DBN by Alex Testo

Alex Testo has developed a set of rules inspired by the DBx stable of rules, specifically covering the Napoleonic period.

They are well written and presented, with some nice detail. At its heart, the basic game engine is delightfully smooth and so play runs easily off a simple Quick Reference Sheet.

Having read the rules twice, I am left with an impression that most game queries are going to be likely answered in the rules. 

One of the important elements that Alex has brought is the concept of attrition. Combat is by opposed die rolls plus modifiers. If you score higher than the enemy then a hit is applied, score double or more and you inflict 2 hits or something more serious!

The first hit is just a hit, two hits make the unit shaken and on the third hit, a unit is removed from play. Units do not get a chance to recover from hits.

I am presently collecting two napoleonic armies, my 28mm French / Austrian and my new project of Epic scale French / Prussian. The former are well established on 80mm bases, the later are on 55mm bases, but the project is so new that now would be the time to change basing without any real disruption.

In wanting to get these rules to the table as soon as possible, I face three initial possibilities on scale and basing;

The rule set prescribes base sizes of 40mm frontage for 15mm and smaller and 60mm for 25 / 28mm. A single musket base is representing something like a brigade.

Firstly I could re-base specifically to the measurements prescribed in the rules.

OR

My Epic can be placed on 55mm frontages. I’m not a big fan of the 55mm infantry strips sitting on the supplied 60mm bases, because you end up with a small gap at the end of the line, that can look a bit odd when placed next to a similar base, so I snip the rounded ends of the strips and attach them to a 55mm base, a nice tight fit.

Click on me!

For my new Pocket Army project, I have the infantry currently on 35mm deep bases, which allows for 3 ranks. That makes for a musket unit with 3 ranks of 10 men, so 30 heads to the base, which has a nice density to it. 

I will refit the cavalry to the same frontage (4 mounted for my dragoons shown above), but wanting 2 ranks (8 mounted) to make them look right next to the infantry, with a little bit of mass about them, they need to go on a 55 x 60 bases.

The artillery can happily could have a frontage of 2 guns with crew on a 55 x 40, though looking at conversions in the rules setting them at 60 deep would be fine.

If I went with this, then in moving from a 40mm to 55mm frontage per unit, I should increase all measurements by a factor of 1.375, so on the measuring ruler, 100 Paces should be raised from 25mm to 35mm. So for example, muskets fire at 200 Paces, so with this change, would fire at 70mm instead of 50mm.

I have asked Alex for a bit of advice on the subject of base size and he has said that the infantry and cavalry should really be on the same depth of base, so I may need to visually enjoy them as per above, but if forced to recoil etc, I might need to ‘imagine’ that the infantry have the same base depth as the cavalry. He also suggested that the 28mm artillery should have a 80 x 80 base placed underneath it, to keep everything true.

OR

If using my 28's, then they could stay on their 80mm bases and a similar process would see a doubling of the basic measurement, with 100 Paces being represented by 50mm instead of 25mm (exactly doubled), so my home made ruler would be marked up in 50mm (2") increments with musket bases as an example, firing at 200 Paces (100mm).

For the basic 12 element game, which in the rulebook uses a 2’ x 2’ battlefield in 15mm on 40mm frontages, I would need to grow the table to a 3’ x 3’ or just slightly less for the Epic and to 4’ x 4’ for the 28’s. In each case, you are really looking at the concept of a Pocket Army playing in a small space, which I like.

Alex describes the 12 element army as a corps sized formation and the rules have scope to increase the number of ‘corps’ used per side to give a bigger game, much like ‘big army DBA’ does. 

In this case, the battlefield would widen by 1 foot (300mm) per additional formation (corps). These bigger armies also accommodate multi-player games and can reflect some of the bigger historical multi corps battles. There are videos on Alex’s YouTube channel that have AAR’s on Eylau, Leipzig, Borodino, Ligny and Waterloo as examples.

Anyway, for now, I will do some knock-about games with my 28’s as that gives me fully painted forces, but as a project, I will chip away at the Epic scale as I need something that gets me away from the table where I stand, to the table where I can sit.

Every now and then, something comes along to re-enthuse and I am seeing DBN in that light. There will be more to come on this here, while over at over at the Commanders site I may set up a specific DBN page and put updates there.

