More Desert Frontier DBA

I played a couple more games of DBA yesterday, using my neglected Roman desert frontier armies.

In the first I completed my trilogy of games, pitting the Romans against the Parthians. Both armies used the lists from the previous post. The Romans defended, chose some bad going to shut down the superior numbers of Parthian mounted and then didn't get to place half of it. The Parthians aimed their attack at the Roman right, whilst the Romans formed a solid infantry line and held their limited mounted assets in reserve.

The Parthians led with a light horse swing around the Roman right, which the Romans countered by sending out their dromedarii.

The Parthians were on the Romans very rapidly. Double-ranking the light horse gave them a fair bit of striking power, especially since the cataphracts quickly opened up some overlaps.

The Roman right collapsed very quickly - they lost some blades, auxilia and the camels.

The Romans threw in their reserves, and had a surprising amount of success. Their cavalry destroyed some light horse ...

... whilst on their left unengaged auxilia managed to surround another element of light horse and destroy them. Finally the front element of a supported light horse group was forced to flee, which destroyed it as it was unable to pass through the element behind it.

The Parthians were now three elements down, as well as the Romans. But the Romans had had to plug a gap in their line with warband, and warband vs cataphracts is never going to end well. In fact with overlaps the warband were two points up in the combat, but the Parthians rolled well, and the routed warband cost the Romans the battle.

So a 4-3 win for the Parthians. It looked like it was going to be a walkover, but counterattacking the light horse and blocking their retreats almost saw the Romans come out on top.

For the second game I got out my Meroitic Kushite army, against the Romans (the only historical foe I have for them). I diced for element choices again, and got the following armies:

Romans: 1 x Cv General, 1 x Cv, 4 x 4Bd, 3 x 3Ax, 2 x Lh, 1 x Ps

Kushites: 1 x El General, 1 x Cv, 5 x Sp, 2 x 4 Bd, 2 x 4Bw, 1 x Ps

The Kushites defended. Their home terrain is Steppe rather than the expected Dry, which always catches me out. The battlefield saw a temple complex out on one flank, and a couple of low hills. The Romans massed against the Kushite right, looking to rush it with their mounted despite the presence of elephants.

The Kushite right.

The opposing Romans.

Both sides started with low PIPs, so the advance and sorting out of lines took longer than expected.

The first contact!

The elephants pushed back the light horse the Romans had sent against them. But this left them exposed, and they were quickly brought down by swarms of horse-archers.

As the Roman blades advanced against their foes, the two lines broke up. However with their general gone the Kushites struggled to mount any meaningful defence.

The Romans broke through the Kushite line. The light horse would ride for the Kushite camp, but dallied long enough to provide some useful overlaps which saw the Kushites lose an element of spearmen.

On the other flank the Romans had sent auxilia through the temple complex, but they were hit by Kushite light troops as they emerged, and lost an element.

However the Romans were very much in control on the rest of the battlefield, and their general led a battle-winning attack on the Kushite flank to destroy more spearmen, and give the Romans a 4g-1 win.

The end of the battle - both lines were very fragmented, thanks to the propensity for blades to pursue their beaten opponent.