Sixty-Two Special leads to The Big Move

 

Here are our boys all saddled up for The Big Move.  

My last post in June suggested there were some game reports coming. What happened? Well, the Summer of COVID 2020 for us was followed by this most recent Summer of The Big Move 2021.

Big Move. . . what happened? 2 days after my last post I found myself unexpectedly and ostensibly “retired.” Yeah. What would our response Move be? After some hard deliberation, we decided our best Move might be to take advantage of the red-hot real estate market in the Twin Cities and sell our house in preparation for a Move back "home" to Kansas City. It's what we intended for the end of our current Five-Year Plan to Retirement. . . we would just Move up the date, without the actual retirement part.

 

So, between mid-June and late August, we prepped our home in the Twin Cities for sale, sold it

 

. . . bought a new home, then packed our entire household and put it on a truck for Overland Park, Kansas

 

 . . . and finally, moved into that new home - with our boys, of course.  

 

It was truly a Big Move, and despite the reason for it I am profoundly grateful that it worked out as well as it did. 

Because this is primarily a blog about gaming, I have intentionally understated the intensity and trauma of the overall experience. I'll just acknowledge and thank my wife, family and friends for their help and support and do my best to continue to cultivate a grateful spirit. 

 

"Moving in" turns into "settling in," and while that is happening there may not be much personal gaming news to post. All my stuff is still in boxes. However, I am back in the home town of The Baron, Wiley Games and the Basement Generals, so will be doing some gaming. For instance, I've already participated in this Star Wars bounty-hunting game of Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes. And if you want to hear me "drone on and on until I start foaming at the mouth and falling over backward" about terrain, you can check out this episode of BS-ingwith the Baron, which I did just before leaving Minnesota, from a room that was mostly filled with packed boxes awaiting loading.

 

Bruce and I did get that game of DBA 3.0 Big Battle in before the Move. Bruce brought 2 armies that looked terribly mismatched on initial review: II/33 Polybian Roman and I/36b Italian Hill Tribes/Sardinian. The Sardinians are all Psiloi and Auxilia except for a possible Chariot General; I "won" the Sardinians and prayed to the terrain gods. Terrain can be the great equalizer in DBA if your opponent cooperates.

 

I defended (of course) and chose Difficult Hills and Woods, which mostly ended up on the right side of the table, so that is where I set up to fight. Bruce wanted to fight in 3 neat Roman lines, but I wanted a messy scrum in the terrain so maneuvered to set up good positions with a refused line on the left to hold the flank.

The Roman Cavalry general took the bait and led his Auxilia into the woods and was killed after some initial success. His Auxilia had a little more success, but not enough, and the command was eventually demoralized.

At which point the Romans withdrew to form a defensive "square" and the Sardinians solidified their terrain wall. The Romans weren't going to fight in the woods and the Sardinians were not coming out, so we had a draw, advantage Sardinians because of the demoralized Roman command. A very interesting positional battle from my point of view. Thanks, Bruce, and stay well!