Edit - I have made my ruler at 40mm per 100 paces and will try that with both the Epic and the 28's and see whether it works and if not why.

Resources;

My Commanders site is just some extra webspace that I use to do the more snippet based type of posts and project discussion. It is paid for and advert free. LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

The DBN site (for a copy of the rules, go to DOWNLOAD or if you want a hard copy, go to MORE and click on the CONTACT page to make your request) LINK

https://dbnwargaming.weebly.com/

For a video AAR of Quatre Bras LINK

 

https://youtu.be/hXJy05JOmU4?si=VI_20tLbej4upVAn

Starting a new Pocket Army for Dodgy Backs!

Well, there is a bit more to it than that - it is connected to some ‘thinking’ - Oh Dear!

It is a Pocket Army because its size will be contained, but it is also a three foot army because I am speed painting and viewing at the three foot rule is a guiding principle. It is also a …. Oh what should I call it! …. A restricted mobility army for those occasions that my back / leg problems have a flare-up and I need to sit at the table with just a small game in front of me. It is also an experimental army to bring all of the above together for some sort of assessment of feasibility on how best to proceed.

Since doing the 10mm infantry in 2 ranks on 3 bases, I am now looking a 3 ranks on 2 bases, but having a similar total frontage of 110 - 120mm.

Pocket Army - 5 x infantry, 1 x artillery, 1 x light horse and 1 x heavy horse per side will be the object of the exercise. Last year I cut a couple of neoprene gaming mats down to 4’ x 2’ and I would see these armies operating in that sort of space.

Three Foot Army - Painting with the three foot rule in mind. I have been doing some test bases, where the figures are primed and then glued into positions on bases ….. and then painted - fast! I have never previously thought this a good idea, but it certainly forces you away from getting involved in all of the detail. 

Just get a general impression and the paint only goes where the brush and the eye can go and it is a faster way to paint. I don’t enjoy seeing the results close up, but at gaming distance (three foot), there is a lot of forgiveness. I know this sounds a terrible thing to say, but without the usual love poured into them, it allows me to tell the family that when I’m dearly departed, not to worry about them, they can even be thrown away! They will be as disposable as any football or concert ticket.

So far I have painted a group of Pendraken 10mm bases and now a group of these Epic bases. At the conclusion of that, I think it just comes down to personal preference, though I think the looser 10mm artillery looks better to the eye than the very fixed Epic poses with the gunners in rigid positions, but I like the Epic infantry better (I will rebase by 10mm to the same look and see how I feel about that). The cavalry fight it out on equal terms.

Restricted Mobility Army - I am having problems standing for lengthy periods at my gaming table. It is 40” off the ground to reduce bending, which is good, but being on my feet in a fairly static position can soon bring discomfort that lasts for a few days. Sitting at the dining table brings some relief, but not if stretching across it, so the idea of having a 2 x 4 mat under my nose, while sitting, holds some appeal - restrictive, but sometime you can’t have a cake and a bun!

Long (long) term, more of my gaming may come down to this sort of play, so perhaps having a couple of Pocket Armies on stand-by for that eventuality is not such a bad idea.

Experimental Army - I have a potted history of jumping back and forth between scales, systems and table setups. There is of course a financial cost to this, but equally important a time cost, whether that be painting or moving between systems etc, so I am just feeling my way along with this project, to see where it goes ..... if anywhere! 

One of the benefits of going with the ‘three foot army’, with most things being painted while on their base, I can build all of the bases of the whole Pocket Army ahead of time and game with them unpainted, pushing them into the painting queue one at a time as the fancy takes me, until the armies move slowly from being mostly unpainted, to painted.

This a critically more effective way of seeing whether a project suits and settling upon the right set of rules, rather than having to paint everything first.

In my minds eye at the moment, is a game with relatively big bases and fewer moving parts. Having tried variations on this theme, I quite like the latest iteration as follows.

Infantry - For Napoleonics, taking the British aside, the formations can be represented 3 ranks deep, so even if I go for a smaller frontage, the extra rank keeps the number of heads in the unit high enough for a good visual presence.

Above - This is a three foot photo of a 3 foot unit .... it looks okay to my eyes! (actually, in truth, it does withstand closer inspection).

