The scientific journals of the world are currently contemplating three potential global-wide areas of disaster: first, the Greenhouse Effect, wherein we keel over from getting too much C02...or not enough (I'm not sure which) ; second, the "Big One" off the western coast of the US, wherein, with a large sucking sound, all of California slides into the Pacific Ocean; and third, possibly the worst, the gradual infusion of DBM into the wargaming world, wherein the hobby is slowly being enveloped in noxious vapours and black, unbreathable fumes. During my three week vacation in the UK, I visited a good friend Robin Peck in Norwich, and we played... DBM. I attended a meeting of the Coventry Wargames Club, and watched them play... DBM. I visited the Worthing Wargames Club, and I played... DBM. And I note that here in my very own backyard, one or two small groups of cloaked and hooded figures, at every PW meeting, tippytoe silently into the back room, and set up their own DBM scenarios. Is there no surcease?? From the very beginnings of time, when, as a simple country lad, I entered the wargaming hobby, I have always had an aversion to the products published by the WRG people. Not because their games were faulty, but because their publications tend to make one grit one's teeth together into a very fine powder. The DBM rules book is a case in point. Without fear of contradiction, I can state that one cannot learn to play DBM by reading the rules book. What is fascinating to me is that once the rules are adequately explained to you, you find that (a) DBM is an entertaining and enjoyable game, and (b) the rules are essentially quite simple and logical. Note that I said "... once the rules are explained to you..." since there's no way you can, by yourself, learn the basics of the game from the rule book. As I've indicated before, it seems as if the DBM/WRG author bends over, puts his head between his legs, and from this inverted, upside down and backwards position, proceeds to type out his rules. Then, after the author completes his text, he turns it over to a reviewer who ensures the output is incomprehensible. All passages in clear English are reworked to reduce any possibility of the thought content being understood, and all logical paragraph orderings are reassembled in random fashion to provide a maximum incoherency factor. Now, having worked myself into a frenzy, having bitten my shield several times, having wiped the foam off my lips, let me tell you of my DBM adventures. Battle of Hastings At Robin Peck's house, using as a guide an article by Stephen Simpson in WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED (#75, Dec '93), we set up the Battle of Hastings. From the DBM army lists, we chose 100 point armies for both the Saxons and the Normans, and came up with: Harold... 26 stands, plus a "free" general William... 19 stands, plus a "free" general Hastings is an interesting scenario. We set up the game such that the Saxons, perched on their hill, presented a solid wall of frontline troops some 8 or 9 stands wide, and everyone else bunched in behind the front line. Impenetrable terrain was defined to be on either flank, so the Saxons had only to worry about the Normans coming straight at them up the hill. To emulate the fact that Harold's infantry, on occasion, ran down the hill after whopping the attacking Normans, we defined all of Harold's troops as "irregular"... which meant that unless held back by using a control pip on them, they'd all dash down the hill trying to get their licks in on the Normans, thus breaking the solid shield-wall on the hill, and making the disorganized Saxons an easy target for William's knights. So much for theory. In our first game, William led with his infantry (9 of 19 stands; the others were knights), and succeeded in getting his entire infantry force wiped out even before his knights moved forward. Second game. This time the entire Norman force, infantry and cavalry, moved forward as one block and contacted the Saxons en masse. In the middle of the Saxon line was a stand of archers ("psiloi" to those in the know), which lost a melee, and fled to the rear. I'm not sure if we read the rulebook correctly (I'm not sure if anyone can read the rule book correctly), but we assumed that when the front rank archers fled, they took with them all stands directly to their rear. In effect, the whole file ran back. And the last stand in this particular column happened to be Harold himself! When the column in which Harold was located took off, Harold lost control of all his troops, and being "irregular", said the text, "the elements must make a spontaneous advance as individual elements." This meant that the whole Saxon horde came arunnin' off the hill... each stand on its own. In retrospect, I think we slightly overdid the "run down the hill" aspect of the battle. In breaking up and advancing, the Saxon stands lost their "plus 1" for a hill advantage, but this didn't seem to prevent them from eating up William's knights. Just a bad day for William. Despite the fact that he had "enticed" the Saxons off their hill, William still got his head handed to him. Bob O'Brien is the moving force of the Worthing Wargame Club, and when Tom Elsworth and I visited him, he arranged a full day's DBM tournament for us. For those not versed in wargaming lore, Bob O'Brien was one of the early developers of the WRG rules sets. 'Twas he who came up with the dreaded WRG "reaction test", wherein 10? 