My ping-pong table was divided in two... each half a battlefield. On Table #1 (T#1), we set up a small DBR encounter. On Table #2 (T#2) were placed similar size forces, but the rules to be used were my own version of Simon's Renaissancish Goings-On (SRGO). The intent was to run the same encounter side-by-side and see how the outcomes differed. My 25mm figures were used, and the scales resulted in the opposing forces initially set up some 2 feet apart on the DBR table, while approximately 4 feet from each other on T#2. Jeff Wiltrout acted as our in-house DBR expert, and he insisted that if we were going to use the DBR rules, we should, indeed, use the DBR rules. Which meant that on T#1, distances were measured in centimeters, while in T#2, in inches. Some idea of the relative distances moved are given below. Note that in DBR, 60 millimeters equals 50 paces. Table #1 (DBR) Table #2 (SRGO) Light horse 250 paces (300 mm or 12 inches) 20inches Lancers 200 paces (240 mm or 9.6 inches) 15 inches Pike 100 paces (120 mm or 4.8 inches) 8 inches Otherfoot 100 paces (120 mm or 4.8 inches) 10inches You'll note that the DBR movement rates were less than my own, but due to the initial setup distances on the field, the forces made contact on both tables on Bound 2. Fred Haub was pitted against Jeff on the DBR table, and his lancers smacked into those of Jeff's. In similar fashion, I fought Jeff on T#2, where my own lancers charged into Jeff's cavalry. Under DBR, a lancer stand in combat adds +3 to a 6-sided die roll. Both Jeff and Fred tossed their 6-sided dice, and Fred totaled more than Jeff. If Fred's total had doubled Jeff's, he would have wiped out the opposing lancer stand. As it was, he forced Jeff's lancers to step back... "recoil" is the proper buzz word. As I remember, Fred caused 2 of 3 of Jeff's lancers to recoil; the third comparison proved to be a standoff. DBR requires a lancer stand to follow up, i.e, pursue, a stand that it has caused to recoil. Which meant that the victorious lancers shot forward and penetrated Jeff's line. Incidentally, the initial dispositions of both Fred's and Jeff's forces were the same. Each army had 14 stands in it and all stands had been formed into one long contiguous line, the better to take advantage of the pip movement system. Movement pips are diced for by tossing a 6-sided die, and I think Jeff stated it requires 1 pip to move a group 4 elements (stands) wide. Thus with 14 stands, a toss of 4 or more could move the entire line forward. After the battle, I checked the DBR manual to see for myself what the movement restrictions were. On page 16 of the rule book is stated: 1 pip is expended to... move a group of up to 4 elements wide... 3 pips are expended to... move a group more than 4 elements wide Question of the day: how many pips do I need to move a group of elements 5 stands wide? Is it 2, or is it 3?? H-m-m-m? The answer lies somewhere in the definition of "group", but I'm certainly not going to get any gray hair worrying about it. The DBA/DBM/DBR boys seem to ignore this sort of nonsense... what they do is wait for someone to appear who has spoken directly to Phil Barker to get an interpretation from the Big Guy himself. I kid you not. At the last PW meeting, during a DBR game, the two opposing fellas were trying to decipher a rule having to do with a combat outcome which referenced, not just the sum of the die-plus-modifier total, but did something else if the total was odd. Neither man could interpret the rule, and they limped along, until in walked Mike Guth. "Don't worry, " said Mike, "I understand what's supposed to happen. I called Phil Barker earlier in the day and he explained everything." Most interesting of all was that no one raised an eyebrow, no one thought this an unusual occurrence. My only comment is that Mr. Barker must get one helluvalotta phone calls. But we digress. Back to Table #2, where my lancers charged those of Jeff's. Under SRGO, lancers had a Combat Value (CV) of 7; each side tossed a 10-sided die, and the high total won the round. SRGO requires that at least 3 rounds be fought, i.e., 3 comparisons of the dice. Three rounds were fought; i.e., the dice were quickly tossed three times and the totals compared for each round. At the end of the third round, there was a 30 percent chance the melee ended. If a fourth round occurred, there was then a 60 percent chance that the melee ended, and so on. The winner was