The phenomenon of figure gaming's debt to Phil Barker is remarkable. I can think of no single rules-writer of even vaguely close fame. In terms of wide-acceptability perhaps only George Gush's Renaissance stuff comes close or Frank Chadwick's Command Decision and both are much narrower in field. Sadly though Phil's work has united the tournament gamers who comprise most figure gamers (who seek equal point battles with strangers) it is more because they were the only real choice than that they are accurate and effective simulations. In terms of drafting and conceptual structure the old WRG rules sucked big time.
Says who?
Says Phil Barker when he put together his ingenious (if still wonky) DBA and rejected many of the old conventions with which he had annoyed us before. Whatever was wrong or right with the historical design of the DBA rules (and with these you could fiddle) the concept of quick, low-cost but challenging gaming with a good historical basis was quite stunning. Sadly the demands of size and the tide of complexity has started Phil like some leviathan (actually physically exactly like some leviathan) back out to the Sea of Complexity (Extended Metaphor Alert!!!!). The obvious appeal of ancients is such that the team at Vae Victis seeking an Ancients tactical system for their lovely graphics could have gone with Big Phil or with Richard "Mr Bulky" Berg (in his case more mentally that physically). Instead of another sub-SPQR they have elected to turn DBM into a hex game - hence Champs de Bataille. Thou hast conquered Midlander!
To accompany this the magazine has given us magnificent sets of Byzantine, Gothic, Vandal, Roman, Greek, Hun and Frank Armies with the Iron Age Armies in VV15. It would be delightful to report this was a major success but I fear it is not. The system is just as tedious as Barker's watered down DBM but with the added complication that using hexes in which you face a vertex has meant that whereas in DBM you lined up opposite your opponent (which would indicate a square grid or a side facing hex system) in Champs de Bataille you face two opponents! This means that a lot of the rules are taken up with dealing with a problem of the designers own making. Not aided for anglophones by these sections of the rules being the least successfully translated of any. [Of course it suggests two uses for all these poptastic counters, firstly I can use them for my Field of Battle, secondly we can alter Champs to use a side facing system, but I am under detention for trying to design too many games so we will leave it for the nonce.]
Having shot themselves in the leg (much as the Society of Ancients Legion) the game remains true to the original model (so if you play DBM you will be well in here). If in SPQR generalship is reduced to a game of Snap in which one side has the better cards in Champs de Bataille it is a matter of parade-ground movement being the Answer To Everything. You throw your dice and get Activation Points (it is well known that Activation varied in this strange 1-6 fashion throughout historical battles) one of which could if your forces are aligned and facing the right way move half your army (because each "corps" moves separately it could not - I think- be all your army). So a correctly aligned force is very efficient (since you will always get one on your dice it can always move and you choose exactly what does move, not a sensation known to, say, Darius) but a much smaller set of forces (all within calling range say) which are misaligned could consume six Activation Points (six times as much drill).
The real variable efficiency of formation sizes is not much honoured here. Even worse within the dice score your Franks (all rancid butter and snot) can counter-march in a fashion that a Guards Regimental Sergeant-Major would enjoy. Providing they throw big scores. There is an example in the rules of Irregular Arab Cavalry forming from partial line ahead to an oblique formation which is breathtaking both in concept and in the idea that this is something which Irregular Arab Cavalry would do in the first place. These boys should join the Household Cavalry!
Of course within the confines of the system there is a lot of clever stuff in a chessy-style. You rush forward your skirmishers to prevent you opponents moving more efficiently out of range of you. Impetuous troops which you do not move (or deliberately stop from moving by forming them in the Line from Hell) rush forward ("Steady, damn you, steady"). Furthermore Irregular troops do take more "command" than regular so all is not daft, merely the wrong methodology.
Combat Simple
Combat is simple. It uses a narrative style whereby opposing type A against type B and outscoring them (both factors plus dice) will cause a recoil (push back) but more than doubling their score will cause something much more fatal. So its Push or Crush, but to add to the fun certain kinds of weapon are much more (or less) effective that this in the right situation - so if Pikes do not beat Knights (the type descriptions are very non-atmospheric) then the Pikes are dead. But of course the pikes can stack which favours them, and so it goes with experience and chess-skills being rewarded as the Byzantine player seeks to disassemble his bigger but more stupid opponent who just wants to roll over him. I found the combat pretty tedious, although the problems from the two hex front may have added to this. Dicing for a line of fifteen skirmishers is not much fun. It is, however, very much the way tactical wargaming goes.
Once the slaughter starts each army has a break level and last man in is a cissy. The design (as with Phil Barker's original) is too cunning to let the death of a lot of skirmishers count for the same as Macedonian pikemen, so there is a blood tariff to produce counter-equivalents. Ancient combat is tough battering stuff, you either play it quickly using rough-graining methods like in my Flowers of the Forest or (it seems to me) try to find an abstract game in the slaughter and play that while the body counts mount. The level of control is manifestly much larger than in reality with many decisions as to hexes occupied or positions take and where to place that overlap support being pure fiction.
Does it satisfy? We found it so lacking in historical feel that we abandoned it half-a-game in. Gareth Simon did claim it was a remarkably faithful simulation of Phil Barker's work - but I did not take this as a compliment, he's a sarcastic little blister in his own Welsh way. There is certainly an abstract game here with elements of ancient warfare, but as to commanding a force of Franks in battle there is not much connection.
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© Copyright 1997 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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