August 1st featured a Field of Glory game with my Seleucids versus Jim Naughton’s Early Imperial Romans. My army was pointed by Tim Hladon, and we were surprized to see no ellys or chariots! That’s not the Tim we know! It seemed a good build, though, so I went with it. This was about my third game with the rules, but we have played a few more in Pittsburgh so the basic concepts are known. Terrain placement took about 15 minutes, and generally seems to leave the center of the battlefield open for combat–a good thing for the most part.

Jim deploys his Romans

Jim deploys his Romans

My phalangites are in the center with Roman-style Argyraspids and archers on the flanks. Cavalry is deployed on each wing. My plan was simple…crush the middle with the pikes while the cav held off Jim’s flanking attempts.

He had bad going on his flanks with “ambush” counters showing, so I knew he would hold back, pin my pikes, and then try to work the flanks.

One good thing about FOG is that the combat starts pretty quickly. In a few moves we were in combat. Jim’s artillery and slingers hit first on my left, rocking back some Argyraspids and even managing to kill a stand. His dice rolls were magificent, while I was the Diceman <G>

Impact round

Impact round

I took 6 hits while gave Jim only 2!

Nice dice..6 hits out of 7 dice!

Nice dice..6 hits out of 7 dice!

Jim’s better quality troops allowed him re-rolls on dice showing 1 or 2. My morale /death roll was equally magnificent..one stand dead and a 3 for morale. Needless to say this was bad! Short news is the game continued in the same vein. Jim’s next rolls were just as good and mine were just as bad. End result is a broken Seleucid army. We didn’t finish the game due to time, but the result was ordained. I would have killed only one of his aux units that I caught with cataphracts in the open, but my pikes were toast.
Diceman’s verdict on FOG?? Thumbs down so far. It’s too sensitive to morale for my bad dice to handle. Combat and movement seem OK, although the combat takes several phases with different factors in each phase. I like terrain generation and ambush possibilities. Markers are needed to remember hits and moral level loss. It seems more in line with the old WRG 6th edition rules but less tedious to figure combat results. The game lenth seems a bit shorter than DBM. On the whole, I think I prefer DBA Big Battles or DBM for my choice for ancients. YMMV as always.