Successor Test Drive

I finally primed up the last batch of figures for my Hellenistic morph collection despite the low temps and wind.  Living in a high-rise apartment makes some hobby tasks harder: I took the models out to the Han River park to prime up.  The group consists of four elephants and two scythed chariots.  I will use one of the chariots for the morph and save the other for a future Persian army.

I also have a batch of Auxilia that just needs ground cover on the bases.  I carried the Auxilia with me on a trip to the States.  This is the first time that I have carried along a painting project, and it was worth it.  I also used Essex miniatures labeled as "Assorted Hoplites with Pilum" to create imitation Legionnaires to use with the Ptolemaic and Seleucid lists.  With jet lag waking me up at 3 am, I had plenty of painting time!

I am also painting more Pikes, Cavalry, and Camels.  Although I plan to use the elements to morph numerous Hellenistic armies, I am painting the last batch of Pike and Cav as Seleucids.  When complete, I will be able to field any two enemy armies from the various successor states as well as the Alexandrian armies.  I suspect that the collection might also work for other games like DBMM or Field of Glory.

Lysimachid

My son Ryan was interested in playing DBA tonight, so we fielded the partially painted Elephants to try them out.  Ryan fought with the Lysimachid (II/17b) army.  He deployed all but two elements in one large group, keeping two Psiloi back to guard his camp.

Kassandros

I tried out the Kassandros Army, placing all elements but my Knight General and Cavalry in a group.  I played the defender.

 We used the 2.2 rules and the draft army lists for 3.0.  Since we had not played 2.2 in a while, we reviewed the quick kill situations before starting.  The armies present several interesting quick kills.  Ryan had many elements that could quick kill my Elephant and Knight General.  I initially deployed the Elephant near my Pikes, but I rotated the element to face off with Ryan's Knight General.  I was a little nervous about his Light Horse going after the Elephant, but he decided to use it for a swift attack on my camp.

The two main groups moved to contact, and I killed his General on the first round of fighting with my Elephant.  We decided to count it as two lost and continue playing.  Two turns later, I flanked his Elephant with mine and managed to kill it.

Ryan's turn was uneventful.  He rolled low PIPs and used them to attack my camp.  The Light Horse recoiled.  On my next turn, I moved my Elephant forward, forcing the Pikes to turn to face the attacker.
With Auxilia on the flank and no luck on the dice, Ryan lost the Pikes and the battle.

Shout Out

I recently met a very experienced player, Jeff, who lives in Seoul.  We played several games, and Jeff patiently taught me the finer points of DBA 2.2.  I credit that gaming session with my attention to the deployment in this game.  Ryan is very competitive, so I suspect he, too, will look for a good deployment approach when we next pit a few miniature armies against each other.