DBA and a Drubbing at Goya’s

Earlier this year Goya introduced me to the dark art of DBA games and to my surprise I have really enjoyed playing them. The limited figure numbers and playing area coupled with games that last less than an hour have a real appeal. The resulting games have been fun with more tactical depth than you would think at first glance at the rules. Goya also kindly gifted me an Essex Miniatures DBA Carthaginian Army that I have been slowly painting.

I'm just over halfway through the Carthaginians, there are four more infantry bases and of course an elephant then they'll be ready for action.

But this is where praise for Goya ends (only joking) as he invited me over this week to play through the CCN Essling scenario knowing that I was suffering from jetlag (excuses, excuses). The result was something of a drubbing for me as I lost both the games we played.

This is the initial deployment as per the CCN scenario. We played normal Commands and Colors rules but with Tony's firing amendments for Ramekin.

The centre piece of the game was this magnificent model of the Granary. The model is actually 15mm but works perfectly with Goya's 20mm figures.

All the troops on the table were from Goya's vast collection of (mostly) vintage Minifigs. There were lots of Austrians and all superbly painted - a joy to behold.

Austrian Cuirassiers riding the famous Minifigs 'fat bottomed' horses!

Some very nice French Guard Horse Artillery - love the moustaches.

Goya played the Austrians in the first game and managed to eject my French infantry from the Granary gaining vital VPs in the process - 9 to 6 final score in favour of the men in white.

When I saw this chap with the shako on his musket it brought back memories of the front cover of the old Minifigs catalogue.

Game two saw us switching sides and as I had a preponderance of Left Flank cards, I tried to turn the French right but it didn't go well. The hussars in the centre of this shot are from the Hinton Compatriots range.

Try as I might I could make no progress and my units were getting chewed up at a terrible pace.

This time the Granary stayed securely in French hands.

Great fun even if the 9 to nil score of our second game still smarts!

They’re all Greeks to me

Although I’ve been interested in wargaming since I was twelve years old I’ve never really dabbled in the ancient period. I did have quite a few Romans and Britons when Airfix first released them but I never replaced these with any metal figures when I entered my ‘serious’ wargaming phase. I may have been put off by playing a game with one of my school friends who insisted on pushing heaps of Airfix Robin Hood figures around the table alleging they were Carthaginian veteran spearmen. I think if you can’t be bothered to stand the toy soldiers up you really shouldn’t be playing wargames at all.

AG/7 Officer waving sword

AG/10 Hoplite thrusting with sword

AG/11 Hoplite thrusting with spear

AG/13 Hoplite marching

As a result of this I don’t know very much about the various Ancients periods and was certainly made to feel a bit inadequate when observing WRG competition games back in the 80s. The games didn’t look like much fun and always seemed to be small scale affairs rather than the large pitch battles I imagined from my limited knowledge of Hannibal, Alexander and Caesar. About ten years ago I did buy a copy of Warhammer Ancient Battles which looked more like the sort of rules I might enjoy to play. I even painted up a few 28mm Carthaginians (and based them so they stood up!) but not long after this I was seduced by the Hinton Hunt’s and Hannibal’s lads were boxed up and forgotten.

Now some of you may not be aware that Hinton Hunt actually did produce a range of 20mm Ancient figures. It wasn’t a very big range but covered Greeks, Persians, Romans and Celts so when this lot came up on eBay last week I couldn’t resist particularly as nobody else bid on them. It’s a nice little batch of figures as it includes one of each type of Greek figure released. Not much use from a wargaming point of view as this really is a tiny army however it’s really interesting to see them as I’m sure you’ll agree.