Christy and I played our first games of DBA in what is probably 3 years.  We got out the old tried and true "New Kingdom Egyptians vs. Hittites" set and managed to get two games in in around an hour.  (That's one of the things I love about DBA - so easy that you can remember it after years away, and games never last more than an hour.)

The first game had me (the Egyptians) invading Cannan, and Christy (Hittites) trying to prevent my imperialistic drive north.  Christy got to place the terrain, and I wound up approaching along the road to the city she was defending.  She made very effective use of her skirmishers to delay my forces and pick where to fight, and my invasion was crushed.

The second game had her forces pursuing mine into Egypt.  We fought in a marshy area on the banks of the Nile.  This time deployment was pretty standard, with both armies drawing up into battle lines early on.  We had an abysmal run of bad PIPs (In DBA you roll a d6 to see how many groups you can move each turn), and the armies seemed to not be eager to close with each other.  Fortunately, that gave me time to wheel my archers around to threaten Christy's chariots.  I think she gave more respect to the archers than they deserved, holding back half her chariotry out of bowshot.  Her solid line of spearmen advanced and clashed with mine, pushing and shoving back and forth for a few turns while our respective generals duked it out with no decisive results.

To reenforce her position, Christy decided to engage my bowmen, hoping to open up my flank and break our stalemate in the center.  Alas, in Egypt Horus smiles upon the children of the Nile and Christy's chariots were driven away, leaving the Pharaoh triumphant.

Though I think Christy gave my bows too much respect, they were my most effective units in that game, so maybe not.  In DBA bowmen are pretty good against mounted troops but really suck against any infantry.  When fighting Hittites, I need to be very careful not to let her engage my bows with her infantry, because they tear me up every time.

I'm pretty pleased with myself that I won the second game since I almost always lose when I'm playing against Christy.  She's a solid general and has a good intuitive grasp on stacking the odds in her favor, which is one of the most important skills in a dice based wargame.

It was good to play DBA again.  I had become a little worried that with all my Chain Reaction and WAB activities in recent years that maybe DBA wouldn't feel right to me anymore.  But no worries, it was just as fun as it used to be.