The second game was much quicker than the first. The battlefield consisted of two hills east and west at the north end of the table, with a wood in the south eastern quarter. Mike was the invader this time, so I deployed down my army first. Again, my downfall was at deployment (it usually is!). I plonked my camp behind the wood (the only terrain at my end of the table), thinking it would be safe. Opps! Don't rely on the terrain to do the job your army should be doing!

I lined up all my spear in the centre (double ranked), with the psiloi (skirmishers) in the woods and my cavalry on the left. Mike deployed his knights on the west of the field (his right, my left), foot in the centre, with his lowly light horse at the left of his line.

He advanced his knights, while I frantically tried to extend the line of my spears to prevent his rolling up my flank. Then lo and behold, his light horse tears down the field, around the wood and screams into my camp - and there was nothing I could do about it! I tried sending my cavalry across to beat off his light horse, but it was too late. Bang! He takes down my camp - which isn't good. In DBA, your camp is worth two elements destroyed - already half way to defeat within the first few moves of the game!

Mike then sends the knights into my spear, which did better than both of us expected - I even managed to take one of his knights down. Trouble was, on the other flank my psiloi was in trouble. It got mobbed by two of Mikes own psiloi. Three down, only one to go...

My spear advanced - well, those who weren't engaged with the knights anyway. I figured my best bet was with my spear chewing into Mike's foot, which consisted of bow, a spear element and three auxilia (light troops). So in I went with high expectations, which came to naught. The trouble was, I only managed to push Mike's foot back, not actually destroying anything, even whilst holding up against the knights on the other flank. But my time had run out. Up from behind came Mike's psiloi, pinning my remaining psiloi on his auxilia to it's front. At factor one to factor three (in Mike's favour), and with an enemy element on my psiloi's rear (meaning it would be destroyed on a recoil result), the odds of survival were not great. Bang (again!). It was all over. My last element went down in a screaming heap. Two out of two for Mike.

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