With Added Free wargames rules – Not Quite Rocket Science. Contains both sorts of robots … Evil, and Giant, Stompy! Mad Science and Explosions guaranteed!
Sci-fi sculptors and printers are practiced in producing miniatures that are NOT copyrighted Intellectual Property (IP), so when these little beauties came out, I decided to order some 15mm Hikari Occupation Army from Zarbo 3D Printing. Everyone has seen that iconic scene from Dune where the Harkonnen troopers glide eerily up the vertical rock face in their black armour.
Sometimes, one space sword is just not enough.
My first thought when they arrived, printed in transluscent green resin, was that they were a little small, but this was an illusion. When painted, they are chunky little figures with a lot of detail. Spraying them black left the detail hidden, so I painted on three successively lighter shades of desaturated blue until the contours of the suits could be discerned. My first plan was to leave the faceplates and swords in the same colour as the armour but this proved underwhelming, so they were painted yellow and glowy orange respectively.
Have you got a Flag?
Each of the 42 figures is individually animated! At £24.50 (incl postage), they work out at about 58p per figure, which is about the same as metal figures, or a little more.
The Ecclesiarchy tanks attack Hive City on New Wentworth.
Continuing the development of FIBUA (Fighting in Built-up Areas), I set up a city with lines of sight running through them and gave anti tank and anti aircraft guns ranges varying from two to seven hexes. The experimental nature of the game made it a Not Quite Rocket Science (NQRS) game rather than a Not Quite Mechanised (NQM) game.
Telling the players that it was set in 1956, around the time of the Suez Canal Crisis (or invasion, if your house was in a nice residential part of Port Said,) kept Phil onside and gave a setting for the players to focus on. Players are used to my haphazard substitution of anachronistic equipment by now, so nobody was any the wiser – if they even cared.¹
In reality, the game could have been any modern third world one and I’ve added it to the ongoing saga of the Ecclesiarchy for my own amusement. Peter Pig spacemen, (which have a rather nice Dieselpunk vibe) and Alternative Army bases were filling in too as I had taken them out the day before to add detail to some of the bases. Hive City is slowly taking on a dieselpunk noir look.
Ecclesiarchy tanks flank Hive City to the west.
I excluded drones and limited artillery to one company for the defenders to prevent rubble from slowing things down for this game. The Giant Stompy Robots (GSRs) stayed at home for the same reason. They were probably having their knee joints oiled, or something. All that stomping really takes it out of you.
The defence is crumbling as Ecclesiarchy tanks and infantry reach the main square.
I was keen to see if putting sight lines into the city affected axes of advance, which it did, but not in the way that I expected. As we started, I briefed the players that if both combatants were in a built-up Area Hex (BUA), players would take hits as permanent casualties, reasoning that it would reflect the higher intensity of combat. Graham suggested that casualties should only apply to the loser of the combat outcome if they were pushed out of the position, rather like last week’s game as SHQ, where Germans that were bombed in dugouts and took casualties surrendered. It seemed reasonable, so I agreed. I should have thought about it a bit more and stuck with my original plan, as it allowed the attackers to (correctly) overwhelm defended positions and win the combat outcomes by concentrating forces, due to the large numbers of hits that they had inflicted without receiving many casualties in return. Graham was keen to point out that really it was a victory for Phil and him. 🙂
Engineers waiting to blow the bridges. They are piled onto a very overloaded Humvee.
This was fine, and to their credits, Phil and Graham conducted textbook sweeps through the BUA and consistently rolled above average where it mattered, whilst Tim and Steve had a basically sound plan to defend forward, then pull back, but managed to pull more than their fair share of low scores out of the bag. They did make the mistake of trying to defend the forward edge of the BUA to take advantage of the attackers being in the open, but all it did was allow the attackers to take advantage of the higher stacking density of SP7 in open hexes outside the BUA to swarm the defender, who was not rolling enough dice to inflict casualties. There is a discussion of this over on Graham’s Blog. In particular, note Martin Rapier’s comment. Also see Footnote (2) below.
The attackers managed to capture the half of the city and push one unit over the bridge, so declared victory. The defenders managed to blow all the bridges and were confident that they could hold the home side of the river, so they declared victory too! However, the attackers took almost no casualties whatsoever, and statistics suggest that casualties were more evenly spread between attacker and defender during FIBUA.
As an aftermath, those casualties are of a different nature with more dead or captured defenders and more wounded attackers. Attackers should take fewer casualties overall as they can choose the time and place of their attacks to isolate defenders. This is why counterattacks are important.²
An Ecclesiarchy assault company with an antitank platoon have a foothold on the south side of the river. The successful bridge demolition is behind them. They have taken casualties from attacking through a bombardment and are temporarily disorganised and out of ammunition.
