It's DBA Jim, but not as we know it.

Many years ago I was a big fan of DBA, I built up several armies and played using 24 elements per side with some rule changes to facilitate the larger armies.

With my old first edition rulebook tatty and worn I decided to upgrade when the latest edition was published a couple of years ago. I didn't really get on with it however, I adapted it to squares to make it less fiddly here but still struggled to find any enthusiasm for it.

Today I had a bit of a brainwave and decided to draw up a new gridded board. I gave it big 100mm squares so that I could fit units inside and treat the grid square as the element base.

I could only fit 12 squares by 9 onto my 4x3 foot board but it is enough to deploy and manoeuvre 12 element armies like so...

 Gauls on the left and Camillan Romans on the right.

 The rules.

 I gridded the board with small brown crosses to make the grid less obvious.

  View from the Roman lines.

 Some of the hairy Gauls.

The battle gets underway.

And the infantry come to blows quickly due to the shallow board.

The warbands in the second row count as support for the first row.

 A bit of a scrap on the flank. The Roman Generals element was destroyed soon after with a 6-1 roll.

 Some of the Gauls breakthrough while the others get pushed back.

It's down to the Triarii. Who repel the warriors smartly.

But the Hastati and Princeps break and the battle is lost for the Romans.

Not bad, I will play some more of this. I can also use the gridded board to play Hordes of the things without rebasing anything as long as I can fit them in the square.

I may invest in Simon Millers To the Strongest rules which would suit the grid and my collection.

I wonder what else I could use this board for, any ideas are very welcome.

DBA squared.

I rebased some of my 15mm ancients as I threatened in my previous post to make a couple of DBA armies and quickly made a square gridded board. Here is a play test...

 Polly Romans.

 Seleucids.

 After the Scythed Chariot crashes through the Roman line it finds itself doomed at the hands of the velites on the hill and the triarii.

 The lines clash in the centre of the field.

 With mixed results.

 The Seleucid heavies outflank some of the Triarii.

 And thureophoroi clash with hastati.

 The nellie steadily pushes the Romans back.

 The triarii come to the aid of the princeps fighting the elephant.

 The velites flank the stubborn thureos.

 The Roman general picks an easy target.

 The elephant is recoiled.

 The phalanx is being pushed steadily backwards.

 The Seleucid general flanks the Romans fighting the elephant which breaks them.

 The elephant is attacked by the triarii and flanked by the velites.

 The Roman general charges home to destroy the Seleucid archers.

 With the Thracians routed the Romans now turn the flank of the phalanx.

 The triarii recoil the nellie and the Seleucid general dies.

His phalanx is cut to pieces too.

This game is much less fiddly on the squared board and the square basing suits me better too, these bases will be used for Hail Caesar rules too when I get them done.

Rule sets for ancient war games.

Recently I have been trying out various rules  for ancient period war games. 

I tried out the old standby, WRG Ancients 5th edition, with my 15mm collection but found it pretty dull.

I had a couple of games of Hail Caesar and found it to give a much more exciting game. I have decided to make Hail Caesar my game of choice when using my venerable 15mm soldiers.

This entails rebasing the toys of course and another dilemma or two, because like most wargamers I want to use them for other rules too, which brings me to DBA.

Earlier this year I bought the new shiny 3rd edition of DBA and while I found the rules mainly good I did not care for the look of the game with its small number of models. 

I looked at using large bases but I did also find the speed of the game too fast, it seems to take longer to set up the terrain than to fight the battle.
So I went back to using 24 standard sized elements as I did for years when DBA first came out. This was better but I struggled with the fiddly positioning of the stands, especially on terrain features. 

I've put DBA onto a back burner for now.

For the Waterloo 200th anniversary I dug out Commands and Colors Napoleonics and missed the day because I hurt my back at work, but I eventually got it played and several other scenarios which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

This led to the Ancients version coming out of the cupboard and I haven't stopped since!.

 I found this expansion at a very good price from IGUK and it made a fine fathers day present. I have played Roman Civil War, Rome against Gaul and Spartacus too. I love it!.

 Here are some of my Greeks.

 And Persians.

 A gentleman on Board Game Geek made some excellent downloadable special leader and Spartan army stickers.

And I painted some spare blocks white to make a small Spartan army. I do like to make something for nothing.

This got me thinking about DBA again and I now plan to put all of my 15mm collection onto 40mm square bases with the exception of some generals for Hail Caesar. 

One base would be a small unit and two to four a standard unit using Hail Caesar, so it would work well for that. 

For DBA well...
I'm thinking about making a square gridded board with 40mm squares and square hills and terrain features too, ( this is the influence of Commands and Colors ).
This would dispense with the fiddly positioning of elements and suit the base width unit of measure.

More DBA 3

 Anglo-Danish versus Normans.

 I've been enjoying this game. I've used Gallic, Spanish, Marian Romans and Pontic forces in recent days.

 The speed of play takes a little getting used to though.

 I used to play 24 element armies and most of my armies have at least 24 elements. Some have many more from being expanded for DBM. I never really enjoyed DBM though.

 Several years ago I rebased some of my armies onto 80mm wide bases but I was not pleased with the plain flocked appearance. Recently I found some very nicely based 80mm elements here  http://balagan.info/romans-versus-iberian-two-big-base-dba-battle-reports and was quite inspired to copy them.

 So the plan at present is to rebase and play on a 120cm square table.

 I reckon if DBA felt too fast I could still use the elements as units for Hail Caesar of Kings of War. After payday I'll send for some MDF bases and sand.

Irregular Miniatures 15mm Saxons, the Normans are TTM and now available from 15mm.co.uk .

Beware the Ides of March.

 DBA v.3 arrived the other day.

 It is quite a leap from the original from 25 years ago.

 DBA is not the most photogenic game.

 Yesterday I played Marian Romans versus Marian Romans in honour of the date.

 The red general I deemed to be Julius Caesar.

 He kept getting beaten.

 His opponent had an elephant but it didn't do much.

I had a couple of games with these forces and then brought out a Pontic army which managed to kill Caesar!. Bad day for him.