First Test with DBA 3.0

I finally played my first game of DBA 3.0 (the current test version) and although it was solo, I did not use DBAS; I was simply playing both sides, trying to figure out what rules changed and how things were different.

I played the draft lists of the New Kingdom Egyptians (the b list) versus the Philistines (the a list) and came up with the first issue: the Philistines list the NKE as an enemy, but the reverse is not true. Ah well, hopefully the Barkers have that sorted out.

With an aggression of 3 for the Philistines, and a good roll, they ended up the invaders. The NKE had to place the terrain. As the topography is Littoral, I had to place a waterway. For the optional terrain, I chose a road and a woods; nothing too complex for the first game. The photo below shows the terrain (and troop dispositions at the end of the game). The NKE are at the bottom and the Philistines are at the top.

The first thing that changes is rolling for terrain quarter placement. In this case it was no real challenge as two of the three rolls were a '5', allowing the NKE player to place the terrain as they wished.

On the DBA forum on Yahoo, I could have sworn I saw a statement that the invader could not choose a baseline that contained a BUA, but I could not find the rule that said it. I will have to ask on the forum, but as I could not find the rule I decided to forego a BUA this game.

The NKE decided to setup farther back, in order to get their Bows into action longer. Basically, that did not work. The Bows did nothing except provide the occasional overlap for Blade on Blade battles.

The Blade pursuit made the battles really mix it up. Rather than spending PIPs redressing lines from recoils, I now spent PIPs running my supports to keep up with my pursuing Blades!

Some mention that the games go very fast. Mine was something on the order of 7 turns (14 bounds). Blade on Blade combat is inconclusive. Without a 6-1 roll you will just recoil. Overlaps, even double overlaps, aren't always deadly and a recoil just breaks his line as bad as it does yours.

I liked the extra movement and the 1/2 base width/1 base width recoils.

I will definitely be switching. Plus, my Philistines can now have their LCh (Gen) dismount as a Bd (Gen). Time to paint three more figures!

By the way, the Philistines won, 4-3. The Philistines lost two Bd and one Ps, while the NKE lost two Bw, one Bd, and one LCh.

UPDATE: In reviewing the rules I may have made a mistake and the NKE won 4-3. The problem arose when I realized that the Ps providing rear support to a Bd against a LCh should have been destroyed when the Bd was destroyed on a 6-1 roll. So, that is how close the game was!