20? factors are referenced to see what units will do when first seeing the enemy, when seeing their friends rout, when taking casualties, etc. Way back when, the reaction test was definitely in the forefront of wargaming development. Bob's comment was that when the reaction test was first tried out, and the troops took off instead of obeying orders, "We thought we had really latched on to something good..." But today, the Worthing group's interest focuses on DBM, and for the tournament, all players were told to select an army from the DBM listings. I chose Army #51, a late Judean array... the Hammer of Yahweh, I termed them. I'm afraid that Yahweh wasn't with us that day; the record will show the following six consecutive losses: Game Number Opposing Army 1 Carthaginians 2 Early Germans 3 Parthians 4 Pre-Islamic Arabs 5 Selucids 6 Irish In looking at the DBM rule book, it appears that its format is following that of the older WRG rules sets. Oriented toward tournament play, there are 'lebenty 'leben army listings (growing each day), there are 'lebenty 'leben types of troops, and they each can be ordinary, superior, irregular, etc. The book sets up a field day for rules lawyers as the text and interpretations thereof expand in geometric fashion. He who isn't conversant with the rules suffers accordingly. For example, consider what I call the dreaded "swamp ambush". You'll note in the above listing of the defeats of the Hammer of Yahweh that the second loss was inflicted by an Early German contingent. This was Tom Elsworth's force, and as we set up our troops, and chose our terrain, Tom decided to place a swamp to the left rear of my units. What in the world was a swamp doing back there, I wondered. But not for long. I started to move my cavalry out to the left in a flanking march, when, out of the swamp, popped several of Tom's psiloi, light troops, dripping with swamp weeds. They stopped my horsemen in their tracks. The cavalry had to back up to recover from their shock; by definition, the smelly swamp people cut off the cavalry's line of march. Evidently, one can hide his ambushing lights just about anywhere on the field... in swamps, woods, "bad going", in closets, in attics... anywhere. In another battle, my medium troops, auxilia, were contacted by an advancing line of mounted knights. When in combat, the two contacting stands each toss a 6-sided die, add their combat factor and the higher total wins. I had thought that if I lost a combat or two, there would be nothing to worry about... my auxilia would step back gracefully, recover, and charge in again. It turned out, however, that these were not ordinary knights... these were "fast knights". Indeed, they were faster than fast... they were supersonic. When my boys lost, these fast knights didn't permit them to step back; the knights rode right over them, wiping them out, riding them down and destroying them. Not only that, but because I had placed a second rank of auxilia right in back of the first, the fast knights over-rode both ranks!... an absolute slaughter! During my visit to the Coventry Wargaming Club, I noted more DBM games. Incidentally, few people to whom I spoke knew anything about ARMATI, about TACTICA, or any other current set of ancients rules. I attended the Coventry Club's meeting with Paddy Griffith, with whom I was spending the weekend. The good Dr. Griffith, some years ago, somewhat sullied his reputation in the miniatures hobby when he announced that miniatures and pushing toy soldiers around on the table top were for kids... he had graduated to bigger and better things... committee games, and megagames, and multiple-participant strategic games. And so I felt honored that Paddy, acting as my host, actually attended the Coventry Club meeting with me. I could see him gritting his teeth throughout the meeting but he held up well. ECW Forlorn Hope There was one presentation being set up which was not a DBM game. This was an English Civil War battle with 25mm figures, and we asked permission of the host to sit in on the scenario. The rules to be used were FORLORN HOPE, published by Partizan Press in 1987. Partizan Press publishes some good stuff on the era, but I've never been particularly impressed with their rules writing efforts. And I can say, after my one experience in Coventry, that FORLORN HOPE (FH) comes under the heading of Utterly, Absolutely Unnecessary, and Useless (UAUU) rules. Many of my own sets may fall into the UAUU category, but FH beats them by far. FH is a take-off on the old WRG system. There are charts, there are charts, there are charts... 17 of them. One does not move without consulting a chart. For example, for combat, one referenced: a fire combat chart, a melee combat factor chart, a hand-to-hand modifier chart, a combat resolution chart, a melee reaction test chart. The morale test chart alone has 26 factors. To institute a charge, the advancing force went to an 11 factor chart to see if it initiated the charge. Then, if successful, it went to the "charge home" chart of 8 factors. Meanwhile, the defending unit referenced its own "on being charged" chart of 17 factors. Prior to our game, Paddy diced for the status of our units, and succeeded in giving us (we were the Parliamentarians) 5 out of 6 "raw" pike and musket units. Not good. My own "raw" pike and musket unit, 24 figures strong, routed after taking only one casualty. It was never seen again. Despite our "rawness" we advanced up the field