2 bases are needed per unit as I want to be gaming at the more tactical level, where the difference between line, assault column and square can be shown. My first unit off the production line to have these traits are Epic Prussian musketeers, with each base measuring 55mm x 35, the whole unit occupies a frontage of 110mm, with a total of 60 heads, which gives a fair sense of mass.

Above - the same two infantry bases now in column. 

The only thing I am not sure about yet is whether the ranks might be better positioned slightly closer together on say a 30mm deep base, but the deeper base makes assault column look ... deeper! Anyway 5 or so such units on the 4 x 2 should work okay. 

Cavalry - These are set on 80mm x 60mm bases in two ranks of 6 to give 12 models. The example here are Epic French Dragoons. When I did the same base in 10mm, for the same ‘look’ it allowed two ranks of 7. Both look good. 

I intend to use the cavalry as a single base per unit and not concern myself with formation, their class of light, heavy, lancer etc will be what matters. Three bases can represent a whole brigade, say 2 up front and 1 behind, with a frontage of 160 - 180mm .

Artillery - These (above - Epic) are set as 3 guns on a 80mm x 40mm base to represent a battery. In my games, usually 2 guns are used for a battery, so the 3 models offers a bit more real estate. 

However, if I compare the Epic base to the 10mm base (above), In my view, I think the 10mm looks better. The guns have more room to breath and the crew are scattered more randomly over the entire base. My Epic version by comparison looks a bit too rigid. I will likely try and do a separate limber base, to represent the guns when on the move.  

Anyway, as stated, this is a plodders project, that may or may not bloom! 

Change of collection emphasis (again!)

Regular readers of this blog will be used to seeing ‘a final’ stream-lining and re-organisation of hobby post and yes, here we are again! The boardgames get a slight tweak and the figures get a wake up call!

First the easy one - board games. The principle of reducing the collection to being based on ‘series’ rules, covering ancients right through to WWII has been embedded for several years, but every now and then, one series will fall out of favour, replaced by another. The recent tweaks pertain to American War of Independence, American Civil War, with Napoleonics  still under review.

My collection had an AWI gap and the problem here is that there are not many candidates to choose from, especially in the ‘series’ type of games. However, I have jumped (back in) to the Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) games by GMT. I have been here before, but was not keen on the D10 Combat Table as D10 systems can tend to be a bit swingy - however, my view on this sort of thing has changed and I now see ‘swingy’ more as a mechanism to reduce the player having too much control of everything and instead leaving the local fight to the unseen colonels etc.

Anyway, I now have eight separate AWI battles on rather lovely maps - so I am looking forward to re-engaging with this.

For the American Civil War, I am returning to the Blind Swords series by Revolution games. Volume 12, First Day of Gettysburg, has just been released. The system does like its chaos and generally serves to reduce player control - something that I like. I did have the first four games in the series, but each had its own rulebook that was different in each set and that reduced my enjoyment, but now they have moved to a series based rule set for all of the games plus an exclusive rules book for each battle, which is much friendlier when playing across multiple titles.

I am starting with three new titles, The First Day at Gettysburg, Salem’s Church and 1st Bull Run. These games have replaced the ACW Battles series by Worthington Games, Rebel Fury by GMT and Great Battles of the American Civil War by GMT, which have all since been moved on.

Napoleonics have a slight log jam at the moment. I got rid of Hexasim’s Eagles of France series and dropped the Eylau series by Sound of Drums. I am left with two series, The Library of Napoleonic Battles by Operational Studies Group and Jours de Gloire by Vae Victis. I like both for different reasons, though both take longer to play than I really want, while the compact nature of JdG makes them easier to be left set up. The truth is, the Napoleonic series that I really want hasn’t been made yet. Regardless, to be true to having one series system per historical period, ideally one of these needs to go and one needs supporting, if for no other reason that then only one set of rules needs to remembered for good play.

I am still buying non-series games, but they need to work hard to justify the shelf space and wallet emptying.

Now the figures. Two factors recently gave me a ‘light on’ moment. Firstly, I have been collecting everything Epic (from Warlord Games) for a while. I had 7 of the large battle boxes covering 5 different periods, giving a total of 14,000 figures, with more Epic releases on the horizon and as a somewhat compulsive collector, they will be bought (the series mentality!) 

I was painting these furiously and not particularly making big inroads into that stash and it was clear that painting, something I don’t like anyway, was becoming the predominant part of my hobby time. I was in effect becoming hostage to more painting than I could likely do in my remaining years - a painting treadmill.

