The DBM game concept provides an excellent vehicle for fast fun games with a reasonable historic flavor and a minimum of complicated contradictory rules. It is not, however, without some problems that can be readily corrected (or simply accepted.)

The biggest problem (unless you view simplicity as a problem) is premature demoralisation. Individual commands become demoralised upon 33% losses. An entire Army becomes demoralised when over half of its stands are lost or part of a demoralised command. In the worst case, an Army with two equal commands will lose when either command suffers one-third losses- only 17% of the total Army! This is easily addressed by raising the command demoralisation factor from 33% up towards 50%, or by raising I e Army threshold above 50%.

The second significant problem is the excessive contribution of dice to determining the winner. Dice are a necessary part of most wargames, however in DBM the standard D6 distribution outweighs the units relative combat factors (2-5) and the terrain impact (1 or 2.) Command control suffers from the same fluctuation of a standard D6.

Both rules can be addressed by switching to average dice. This will eliminate the catastrophic die rolls that let Psiloi beat Knights (among many others.) In regard to initiative dice, no carefully planned and executed game should be lost due to a single toss of snake eyes. If you can lose on a pair of twos then your plan was to complex anyway.

Several other concerns fall into the category of troop type preference. Pikes are too brittle, losing four stands on a bad die roll is too costly to risk. The whole Army could become demoralised. One improvement would be to eliminate only the front two stands, allowing the back two to fill in.

Auxilia are too weak. Any list that features them, such as Thracians, is not worth playing. Ordinary bowmen are a handicap on the field. If lucky, they can slow an advance prior to being crushed (with resulting premature demoralisation of the entire Army.) In a firefight, their factor of two is dwarfed by the D6 spread of the dice. Also, they get no archery advantage for being uphill.

Warbands are too strong. They get support from a second rank that makes their factor nearly as high as pikes and spears. The real problem is that they destroy most foot with any margin, 2:1 is not necessary. Fortunately, Knights kill them in the same fashion.

One final observation: our group is still struggling with terrain placement rules and the impact of terrain on a battle. We had been doing the placement wrong by letting the attacker remove ALL of the terrain from the center sections. This resulted in the same terrain for every battle- a river on one flank and rough terrain on the other with the center wide open.

In terms of terrain impact, difficult terrain is nearly impossible to move through. Most troops that fight in it are readily killed in it. It must be avoided rather than dealt with. We need more experimentation with terrain on the battlefield.

In spite of these concerns, I find DBM to be much more fun than 7th Edition. It is faster to play and the results are decisive.