DBA: 10 Years
After and Beyond

World Wide Acceptance of DBA in the 90s

by Bob Beattie

Many gamers took the break-through concepts of DBA to heart in the 1990’s. There were many articles in UK and US glossy magazines with either game reports using DBA or suggestions for changes and variants.

DBA competition in Milan, Italy. Photo by Lorenzo Santori.

The Slingshot too had many articles with ideas for increasing complexity. Phil was moved to write in issue 171 of that journal a short piece entitled, “The Virtue of Simplicity” where he said, “ Variations on DBA that now abound in both The Slingshot and the glossies all have one thing in common: they increase complexity.” After a review of how he came to write the rules, he states further, “It is apparent that DBA’s popularity must be due to its combination of acceptable realism with exceptional simplicity. This implies that any future changes must carefully conserve the simplicity.”

Articles about DBA included doing campaigns, such as chariot wars, Roman Empire, Danes, Dark Ages, even solo campaigns in Lone Warrior, and especially popular was matching it to the Avalon Hill game, Kingmaker. Other articles covered suggestions for multi-player games, variations in types of generals, deployment options, combining with a Matrix game, “How to Win,” and different ways of ending a game. Historical Gamer had an article on how to make a 6mm board and figure carrying case. Battle reports covered Lincoln, Hydaspes, Adrinople, the Battle of the Standard, Trebbia, Hastings and Stamford Bridge, The Crusades, Sekigahara.

The game became a standard tournament feature around the world. In an article in The Slingshot on the history of how he wrote DBA, Phil explains how the rules were originally for a tournament. The introduction section to the rules explicitly states that they are to provide for a tournament that can be played in a day. In the same issue of The Slingshot with the first two reviews, co-author Richard B. Scott proposes how to conduct a DBA tournament. These were quite common in UK and spread around the world.

At the large USA national conventions - Cold Wars, Historicon, and later, Fall-In - there were events with 60-70 players. The “Sunday Open” was the first to appear; a Swiss Chess style event with random pairings. Alan Spencer began this event in 1991 at Cold Wars. Alan wanted to keep armies within historical boundaries. Each player his brings own army, is placed in a pool of players with similar historical armies (e.g. “Dawn of War”, “Phalanx to Cohort, “Return of the Barbarians”, and “Of Knights and Causes) and fights against 4 others in the same pool. Points are awarded for destroying elements, destroying generals and for winning games. Player with most points after four rounds wins the pool.

Phil came over to umpire the Historicon 1991 event. This event has continued ever since, falling to the also capable hands of Mike McVeigh. Mike added a category to allow the horse armies to compete against each other. His categories are Biblical, Classical, Early Medieval, Late Medieval, and Steppe. He also reduced the number of games to 3 using the strict Swiss Chess system of winners playing winners, this is enough to resolve the event and let folks finish within 4 hours. It is about the same at every convention, as Terry Gore noted in Saga, 99, “Sunday morning found a huge DBA tournament running. It seemed everyone was having a good time.”

Early on a 25mm tournament was added. This has not had the high numbers of the Open but typically 10 to 12 players participate in a 4 hour slot. A few years ago, Dave Ray got crazy and added the “Midnight Madness” in a single elimination format. First starting at 12 midnight with 16 pairs going for an hour per game and ending around 3am symbol 76 \f “Wingdings” \s 16L. The event has proved so popular that the time was moved back to 11pm so 32 players could enter. The quality of play at that time of night is not always the best and strange things happen. During the midnight start era, I recall Jeff Caruso winning two rounds with only 10 elements but losing when he added the missing 2!

Many aspects of the game might tend to favor certain armies so at the suggestion of our editor and named in his honor, since 1992, I have been running an event named “The Dick Bryant Duplicate Tournament.” Dick ran the very first ancients tournament in the US, using the WRG Ancients Rules (then maybe 4th Edition!) back in the 1970’s. I provide matched pairs of armies and players would place them as they saw fit. Recently, I have produced “Battle Problems” based on historical battles. The armies are set in pre-determined positions. These I see as akin to chess problems - “White to move and win in 3.” The games do not have to be “even” because all players take all sides. In 2000, I did Kadesh and a double event based on 1066 with Anglo-Danes fighting Vikings at Stamford Bridge and then Normans at Hastings.

Besides these events at national conventions in the US, there are many such events at regional cons. Dennis Frank and Mike Demena have done an excellent event with pre-set battle boards at the Great Lakes Historical Gaming Society annual convention in Ohio. In California, Marty Schmidt does one at Kublacon in Oakland and at ConQuest in Palo Alto . Manuel Ruiz at Fresno uses preset historically based layouts. Ed Dillon does a Midnight Madness at Nashcon, in Nashville, Tennessee. Other US events are held in a number of states including, Michigan, Texas, Illinois, Washington, Louisiana, and Kansas. Around the world, events are to be found in German (Stuhr Wargamers Convention), Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and Canada (among others, a well-run event at Migscon put on by Brian Lewis), and of course, UK.

Temporal Spread of DBA

Besides spreading around the world for games and tournaments in the temporal domain of the rules, that is to say the ancient and medieval eras, DBA was converted by many players to other historical eras. A search of every issue of Wargames Illustrated, Miniature Warfare, The Courier, Practical Wargamer, and Historical Gamer between 1990 and 1998 yields some 30 articles involving DBA. At least 11 of these take DBA into an era past is nominal end date of 1500. The first jump was a short one, to the Renaissance. There were at least 3 of these including the English Civil War. Cliff Castle of the US Pike and Shot Society also wrote an extensive variation of DBA for that era that was distributed to all members.

Further variants in Wargames Illustrated took DBA concepts into the French and Indian War, the Napoleonic era, the Crimea, the War of Southern Succession, Victorian Era Colonial, and the Great War. The Courier had articles that included one by Nick Nasacti on DBA for the Franco-Prussian War and the 18th century. Duncan MacFarland wrote for the Midwest Wargamers Association Newsletter a variant for World War II as recently as 1999. Other articles converted it into both ancient and more modern naval games. To this day it continues. The Humberside Web page maintained by Tony Barr has many variant games, 1500-1900,( http://www.barr.karoo.net/hws/dbx/) as does Chris Brantly at the DBA Resource Page (see below).

Has any other rules in the history of wargaming had such commitment from its followers that they want to play all games with it?

The Commercial Scene

The term “DBA-like” became almost a standard for describing other rules to covey the twin virtues of the original - simplicity and elegance. DBA became the standard by which all rules, not just other attempts at ancient/medieval ones were judged.

Besides acceptance by players, the rules set a unique precedent among figure makers. They began to sell packs of figures designed to be complete armies for DBA. Essex began the trend, followed by Miniature Figurines with “double packs.” Others following suit even Foundry for their 25mm figs. Phil Barker once had a range of figures named after him and Mini Figs, in the USA anyway, named their colonial series after The Sword and the Flame in the 1980’s. Peter Sides published a series of scenario books for doing large historical DBA games. The Quartermaster, in Canada, sold DBA rulers with element movements on it. Has a set of rules determined the marketing strategy of so many companies.

More DBA: 10 Years

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