Marian Romans v Early Germans

It's been a little while since I've written up a battle report, so let's skip the intervening games and travel back ... back ... back to 50 B.C. where the Marian Roman Legions face off the Early German hordes in the forests of, err, early Germany.

I was the attacker.  The defending Germans put down two forests, a marsh, and two gentle hills.  I ended up with the opposite board edge to that which I wanted, which was fine, as it gave me a nice open space to advance my long line of Bd.  The central marsh would be a problem, so I put an element of Ps into it to prevent too many shenanigans as well as my surplus Bd and LH to try to draw a few more enemy Wb to that side of the board.

 The Germans broke into 6 groups quite early so I thought I might get lucky if he ran into bad pips.

I was fearing the double move of the Wb allowing him to move to my flank through the marsh, so I started to turn my line of Bd to the left.  I mirrored this to the left of the marsh.  My CvG began to move to the far right flank to deal with the Cv threat there.

The Germans got 6 pips and sent his Wb crashing into my Bd with a double move, while also sending a unit against my Ps in the marsh.  He was hoping to make the Ps flee and then be free to flank me, but my Ps are made of stern stuff.  My Bd recoiled all of his Wb except for the WbG which got a stick.  The following turn I left my unit where they were, hoping to pick off his WbG and win the game, but I only got a recoil.

His Wb continued to chase my Ps out of the marsh.  My Bd to the right of the marsh killed two elements of Wb with that roll of a 6 you can see on the red dice.  I was rolling incredibly well today - lots of 6's, but my opponent was rolling just well enough to avoid being doubled.  On the hill to the right my Bd chased off his Ps but couldn't make progress against the Cv due to the hill.

He again double moved a unit of Wb into the marsh and turned my Bd to face them but the Wb recoiled.  My Ps also turned the tables in the centre and recoiled that Wb that had chased them out of the marsh.  I was reluctant to send my Bd into the marsh, so in my turn, when I only had one pip, I just moved two Bd and their supporting Ps against the Wb line.  The Wb were now only single ranked so my chances were good, but the combat rolls were bad and I lost all three elements, blowing a huge hole in the middle of my line.  Uh oh.

My spirits were briefly lifted when he only got 1 pip in the next turn.  He couldn't get an overlap against my lone Bd to the right of the marsh due to the bad going so I had a chance.  He chose to attack me again from the marsh and I rolled a 1.  Dead Bd, end of game.

Post-game thoughts:

• Fun game.  I think my approach was right but I failed to kill the Germans when I had a chance.  If only that 6-3 combat against the enemy General had worked out!
• I didn't use my LH or my CvG well.  Both ended up right out on the flanks and being essentially unused.  They would have been more useful if I had had them as a reserve.  They could have moved through that gap in my kinked line and caused all sorts of problems for the Germans.
• Still, my current DBA philosophy is to keep it simple, so I wanted to avoid getting my units tangled up in each other like I have in the past.
• But on the third hand, having my CvG way out on the flank meant that I was unable to move my LH when I had low pips because it was out of command range.  Note to self: keep general in the centre.  If I'd been able to use my LH more actively, either drawing back to flank that Wb that kept attacking my Ps, or going wide to threaten the left flank, I think the Germans would have had more difficult problems to solve than a simple long line of Bd.