3 players per side; 3 Seleucid commands, one of which was assigned all army baggage; 2 Roman commands, 1 Pergamene ally, & 1 baggage train PIP dump. No strategems or non-normal generals on either side.

The armies were thrown together "quick & dirty" using a combination of the old lists, & all the details from the new lists that I could remember. I didn't do the composition of either, so I don't really know what comprised either army, but both were fairly "standard" for armies of the 202-190 b.c.e. period, so use your imagination. I do remember that the Seleucid army was very Pk-heavy & light on mounted. Terrain, for the most part, played no role in the battle; there was some fighting in a patch of woods on the far Roman right, very late in the game, but that was about it for terrain effects. The Roman Reg Bge PIP dump helped them a little bit, but IMO not enough to be significant.

The Pergamene allies, which were on the far Roman right flank, faired very poorly: a few Skythian LH (F) sallied out to meet the Pergamene knights & their Gaul/Galatian allied horse, & very quickly, the Pergamene general got overlapped & killed on a 6-1 roll. This result kept the Pergamenes from doing anything truly meaningful for the rest of the battle (tho astonishingly I don't recall them ever breaking) & allowed the main mass of the pike to march full-bore into the Romans centre. Pressured by Elephants, psiloi, & a ton of Pk (something like 24 stands of PK, at least), the Roman centre eventually broke.

I was commanding the far Seleucid right, including the overall CinC. I had 8 stands of Pk (O), 2 Kn (X), 1 Kn (F), 4 Bw (I), & about 6 Ps (O), all facing what looked like a ton of legionarii double-backed, & flanked on both sides by Cv (O). On their far left flank, they had a small group of LH. It was that group of horse that caused me untold grief, as they badly outnumbered my own horse & I couldn't get infantry support over quckly enough. Nevertheless, my knights blasted a gaping hole in their ranks, but were then eventually overwhelmed & destroyed, including the CinC, when the LH surrounded me completely.

The highlight of the battle, tho, was the performance of my pike versus the Roman legionarii. Basically, 4 stands of Reg Pk (O), at 16 points & 4 MEs, was an easy match for 2 stands of Reg Bd (O) at 14 points & 2 MEs, except that in order to actually get anything done, the Reg Bd (O) *needed* overlaps. Meanwhile, even when overlapped, the Pk won all but two rolls, & only one of the losing rolls obtained a QK for the Bd. Basically, my pike were having their way, repeatedly forced the Romans to recoil, & even destroyed one element via doubling. Had my CinC not been killed -- & it was a very close thing, if my opponent hadn't been so blessed with PIP dice he wouldn't have been able to overwhelm me as he did -- I would have eventually worn his command down without taking significant losses among my Pk. Had my Pk been (S) grade Argyraspids -- who were in the centre of the battle, grinding down the Roman centre command -- I'm confident I would have beaten the

 legionarii soundly, overlaps or no.

One other interesting thing: rather then assigning PIP dice high-middle-low, as the Roman army did, we Seleucids chose to average our dice, & all three of us agreed that it worked splendidly. None of us ever had 6 PIPs to work with, as the Romans regularly did -- my friend Mark is beastly lucky when it comes to rolling PIP dice! -- but by the same token, none of us ever had less than 3, either.

We made a few minor mistakes with the rules, but didn't discover them until it was much too late, & IMO none of them truly affected either side significantly. Possibly the biggest "game-changer" was our forgetting about the 0-PIP move for a force of Pk that moves straight forward on clear ground. That might have had some interesting effects had we remembered it, but I can't say for sure. Going into the battle, I felt a bit of trepidation knowing that my beloved pike phalanx was going to roll against Roman blades -- but now, having had just a mere modicum of decent dice luck, I no longer feel any qualms about it. I'm confident my phalanx will *at least* hold its own in such battles, & if I can manage the flank support a little better, will have an excellent chance of winning.

Finally, & most important: the game was *fun* for all concerned, & felt "historical." Yet another wonderful evening of carnage with The Friday Knights! I'd say that we see minor "issues" with DBMM, but nothing that would cause us to call it a "broken system", & certainly every game we've had has been *highly* entertaining.