"Time for a BIG Optio game" Topic

A typical Optio game of 30-ish stands per side usually takes 2 hours or less to play. But what about a much bigger game, e.g. 68 stands vs 44? I decided to find out.

Battle report here.

Thanks for sharing.

You're welcome. :-)

One feature I discovered when playing a big game was that major repositionings of units becomes difficult if not impossible.

One thing we forget when playing smaller games like DBA is how narrow the distance between two armies was compared to their width. An army 2km or more wide (including the cavalry) could deploy 500m to 1km from its opponent, occasionally less. This meant that the two armies were virtually on top of each other when the battle commenced – you by and large had to fight what was in front of you, ruling out any creative shifts and redeployments in mid-battle. In DBA, armies can be further apart than their frontage, which gives much more tactical leeway than armies historically had.

Added to this the fact that in a large game (and historically) the enemy has plenty of time to react if you did try a major repositioning. It takes several moves to get from one flank to the other, or try something else as spectacular, and in that time your opponent is able to do something about it.

Scissors-paper-stone is the name of the game.