as best we could. In melee, raw troops suffered twice over... not only did they get a negative modifier for being raw, but their opponents got a bigger, positive modifier for being better than they were! This doublewhammy did us no good... none of our units, save one, survived the first contact. This one viable unit was in Paddy's force, and late in the game, when Parliament's position looked (and was) hopeless, Paddy requested one more turn. It appeared he had developed a grudge against one of the Royalist pike and musket units (which had defeated a couple of his own) and wanted to toss his remaining unit against it one more time. Alas! Grudge or not, "raw" just wouldn't do it! FH is a slow game. Each turn starts with a "change of orders" phase... units can be given orders to "advance to contact", "hold', "advance and fire", etc. A mounted unit of dragoons goes 6 inches per turn, infantry proportionately slower. My conclusions: stay away from FH. It is to be avoided at all costs! Play DBM if necessary! Fruit Bowl Skirmish I feel I must mention one other miniatures game in which I engaged. Again, the good Dr. Griffith, acting as the perfect host, set his teeth, clenched his fists, and took out a box of 54mm modern Airfix figures, which he had painted several decades ago, and which he keeps buried way at the back of his storage closet. This game was termed the "Fruit Bowl Skirmish". On Paddy's dining room table, there was a fruit bowl, and we distributed its contents on top of the table... an orange here, an apple there, here a lemon, there a banana... Then we each took about 8 figures and set them out, in alternating fashion, behind the pieces of fruit. Then the skirmish began. In alternate turns we would select one man. Using his line-of-sight, we'd determine if he could see any enemy troops. If so, then that enemy soldier was killed. The man only had to see a "piece" of the enemy... a foot, a hand, a shoe, an elbow, and BANG!, the enemy died. The alternate to going BANG! was... if you saw your own man was in plain view of an enemy figure... to move your man to a better cover position. I proved singularly inept at placing my people in cover. As the illustration shows, the configuration of the fruit on the table lent itself to exposure of the lower limbs and feet. Paddy, better trained than I at this type of stealth warfare, kept his men well hidden, all the while zeroing in on my exposed heels and toes. ACW Using a set of American Civil War rules I had brought with me, I played a game with them at Robin Peck's house, and later on, at Duncan McFarlane's. The basis of the rules system rested on a set of Cohesion Points (CP) given every 4-stand regiment. Each regiment started with around 50 CP, and its total gradually diminished through losses due to fire and melee. The basic Morale Grade of a regiment regiment started out in fine fashion at a grade of 2 x 50, or 100%. But two factors decreased this figure: a. First, the CP total itself went down as the battle continued, and b. Second, subtracted from the basic Morale Grade was the distance of the regiment from its brigade officer. With four or so regiments to look after, the brigadier couldn't be everywhere at once, and some of his units suffered accordingly. At Robin's house, we referenced the August, 1976 issue of WARGAMER'S DIGEST, and set up a game styled along the scenario given in the magazine. In the rules, I had incorporated a very old boardgame combat procedure which required the opposing commanders in melee to decide which aspect of the melee was of greater importance: attrition of the enemy, or driving him off and winning (holding) the position. For example, if I had two regiments in melee, one with 40 CP, the other with 30, this gave me a total of 70 CP for the combat. Then I would divide my total number of points in two parts as follows: a. Points devoted to holding the position. If I thought the position was extremely important, I might devote well over half, say 50 of my 70 CP, to this aspect. Then, to the 50, I'd add a percentage dice throw. My opponent would also add a percentage dice throw to his "hold the position" points, and the higher total would win the position; the smaller total would fall back. b. The remaining 20 of my CP were devoted to killing the enemy. Every 10 points so assigned yielded one 10-sided "Kill Die", and a toss of 1,2,3,4,5 on the die took off 5 CP from the enemy's CP total. Note that if the position itself wasn't important, I could have devoted all 70 of my CP toward killing the enemy, and tossed 7 Kill Dice, with a potential of knocking off 35 points from his CP. I must admit that my superior knowledge of the rules didn't help me in any of the ACW scenarios in which I engaged... I lost 'em all. At Duncan McFarlane's house, Peter Dennis and I took on General McFarlane and came out second best. Peter is a staunch advocate of George Jeffrey's rules system, the "variable bound" concept, which he claims is the only way to actually simulate the train of events that occur on the battlefield. After a number of turns, when our forces were fairly well battered, I was ready to throw in the towel, but Pete determined to fight on. It is noted that "fairly well battered" means that our regimental CP averaged around 20, giving (a) a Morale Grade of 40%, and (b) not-too-many points in melee to either hold a position or attrit the enemy. Back to PW Review April 1995 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com