Secondly I recently read on a blog (sorry can’t remember which one) that the blogger felt that collecting in two periods was pretty sustainable, but that going beyond this becomes increasingly less so! This really clicked with me.

Looking at my stuff in that light, the two army pairings that I like the most are my 28mm Napoleonic French / Austrians and my 28mm Lancastrian / Yorkist Wars of the Roses figures. These collections give me a lot of pleasure and they are (to my eyes) friendlier to paint. Both these collections are still on the smaller side of things, but I like the idea of just adding the odd unit here or there as the fancy takes me without feeling like I am a painting machine.

I have just prepped some units (built and primed) while the weather still holds good for gluing and rattle can spraying outside, with enough now ready for winter painting … and no doubt beyond. With just a few units in this plastic / metal ‘pimple’ (as David from his excellent GHQ blog refers to his small stash - see link below), for the first time in ages, everything feels a lot more manageable and not at all overwhelming, so much so, I have switched off from painting figures over the past few weeks and have turned to building some nice terrain - very enjoyable.

The casualty here has had to be the reluctant selling off of my Epic collection and I must admit a slight ‘sellers regret pang’ when I saw a YouTube video of Warlord Games recent Open Day and they had an Epic Jacobite battle on the table that looked …. well like a Jacobite battle should, but then I looked at the new Napoleonic 28mm farmyard that I am building and calm was restored - as the saying goes, you can’t have your cake and your bun!

I am not decrying the Epic at all, I have really enjoyed gaming at that scale and it could have easily worked for me with the ‘rule’ of just two collections, say Napoleonic French / Prussian or ACW and Hannibal Punic, but my mindset is such that I see them as a collectable series and must have everything, my loss I know, but it is the way it is.

In the mix of sustainable gaming is the fact that my time is in any case already split 50/50 between servicing both board games and figure games, so there are always too many things to do next!

After a number of weeks of selling, the shelf clearance has been shockingly successful with all the smaller figures and associated terrain gone. Even as the 28mm terrain expands (only by a bit), I will still be left with controlled storage and more importantly to me …. a less busy mind.

Of course, there are still periods that I want, but today I am recognising ‘want’ as being distinctly different from ‘need’ and I will not be dipping my toe into anything new until I am satisfied that both the Napoleonic and WotR pairings are more properly developed.

A limit of two periods also means that the fewer rule books needed can hopefully become more second nature in use. It would be nice to think that I could eventually just get by on two rule sets!

For Napoleonic rules, I want to explore my recently bought ‘Soldiers of Napoleon’, which I hope will work for me going forward. If not I will revert back to Black Powder or even my own home brew rules.

For Wars of the Roses, I am going to have a go at ‘On Bloody Ground’, if I don’t get on with them, I have Hail Caesar, now supported by their excellent WotR supplement.

I should admit that somewhere amongst all of this is a yearning to get a plug-in’ to those joys of wargaming in my teenage years, when collecting and gaming just seemed a simpler experience and what you had was, well, what you had and greater familiarity with it gave a more enjoyable experience ….. though admittedly I did seem to have a lot more grey cells then and that may have had something to do with having a fuller and easier grasp of whole rule systems!

I’m sure that part of the attraction of Epic for me has been that nostalgic connection with opening boxes of Airfix figures as an excitable youngster. Ready to go plastic figures …… no multi build stuff, unless you were a WWII gamer and had to cope with such things as those wheels / tracks on the Airfix Churchill tank :-)

Anyway, there you are, an attempt at an easier life / hobby balance, for me anyway. The point being, I hope to game more and paint less ….. a lot less!

For those who have been long time readers and recognise this as just another probable seesaw moment of re-adjustment with justifications and are rolling your eyes right now, you may be right, but in any case thank you for your tolerance of all this navel gazing :-) …… though surely there is another like mind somewhere out there that might see at least some elements of this as recognisable, please let it be so! :-)

Thanks to everyone who visits these pages (and my Commanders site). I know I have my Comments turned off and this may change in time, but it suits me for now and I do appreciate every visit and the time that you give over to reading these posts. Norm. 

Resources;

David’s Tales from GHQ blog LINK

https://talesfromghq.blogspot.com

My other bit of web space …. COMMANDERS. LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html