That situation will change, of course, when artillery and drones come back into the mix, forcing defenders further back into the BUA, and forcing attackers to disperse to avoid everyone being pinned under bombardments.
What worked well
Limiting units in a BUA hex to one SP3 element and and SP1 specialist base reduced clutter to manageable proportions. The limit for units outside BUAs is still 7SP per hex. We had a discussion about BUAs needing higher densities of troops, but that comes from the need to sweep every hex if you want to be certain of it being clear. I’m comfortable with the current stacking limits and direct infliction of casualties rather than hits being a workable compromise for a playable but more lethal game.
What still needs work
1. The effect of units outside a BUA being able to concentrate up to three firing bases in a hex versus the two maximum of the defender pushes the defender to make his stand away from the front edge. This is as it should be. For the next game I need to allow defenders to fortify the hexes that they occupy to make them heavy, with prepared fallback positions, to make up for the defenders’ lack of numbers. The rules already allow for this, (3.1.8 Terrain and 9.3 Target.) A wise defender will do this at least one hex layer in to the BUA to prevent them being directly targeted by direct fire weapons.
2. I need to make multistory hexes more accessible, and to that end have started ripping the roofs off the existing multistory hexes, replacing them with first floor platforms. this will allow the density of a two layer BUA hex to increase from SP4 to SP7.
3. The sight lines didn’t really have much effect on the game, other than to give rise to discussions of who could see whom and that’s something that I want to minimise. Also, the latex roads do not really lie flat enough over the BUA hex tiles, so they are going to be reserved for open terrain. Most gamers have a poor appreciation of just how difficult it is to spot stationary things in urban areas and even relatively open terrain. That’s before artillery starts chewing things up too.
4. I really need to insist that players use dice trays to prevent cocking about with dice on an crowded and uneven tabletop. This will stop terrain being used as a backstop for energetically rolled dice to bounce off.
5. The fleece river was a qualified success – it works in the open, but BUA hexes need something modelled in to them if I am to take cityfights to shows. I shall make something along the lines of the Hexon rivers.
6. I’m coming to the conclusion that I need different hit and casualty markers for each side. we still get “Who’s marker is this?” queries all the time. Watch this space.
7. As the Iran/Iraq war (1980 – 1988) and the Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine have shown, trench warfare is still with us. I need to factor this in.
Footnotes
Phil doesn’t like any games set in the various Arab Israeli wars, or campaigns, or Sci-fi, or fantasy, or rattling dice shakers. I have a list. 🙂
Coventry provided its usual excellent day out with a twist this year -it was a series of six paired doubles game for the armies and enemies of II/56 Early Imperial Rome. Graham was certain that we would come bottom of the table.
Phil elected to take II/56 Early Imperial Romans and I chose II/37 Parthians as their ally. From the chatter of Fanaticus and Facebook, it was clear that players had been planning their strategies and choices of army since early winter in 2025. We had three practice games, changing our armies after the first two games! Scoring did not penalise draws, giving 3-2-1 for a winning, tied and losing draw respectively, so there was a lot of defensive play and maximally-sized terrain templates, but the sociability of a table with four instead of two players on it more than made up for it. I had to hold Phil back a bit, he gets frustrated by defensive players, even when it is a valid strategy. Our games were mostly over quickly, as befits a wave of six armoured letterboxes facing an army of ten of the same! Each team had an amusing name, so we became Bewildered in Northampton! The first player to lose four elements caused the game to end. Phil thought that resulted in not enough dice being rolled to get statistical variation. I was happy that the games didn’t drag on.
Game 1
Game 1
Phil Donald’s II/55 Sarmatians and John Irvine’s II/37 Parthians (See picture above) from The Team With No Name attacked against Phil on the left and me on the right. I took out one of John’s Parthians and Phil took two Sarmatians but lost four auxilia and a blade as the Sarmatian line thundered into his legionaries. It happened very quickly before I had a chance to flank the enemy caterphracts or get up to much mischief on my right flank. Not many sixes rolled on our side but we had plenty of time for a post-game chat.
Game 2
Bruce William with II/37 Parthians and Russel Spain (as in the country) with II/28 Armenians attacked us with gusto as befits an army of sixteen armoured tanks! Phil lost his general but took an enemy element as I lost four elements including my general, taking only one element in return. Not looking good so far! They were Team Smash, Bash and Scarper! Still far too many ones rolled for movement on our side for my liking. My light cavalry mostly hung about with surprised expressions as they were ridden down or shot away. I was thinking too hard about what to do with ones for movement rolls to take photos.
It doesn’t look good for the Judeans!
