Top: John Wouter’s Georgians encounter Django Upton’s Early Imperial Romans at the NWA’s recent DBA Championships. Bottom: Its the flanks stoopid! The Golden Rule: Throw sixes always, then thou cannot lose, no matter how poor your tactics and how clever the enemy. Thou Shalt: 1. Organise thy commands in different sizes 2. Keep thy battle line so that it presents a minimum of flanks 3. Always ensure that an element cannot be killed by the recoils of a friend due to sloppy positioning 4. Keep troops of similar movement speeds in the same command, especially if impetuous. 5. Keep a small ready reserve at all times, resist temptation to stick all in the front line 6. When receiving a surfeit of pips, ensure that you leave your army in a state that a dearth next bound allows it to fight 7. At all times be aware of what a 6" move by enemy LH(F) can do to thine own troops 8. Be at all times unpredictable, and yea even sneaky, in thy setups and stratagems. 9. Always reinforce thy success, not thy failure 10. As far as possible, force the enemy to react to your moves, not vice versa Thou Shalt Not 1. Advance troops far away in advance from thy army, as thou wilt run out of pips sure enough 2. Move thy commanders first, and thus incur a +1 for every other move that bound 3. Go anywhere near ambush terrain with large forces without scouting it first 4. Leave anything more than a holding force to an enemy flank march, but go thee forth and beat up the rest! 5. Plan to win a battle with thy heavy infantry - it's the flanks, stoopid! 6. Allow an enemy to envelop you upon one or both flanks 7. Advance for the sake of something to do in thy bound. If thou hast a strong position, blow it not. 8. Forget to put a few Ps in thy army, they are truly like gold. Nor shall thou put in too many (unless thou art afflicted by Pyrrhic, in which case there art bugger all else) 9. Hold thy Irr Kn(F) in order for too long - they knoweth what to do, and will do it for free. 10. Omit to consult the rules when uncertain, for verily thou wilt have forgotten something Alan Patrick As published by the redoubtable Ed Allen as part of his DBM Army Lists on his fantastic wargaming site: http://tetrad.stanford.edu/ or e-mail him at: allen@sequence.stanford.edu. Dbx Pages Back to Table of Contents -- Kriegspieler #9 To Kriegspieler List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Kriegspieler Publications. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com