At the March PW meeting, Ben Pecson set out an ancients skirmish game with a twist. He used the DBA rules as the guiding structure. There were some 28 single-mounted 25mm Celts plus one chariot manned, or, rather womanned, by Boadecia, herself, versus a bunch of similarly single-mounted Romans. One group of Romans - I think there were six of them - manned the walls of the castle, and it was this castle that we Celts were to take, to pillage, to destroy. As indicated on the map, we Celts started out on three sides of the field, and commenced to move 4 inches per turn. A secondary goal of ours was to capture an oxcart of provisions headed for the castle and guarded by a couple of Romans. We made contact soon enough; one of Joe Walakonis' bands of Celts closed with the oxcart escort around Turn #4, but this didn't seem to phase the oxen... they had been put on "automatic"... and despite the melee and hub-bub going on around them, they placidly continued to make their way toward the castle. Moving at the rate of 4 inches each bound, my Celtic band, starting from the end of the table furthest from the castle, dashed along trying to get into the game before it was over, but they needn't have worried. Even though they finally caught up to the others around Turn #15, there was still lots of combat going on and many Roman scalps to take. The six Romans in the castle abandoned the walls and ran out to help protect the oxcart. There was, therefore, no one within the castle, and it was my thought that a couple of my boys would bypass the melees and zip past the engaged troops, enter the castle and win the day. Under the DBA system, 'auxiliaries', which I think Ben classified the Celts gave them a +3 to add to their 6-sided as die toss in combat. The Celts also had about six men classified as 'psiloi', which gave them a +2. The Romans, for the most part, also had a +3 in combat, except for their leaders. One of them, bedecked in white fur, called the Wolf Man, had a +6... my boys attacked him without suspecting he was a powerhouse, and he wiped out a couple of troops before I wised up. The other Roman leader, Napoleonicus, was mounted on a horse, and he, too, was far from being a wimp. The DBA combat rules are fairly simple, so simple that they lead to interminable combat. Combat is fought man-on-man, and each man tosses his die and adds his modifiers. There are, basically, only two results: If one man's totals are double that of his opponent's, the opponent dies. If not, the attacker backs up an inch or so. Most of the men on the field added +3 to their toss. Note that with 6-sided dice, a one-man-versus-one-man melee has the following possible range of results if each side adds +3: (a) Suppose I'm the attacker, and I toss a 1, and you toss a 6. My total is 4, yours is 9, more than twice my total, and I die. (b) I toss a 1 (total of 4), you toss a 5 (total of 8), you double me, and I die. (c) I toss a 2, and you toss a 6. My total is 5, yours is 9, and I back up. Which means that only the instances in cases (a) and (b) lead to a final result; for all other dice results, the combat is inconclusive. This was the situation when Joe Walakonis' men contacted the Romans; first one would fall back, then the other would fall back, then the other, then the other, then the other... Remember that Joe's boys contacted the Romans around Turn #4, and I arrived up field around Turn #15, and the fighting was still going on. In the past, I've mentioned my dislike of the "interminable melee", but I guess the DBA/DBM crowd thrives on it. Terry Sirk's Celtic band was initially located at the temple on the eastern side of the table, and he and I thought we'd easily swamp the Romans on the field. Not so... our host suddenly placed, on the northeastern corner of the table, about 15 Roman reinforcements. Which meant that we couldn't waltz into the castle without fighting our way through. The men in my band and in the band of Terry's equaled in number the Roman reinforcements, and thus our initial combats were as inconclusive as those of Joe's. In a couple of instances, however, Terry lucked out, tossing a 6 to his opponent's 1, and a Roman was removed. This gave us a chance to gang up, 2-men on-1, or 3-men-on-1, which is the only way you can win at DBA. Even a 2-men-on-1 affair is no bargain, for here the advantaged side only has a 16 percent chance of killing his opponent... again, 84 percent of the time, the outcome is a fallback. Another couple of lucky tosses, and we so far outnumbered the Romans that we were able to slip a couple of Celts to the rear of the Roman line. The man-in-the-rear factor was the turning point of the battle. Here, if a Roman was to fall back, and some burly Celt blocked his way, preventing the retreat, the Roman's heart would instantly fail... "O' shukky gee!", he'd say, and he'd keel over on the spot. After another umpteen turns of battle, we surrounded and killed Napoleonicus, leaving the Romans with only one leader, the dreaded Wolf Man... we still didn't dare attack him and his +6. Mr. Wolf Man, the one-man-army, was classified under the DBA system as a 'blade', hence he started out as a +5, and he added yet another point for being a leader, giving him his +6 total. Some 200 turns into the game, the Romans gave up the ghost. Ben's figures were, as usual, beautifully painted; I mentioned in the last REVIEW that in the previous game he hosted, the casualties were simply turned on their side, and left lying on the field. In this game, we removed the casualties; not a single overturned figure was to be seen, not a single huge base sticking way up in the air. Definitely an improvement over Ben's last outing. Back to PW Review April 1995 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com