the side that won the majority of rounds. My lancers won, I think they took 5 rounds to do so, and Jeff's lancers retreated and received 3 casualty markers. Markers do a unit no good. Not only do they negatively affect the morale level of a unit, but a total of 5 such markers and a unit temporarily flees the field. I say 'temporarily', since it's placed in an off-board Rally Zone and reappears after rallying. My own lancers did not escape unhurt... the unit received one casualty marker merely for being in the melee. On T #1, on the subsequent turns, the original neat single-line formations on both sides of the field had broken up, due to both the limitations imposed by pip-rolling and a series of melees, which set the stands of both sides in disarray. As the lines disintegrated and single stands broke off from the main body, it became more and more difficult to control the elements of the armies. Each army had started with 14 stands: 4 lancer elements 1 bombard 2 light horse 3 blades 3 dragoons 1 Command stand The DBR rules book states that if at the end of a bound, the total of elements lost by a side equals 2/3 of its original strength, that side automatically loses. 2/3 of 14 is 9, but we used 7. Both battles lasted 7 bounds. I compared losses of the 14-stand armies on Bound 4: Table #1... DBR Table #2... SRGO Wiltrout lost 1 lancer stand Wiltrout lost 3 lancer stands Haub lost 1 lancer stand Simon lost 1 lancer stand 1 dragoon 1 archer 1 light horse 1 pike 1 sword & buckler Jeff was doing a fine job of whomping both Fred and me. On T#2, he had forced my army back about 3/4 of the field. Any more retreats would result in my units fleeing the field. It was on the first half of Bound 5, T#1, that Fred managed to flank Jeff's blades and eliminate them. He had knocked off 6 of the required 7 stands, and all seemed to be going well. Jeff, however, caught up to him on the second half of the bound. What had impeded Jeff was a series of low pip rolls, preventing him from moving all the elements he needed to mass his forces. On Bound 6, the die finally came through for Jeff. A toss of a 6, and he was finally able to corner one of Fred's light horse stands... Jeff attacked with lancers and outflanked it. Seven enemy elements wiped out ... end of battle. On T#2, I tried to make a comeback, using the dreaded "officer ploy". Each turn, the commanding officer may remove casualty markers from his units, transferring them to himself. The danger in doing so is that the officer may be killed... he tests every half-bound, and the chance he keels over is the square of the number of markers he carries. This means, for example, that with 7 markers he has a 49% chance (7 squared is 49) of dying, and with 10 markers, he's automatically out of the battle. My officer took 4 markers off his units; 4 squared is only 16, and I thought that 16 percent was an extremely low percentage chance that he'd die... but die he did. The man just up and died on me! He must have had a congenital heart problem... if I had known, I never would have recruited him. Not having an officer is bad, bad, bad. Each time a unit takes a morale test, there's an automatic -20 modifier to the unit's morale level... which usually results in the unit failing the test and receiving yet more markers. I noted that Jeff also kept piling the markers on his officer. Several times, he ran the total number of markers up to 10, thus automatically wiping out the officer. What a cruel fellow! War is hell! Yet Jeff managed to have all his units pass all subsequent morale tests until a replacement officer appeared. Every half-bound, there's a 70 percent chance that a new officer wanders in. And when the new officer appeared for Jeff... what did he do but pile more markers on him!! On Bound 6, I gave up the ghost. Just about all of my units had 4 markers on them (5 sends them off-board to the Rally Zone). And each marker also reduces the unit's morale level by 10 percent. In short, my force was worn out. The results of the two simultaneous games ran fairly parallel to one another. The major difference in procedure was that on my table, I pushed 'units' around, whereas on the DBR table, the players pushed 'elements'. I'm going to phone Phil Barker (collect) to have him explain what an element is. Back to PW Review July 1996 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1996 Wally Simon 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