking in excitement compared to Dbmm and despite much better clarity and its inherent playability its simply just not as much fun.
Sad to say I think FOG will probably be the more popular ruleset :-(