We started a great two week game last evening, the Battle for the Oasis at Āb-Šādahr (Ābšādahr), about 80 miles south of the great city of Ctesiphon.
Āb-Šādahr (Ābšādahr)
Āb = water
Šād = joyful / prosperous
-ahr / -ahrā = place or land
Meaning: “The Oasis of Joyful Waters.”
Apologies once again for not including a narrative (life is very much getting in the way at the moment!) but the game was very evenly poised with most of the until the action starting to develop on the left flank as the Roman Legionaries and Sassanian Aswārān (singular aswār; also spelled Asbārān and Savaran) were coming very close to melee.
The next Sassanian turn was to decide the battle within the next two turns, the Cats went in and with some quite ugly dice rolling they bounce with the Shahanshah's unit being run down, another unit panicking and legging it leaving only one unit of Cataphracts willing to face five units of Roman Legionaries. Time was running down both literally and figuratively so we called time on the game.
Overall, the Early Sassanid and middle imperial Roman clashes have been some of the best games we have played and are deserving of many a rerun so we will be returning to this Third Century, the middle imperial Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire very soon.
