I'm No Longer the "First Man of Rome"

If it's the Ides of March it must be time for our club's annual DBA mini-tournament hosted by my friend and fellow club member Mike C. This annual club tradition is a low-key single evening DBA tournament that usually pits players in two teams, Romans and enemies of Rome to each compete for the titles "First Man of Rome" and "First Enemy of Rome". With the title also comes possession of a representative trophy for the upcoming year. In last year's "First Man of Rome" tournament, I was fortunate to earn the trophy for top Roman player, albeit with a record far worse than the "First Enemy of Rome" winner in a tournament that was heavily dominated by the non-Roman players. This year Mike mixed up the format and all players played Roman armies (of various periods) in a Roman civil war fight to the death! The format sounds a bit monochromatic, but Mike allowed four different Roman lists, and most lists were allowed to substitute one appropriate element from a list of historical allies for that period's Roman allies. We had allied Knight elements, allied Elephant elements, and club member Don played a later Roman army with 4 warband and 2 knight elements, which was particularly scary to many of the early blade-dominant Roman lists. With all of the choices available, the format ended up being quite fun and interesting.

In the first Round I scored a lucky win against Don's tough knight and warband heavy army scoring my kills with lucky 6-1 rolls. Dodging the bullet I thought possibly I might make a bid for emperor for life (well at least for another year), but in round two I fought a back-and-forth battle against the eventual tournament winner, Michael B. (shown above in the gray checkered shirt playing in his first round game). Michael eventually scored the killing blow on my fourth element after several tourns with our scores tied at 3 kills each. The coups-de-gras for Michael was against my General element earning him a valuable tie-breaker point. My game with Michael was quite possibly one of the most fun DBA games I've played in a long time, even though I lost.

My third round game was against Michael's primary rival for this year's title, Chris. While I was able to score 3 points against Michael in round 2, Chris put me to the mat in a dominant contest where I scored only a single kill to his four. The combination of Chris' good play and my bad fortune in maneuver and combat dice sealed my fate. I was to be a mere citizen this year.

Chris and Michael faced off in the fourth round with Michael scoring enough points to win the game and the tournament, being crowned this year's "First Man of Rome" congratulations Michael! For me, well I guess there's always next year.