Game 3
Kevin with II/56 Romans and his young son Casey, who had brought II/51 Late Judeans with a mass of rocky difficult hills to hide behind, defended against us. I reminded Casey that whooping and grinning evilly when sixes were rolled was permitted, nay expected, behaviour. All the action was on the Judean vs Roman flank as I ignored my opponent and concentrated on bullying the Judeans with my heavy cavalry to win a 3(G) – 1 victory, our first of the day! We never found out their team name.
Game 4
Game four followed a convivial lunch of pie and chips. Ken Gordon brought Romans and Tim Rogers brought II/44 Commagenes attacking cautiously to gain a winning draw 2-2 and 3-1 against us. Still, we were racking up a modest number of points by this stage. Again, I forgot to take photos.
Game 5 Cataphracts ride off to bully the Judaean rebels. Note the rascally psiloi in the rough
Game 5
Our 5th game against Tom Whitehead (II/23a Nomad Arab) and Paul Hodson (II/37 Parthian) from team Young Codgers was a slog through the maximum permitted number of two huge sand dunes (made by cobbling four together) and three rough pieces of ground.
We had a long way to march in the centre. The cavalry didn’t seem keen to attack my bows.
In a bold first move, Paul double trotted his Psiloi into a rough patch to block my cataphracts from deploying properly, before redeploying to do the same again. Deploying against him was quite a jigsaw puzzle, but I managed to flank him, and overlap after some intense discussion about free slides, being blocked by rough ground and accepting overlaps if the single defender chose not to, or was unable to conform. Paul’s fiendishly cunning placement had put him in a predicament and gratifyingly, I killed it.
The camels weren’t keen either!
It was only one element but it unlocked the door to one more in quick succession. We gained a very satisfying winning draw 1-1 and 2-1 in our favour, in what had proved to be a very treacle-y game. I took lots of pictures of this as the pace was quite a slow. 🙂
What a splendid sight, as everyone formed up.
Game 6
Phil was fading a bit as we faced up to attack Connor Truby (II/53 Ancient British) and John “One-eye Antigonus” (II/56 Romans) from Team Scale Creep. Connor is the figure that was sculpted over-scale. He bangs his head on door lintels!
Come and get us if you think you’re hard enough! Spoiler – I didn’t think I was. 😦
We attacked a team that knew how to place terrain and use it, so I faced up to Connor and spent the whole battle trying to winkle out his chariots hiding near the baseline without being picked off by warbands in rough terrain. We achieved a 0-0 score whilst the Roman civil war on my right flank resolved 4-2 in John’s favour. Phil muttered a bit afterwards as is his wont!
My cataphracts never had the pips to get to the flank in time.
So there we had it – equal Second from bottom! Yasss!!!
Twenty six players asembled in Castleton for Paul Murgatroyd’sStepp(e)ing Up tournament “to see if the new light horse rules have broken DBA.”¹ The casual players tended to take more light horse, (five in my cobbled-together III/74a Seljuk Turks.).
Three of us headed north to Castleton from Northampton, arriving in good time for tea and coffee.
As previously mentioned, I took III/74aSeljuk Turkish Rum as they had five light horse, Two cavalry plus a cavalry general and two knights with a couple of bows. I assessed that this would give me a balanced force against knight-heavy armies and I should be able to avoid solid foot troops.
Game 1
Paul Hodson’s III-69 W Sudanese Vs my III-74a Seljuk Turkish Rum.
Paul Hodson is the number seven seed, finishing eleventh. He remained courteous and charming throughout the game, bringing a defensive III/69 West Sudanese cavalry-killer army with a 4Kn General, 1 x 4Kn, 6 x 3Bw, 2 x 4Bd and the minimum 2 x LH, to suit his aggression of zero. I usually meet him early on in tournaments so I knew what to expect. Rolling lots of ones for movement really did not help me deploy either. My right flank failed to move for the whole game and the left flank only managed to reach the halfway point of the board, by which time Paul’s six bow elements had marched down the centre of the board to shoot me away, despite setting up well back. He handed my Turks to me on a plate with a 1-5 defeat, elegantly achieved.
As expected, the top-tier DBA players with places in the league to fight for followed the letter of the rules with armies that had the minimum of two light horse and the maximum of heavy-hitting troops delivering fours or better in combat. Knights, Spears, Bows and Pikes were all in evidence (all scoring four against cavalry and Knight threes or Light Horse twos.)
Game 2
Martin Smith’s III-11a Turfan Uiger.
