DBA: 10 Years
After and Beyond

My Personal Voyage into DBA

by Bob Beattie

I have always liked ancients as a gaming possibility. In the early 70’s I was marooned in Ann Arbor with no opponents for other than Napoleonics. My best wargame friends were left behind in the Boston area. From them I heard of a (then) new, exciting game that went by the name of its publisher and edition number: WRG Nth edition - e.g., WRG 4th Edition. (The last version was WRG 7th Edition.) I have never known what the first edition was called; a problem similar to knowing what the 100 Years War was called in its first year. Actually the full title of the last edition is simply War Games Rules, 3000BC to 1485 AD. No one ever called it WGR.

Anyway, my friends in Boston were having great fun with these rules. It even came with complete army lists so you could pick one you liked and play against any other army throughout history using equal points: Sumarians vs. Burgundians if you liked. Well, I got a copy and read it, reread a few times. Read it again. Looked at the army lists. Those I could understand. So over the next 20 years I collected armies based on the lists and bought new editions of the rules, thinking one day they would be revealed to me, or someone would come to town who could teach me. In the meantime I saw folks at conventions, bent over tables filled with beautiful figures and colorful terrain, seeming to have much fun “discussing” the rules. They did not play all that much, mostly lots of discussion. On the sidelines a few onlookers chided the gamers for the “unhistorical match-ups.” Those did seem strange, maybe bordering on fantasy. I would buy up new figures and try to read the rules again.

Then a breakthrough, for in 1989, Ray Koch moved into Ann Arbor. He almost bought a house across the street but ended up only a few blocks away. Like me, he was in the wargame life. He went to conventions, he subscribed to gaming magazines, he had many figures, he knew rules. He had even been in Larry Brom’s gaming group, which for me, at the time a real TSATF nut, gave him high status. Ray knew WGR so at last I would have a teacher. He did not however really like the game and there were other things to play so we did not seem to get to it. Then we discovered Tactica. That seemed much easier and we gave it a go. I tried to rebase my 1500 point WGR Roman and Carthaginian armies but only had about 75% of what I needed. Oh, well, at the next con I would get more. At that same con, Ray picked up a copy of DBA. That changed things.

He brought DBA out at a club game in early fall of 1990. He tried to teach us to play. Twelve stands to an army, that was pretty easy to do. Play with 15mm figures on a 2 by 2 foot square area. Not bad. Alternative moves in turns (called bounds) of stands (called elements) based on a die roll. I could play this. We did play 2-3 games that first night. We did lots of thing wrong, as I later would learn, but we were playing. Little did I know it would take me years to catch on to the subtleties!

There was in that original edition, a suggestion for doing one of the largest battles in ancient history - Gaugamela - with 40-52 elements per side. Hey I could put those numbers together. So for our second game, a few weeks later we did that biggest battle possible. From then on it was DBA every few weeks. We covered all the battles of Alexander the Great and Romans vs. Carthage in 15mm. In 25mm we did many successor battles including, as Dick Bryant would call it, The “Kursk” of ancients, Raphia with 20 elephant elements and over 100 total elements. We were making big battles. We did a campaign as suggested in the book, once, but never really like that.

We all went to Historicon the next year and played in a tournament, one of the group even had Phil as an opponent. We were doing “unhistorical” match-ups but it did not seem that bad. We were not discussing the rules that much, we were actually playing games; 4 in an hour! I put on a big battle of Hydaspes that was not even in the program but which filled up as soon as I set it out. There was a strange mood in the air at that con and for the next few years. Folks carried around their armies in a fishing tackle box and looked for pick up games in the hall. It reminded me of when Volkswagens first got popular in the US in the 1960’s; drivers would always flash their lights or wave at other VWs. DBA players seemed to be a special fraternity who wanted to play a game whenever they could with a brother or to make a convert. Even to this day, at cons, there are always some pairs of guys playing after hours or in between other events, or behind the dealers’ area.

The game really took off. Moreover, Phil released a fantasy version - Hordes of the Thing (HOTT) that our group took to for our first such games (please do not tell Dick B. that we play this). Then came the “big sibling” version for those who really liked the big “edition” games, De Bellis Multitudinis (DBM), and this had 4 books of armies. In early 1995 came DBA 1.1 - up to 24 pages and some of the unclear aspects fixed. In late 1995 a Renaissance version was released, De Bellis Renationi ( DBR). This had 3 army lists books. These are collectively known as DBx games. DBM has gone through a half dozen editions and DBR through one. All told, with all revisions and editions, I count 20 books.

We now stand on the verge of a great leap forward with DBA 2.0. Next we hope Phil lives up to his promise to take the “ DBx “concepts into the 18th century. (and beyond?) I have played and continue to play all of these games. Just last week at the club game I said that we should be doing at least one DBA and one DBR game per month, and HOTT every couple of months. We have concluded that DBM is not conducive to large, social games of a club nature. We do, however, play many big battle DBA games with half a dozen players per side and as many as 120 elements on the table. We also play games based on DBA concepts for other historical episodes such as a 100 anniversary Boxer Rebellion game I ran.

I was there at “creation,” well at least at the “unveiling” game in North America, of DBR at which Phil used my ECW figures. I got to meet the man of legends and found him to be just a regular guy who with his wife, Sue Laflin (now a DBA co-author), likes to read books of fantasy and mystery. He was a folksinger as a youth and can still sing the original Irish/English version of American Civil War songs. He knows ancient and medieval history like the back of his hand, is, indeed, fluent in all history. He was doing tank battles before Tony Bath, the father of ancients, got him into that era. He knows thousands of gamers around the world, but will take the time to send me a fridge magnet for my collection from odd places he visits.

I have been doing more than just playing DBA with the local group. I have been running tournaments since the fall of 1991. At the HMGS Cons, mostly the Duplicate Tournament but also an event for Teenagers (at the suggestion of teen DBA prodigy - Julie Ann Stannoch) and the National Invitational Tournament. I wrote about DBA Tournaments in The Courier. Moreover, I like to put on Big Battle scenario games (see my article in The Courier No. 79.) My favorite such is the Parent-Child Team game. It is great fun to get fathers (no mothers yet) and sons or daughters to game together. Special was the game that 40-ish Dave Sweet showed up with 80-ish father, Charlie Sweet! I have played in many games done by others, especially those of the North American Society of Ancient and Medieval Wargamers events (and I have umpired a number of those too).

These activities have led me to keep up communications with Phil in order to ask for clarifications of situations that have come up in games. I helped Dennis Frank prepare a very useful 3 page clarification list. I also served as a consultant to help the developers of DBA On-line understand the nuances of the game. Since the summer of 1999 I have been playtesting DBA 2.0 prototypes and discussing proposed rules revisions with both Phil and the internet wargames community.

I also ran the first DBR Tournament at Cold Wars and Historicon and continued for some years and also ran tournaments and scenario games at those cons, as well as Michigan Cons and MigsCon. I have enjoyed the DBx games for over 10 years now and plan to continue playing beyond my usual one decade per game limit. I have met, besides Phil and Sue, many great people through DBx, both in person and on the internet. That’s my personal DBA story. I know it’s much like many others around the world - members of that DBA Fraternity. Next I discuss the world wide impact of this little book that has given such a big game to the hobby.

See here for all of my DBA materials in including pics of games http://www-personal.umich.edu/~beattie/bobs.html

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