Hey all,

I have recently been very interested in medieval wargaming. I'd been looking for a rules system and recently settled on Age of the Trebuchet, SBG adapted for the Middle Ages. However, before we got fully into it, my younger brother mentioned that he would prefer something regimental. We've mentioned War of the Ring (lacks siege rules, no?), Warmaster, and Warhammer Ancients (ugh, no thank you), and then I remembered the game DBA, a supposedly popular, quick, and simple wargame for ancient and medieval time periods. Anyway, I found a long unofficial guide, the 2.2 rules, and plenty of introductions telling me about DBA, but have not managed to find anything that very simply told me how to play, if you get my drift.

So, how, very simply, do you play DBA? Would you recommend it? What do you think of Age of the Trebuchet, Warmaster, or War of the Ring as medieval rules?

Thanks in advance!

Been playing DBA for ever (there is also a Hordes of the Things Fantasy version) and is deceptively simple but fun to play.
You get an army of 12 elements. These are normally fixed but with a couple of alternatives. 2-4 models per element.

Deploy Army. Always best to keep them in B2B contact as this will give flanking advantages.

Command. Roll a dice, this is how many elements you can move or a group of elements if in B2B, another reason to keep good order and discipline.

Play. Its the Igo Ugo method with each player moving all element, shooting and then fighting.

Combat. its element V element. Roll a dice and add any factors, same goes for the defender. Highest wins. Now the clever part is the little table that give you the outcome based on whether you just won or won by twice as much and the combatants troop types. For example if you rolled double, then a blade unit will kill a blade unit but a spear unit might just push light skirmish cavalry back.

Battles are normally though until 4 elements are lost, camps/baggage are worth 2 element losses and all armies must have one.

There is also an excellent campaign system.

There is also a rules set called DBM (same-ish system and authors)that caters for larger games and goes into more detail. The men per figure is less so instead of 1 element representing a warband or regiment, several do. But you can just have bigger DBA battles by having more commanders to generate more command dice.

LOTR varient rules will obviously work and work well as you know, not played warmaster its not to dissimilar from DBA I believe but you have to keep track of units hits rather than just remove the element. As to WotR, if you like the system then it should work better than WotR fantasy as you don't have to have all that stupid overpowering magic and hero stuff.

Hey hithero, thank you very much for explaining the game. I was reading "The Unofficial Guide to DBM" by WADBAG last night; I think it was explaining DBA about as simple as possible for a booklet, but some things weren't clicking. After you've explained it, I'm actually leaning towards WotR--never played it, don't have the rulebook either, but I've looked into it and read the quickstart rules, and I think it might be more in line with what I'm looking for. Hithero, if I recall, there was a thread you created showing off a tournament of what appeared to be a WotR-ish game, but you said it was a game you made yourself--any interest in sharing? Merry Christmas btw

I did take out Greeks and Celts to WH World when the WOTR GT was on with my own rules and we managed to play on a packed 12' table with the 2 of us no problem. I've aslo got the rules in English Civil War and Middle-earth. They use the movement trays and regiments are formed WOTR style, the difference is that whole movement trays of troops are removed which makes life a lot easier when packing up I can send them to you if you like, should be easy to adapt to medieval troops. Units are also given ability cards which makes every regiment unique even if fighting a massed Hoplite V Hoplite battle. PM me your email if you want them.

wow huge army there...any more pics to share with us??

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Hi Jamros,

I love WOTR for LOTR gaming but think you can do better for historicals. DBA is a good game if you get the right group. It is huge (by the standards of ancients games) where I live and the guys who play it seem a good bunch. However, two towns further South, a mate tells me they've turned a simple game into a micro-measuring, angle-intensive chore, which is a shame. I've played a bit of DBA myself and think it's a great system. The only real issues I had with it were 1. Impenetrable rulebook and too 'oldshool' (ie positioning and angles matter too much with ZOC etc - leading some players to micromanage to get an edge) in terms of design. 2. The default scale of battle isn't exactly 'epic'- but there is always BBDBA or DDBA to fix that.

For an alternative for massed battles, I can't recommend Impetus strongly enough (http://www.dadiepiombo.com/impetus2.html). There is some stuff on it on my blog too, if you would like to see some more. If you want to give it a try, the basic version is free. We play it in 28mm using a smaller frontage than recommended (8cm, just like an alternate DBA basing size a lot of guys use) and always have a blast. The full version has a lot in it, adding command and control and more reactions, without getting bogged down. I think the designer has done a really good job of getting Ancients combat 'right' and WOTR really needs a whole host of extra systems added to do the same thing.

Cheers

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Thanks for the tip, Xelee. I think I've heard of Impetus, I may look into it. However, to "resolve" my original inquiry, after Hithero's explanation and a bit more reading up about DBA, I decided it just wasn't for me. I was looking for a very simple, very easy game, supporting a large amount of soldiers, that can be easily transportable. By simple, I mean very simple; I know a lot of "older" wargamers hate simplified rulesets, but I'm so obsessed with the hobby aspect of wargaming that when it comes time to game, I'd rather it be almost brain-dead easy to comprehend. In addition, the campaigns I'm planning on playing through include the Ninth Crusade, the First Scottish War of Independence, and the fall of Crusader kingdoms in the Holy Lands (a connected series of events for miniature re-usability). Portability is a big deal for me; I attend a university in Texas, USA, but live in North Carolina, USA, about 1,000 miles away, ie, minis can't take up too much space on a car ride and definitely not a plane flight. And being a student, the budget is tight. Unfortunately I don't have gaming groups; I have a brother at home, and one gaming buddy in Texas.

So, like I said, I kind of dismissed DBA (but thanks again hithero), and after running through an SBG game (after a long hiatus) and trying Warmaster, me brother and I were still a bit iffy on what do use. Finally, we tried War of the Ring. Bingo. It's doesn't claim to recreate the Middle Ages, but that's more than okay. We learned the rules within one short game of Goblins vs Rohirrim. I bought the rulebook, so I kind of feel obligated to stick to WotR, at least for now, which I'm perfectly okay with. To save money and space, we will also be using 1/72 scale miniatures. I reduced the tray sizes proportionally, but now I need to figure out how to base the models individually. I will have to modify many profiles, and WotR lacks siege rules (if GW produced some, I would honestly cash in), but the extra work this time seems "worth it" due to WotR's simplicity. The fact that the minis can--or, have to--be removed from their base really makes transporting loads easier.

This thread can now be used for DBA general discussion

Hi Jamros,

I think WOTR does Medieval ok for Western type forces, much better than it handles ancients etc anyway.

I think you might be surprised to discover that as most (there is a narrow but vocal segment that love it) wargamers age, their love for complexity dims. Once you are playing with a mate after work and getting the kids to bed.... you don't want it to be *too* hard

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http://www.roughwotr.blogspot.com

You can look into The WarEngine, System it used to be called Shockforce. Theres a Yahoo group for support and they are free. I use the system for everything but my WWII naval games.

http://warengine.darktortoise.com/index ... =Main_Page

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/WarEngine/

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