I had a game of DBM with Phil Steele Sunday before last. (And played until 4am Monday morning - but it was a bank holiday.) Which reminds me - I used Blueprint for Victory from the last Spearpoint in the AGM Supplement - the first part of it anyway ' - the rest I have handed over to Michael Grant for serialising in Slingshot. But, getting back to the plot, we were not impressed with the rules in several areas. Phil's views will appear in his Living With An Army List in an upcoming Slingshot: Mine are straightforward. It needs a morale rule of some sort, and there is too much manoeuvrabihty: the dice need to be reduced somehow. I have suggested to Steve Neste a few ideas to try out:

Morale - single elements not in contact with the enemy and not impetuous must make a full move away from any enemy within (the enernY's) movement range unless the moving I player allocates a PIP in the initial phase to hold/move them.

Optional/for discussion - this move cannot be used to attach the element.to another element/body.

Regrouping - a general can issue a Regioup signal by paying one PIP. This means that ALL single elements within their movement range of the general or a body he is part of must join that body unless they are impetuous. if two PIN are expended, single elements and twoelement bodies must move as above. Three PIPS, and one, two and three element bodies must join up, and so on.

Rolling dice - only the C-in-C rolls a die at the beginning of the game, and allocates the PIPs to each of the other commands. The other commands only start rolling dice themselves once they have come within (their own) movement range of enemy elements. (Excluding Psiloi? Excluding Light Horse? Providing the Ps and LH belong to commands consisting solely of Ps or LH? Discuss.) If the C-in-C rolls a 6 then he can bring a flank march in next turn, but he gets to spend the 6 as well, and the flank march can roll its own die on the turn it moves on.

Casualties - Steve thought there ought to be another result of combat other than destroyed or not destroyed but pushed back. so -.if your combat factor is exactly half that of the enemy then instead of being destroyed you flee, with all the frills of bursting through and carrying away the burst-through elements with you.

Phil also liked the victory conditions - you count up demoralized commands - and he will be suggesting that this is adopted for Seventh edition games/tournaments (especially the SQA Doubles. This will then remove the need for players to massacre their opponents' armies, especially if they have "won" the game early. Most tournaments over here work out victory through casualties inflicted/suffered, which means that you have to keep killing People in order to get a big body-count even if the result is obvious. This makes for a boring game for the loser, and in the Swiss/Chess system popular in tournaments here, a top level player can meet a novice, which doesn't give that novice a good introduction to competition gaming. So says Phil.

The introduction to the rules tells us that we should not tamper with the mechanisms Well, I paid good money for them, and if I'm not happy with what I get then I'm going to tamper So there.