Martin Smith is the number two seed, finishing twentieth. I’m glad that I didn’t know that when I forced a 3-1 winning draw against him by playing “Will on a Hill” against his nicely painted III/11a Turfan Uigur Army . This was a balanced proper steppe army comprising 1 x Cav General, 2 x Cav, 3 x LH, 3 x Bw and 3 x Sp. Martin made masterful use of large terrain templates to put a diagonal tar pit of rough and bad going across the centre of the board. I chose the least worst option of setting up cramped but deploying out into open ground. It was enough to pick off his outnumbered horse even though my knights never made it into combat … Again!
Game 3
Colin Alcock’s Mongol Conquest Horde.
Colin Alcock (seeded twenty-fourth but finishing twenty-first) is a cheerful player with a loose style of play. He brought a IV/35Mongol Conquest Horde so we played on a pretty open board. My “Will on a Hill” tactic failed when the combats went against me in the last round, losing 3- 4(G) in a close, fast paced, enjoyable game. This was a rare case of me defending, so I was surprised that I was allowed the side with hills to sit on, possibly because the rough was also there.
Game 4
Matthew Davison’s IV-43c Later Hungarians
Matthew Davison (seeded twelfth, finishing fourteenth) came to the tournament with his dad, so is one of the few players who is not bald, bearded or grey-haired. He is a very focussed player and was rewarded by killing my general early on. This game went right down to the wire with a 4-4(G) loss for my Seljuks against Matthew’s IV/43cLater Hungarians with 2 x war wagons, a 3Kn general and 2 x knights, 3 x Spears and the obligatory 2 x LH. My plan to outflank both wings was going well until I was starved of pips, leaving my two knights stuck on the hilltop and my general stranded at the point of attacking the Hungarian flank. It serves me right, but I’m still claiming a Pyrric Victory. 🙂
Game 5
Paul Murgatroyd’s III-16 Khazar Army.
Paul Murgatroyd was filling in for an unavoidable last-minute drop-out, so he was having a relaxed day, as his fifth from last place (one above me, I finished twenty-third) showed. He is seeded eleventh, so would normally place much higher. He fielded a very nice balanced III/16 Khazar Army Comprising a 3Kn General, 1 x 3Kn, 4 x Cav, 2 x LH, 2 x 7Hd, 1 x Ps(Sk), 1 x Art.
I played “Will on a Hill” and sent the light horse off on a mischief-making expedition to Paul’s right flank, where his artillery was, then shot away at that corner with my bows to make a hole in his solid hordes. His skirmishers sensibly ran away to hide in the village when my light horse charged in take out his artillery piece. The final score was a 2(+2 x Hd) – 1 winning draw to me. Paul had invited his neighbour to the event to see what mischief we got up to in the village hall, so we had a chance to chat as the game went on and explain what happened at tournaments.
Game 6
Keith Murphy (twenty-fifth seed) brought more late Hungarians to the table beating me 3-4 in another tight game that hinged on die rolls on the last move. My attempt to flank him failed. My light horse with rear and side support lost an easy combat, recoiled, then were locked into the subsequent fight, in which they were destroyed. Their flanking protection had also been recoiled to leave the medial (central) flank open. It was a nice piece of work, even if I was on the sharp end of it. Ho hum! I thought that I had taken a photo, but no. It was the one occasion on which I should have tried to break away using the LH new breakaway rule.
Post Game Reflection
Terrain selection was instructive , with usually a minimum of one (small) gentle hill tucked away on the baseline to deny advantage to an attacker and a maximum of three rough or bad (large) terrain pieces placed to restrict the access of light horse to the tender underparts of an enemy army. This, conspired to turn the battlefield into something more resembling Europe than rolling steppe, as a number of players had included substantial foot components. Trebian made the point that standing on a hill in the steppes and looking around, you can see a lot of gentle hills and no built-up areas. So to conclude, it was a good tournament but did not really bring out any flaws in the rule changes for light horse.
However, when exposed to the critical gaze of seasoned tournament gamers, they all voted as one that LH were best avoided and minimised in a tournament list. That tells me that the changes have made them more like light horse in behaviour -fleeing when shot at effectively, and being able to break off rather than dying. They have not turned into a new closet super-troop type.
I also noted that the seasoned players tended to hide their light horse behind or in rough terrain, or friendly heavy hitters, so the Light horse really only came out to play in the lower half of the rankings. (I’m seeded twentieth, so had nothing to lose or prove.) If there was LH as one of the options in a list, they usually chose the non-LH option. In short, there were broadly two types of games being played, competitive and fun.
I’m learning to make the other players work for their victories by not obliging them by closing with them too soon, before I’m ready. They know that at some stage there will be a critical pip famine. If you have over extended, then they will pick you off at leisure. I played “Will on a Hill” against two of the higher ranked players. It was instructive that they tried to wait me out on both occasions. Where I attacked, I usually lost. (two draws, one win and three losses.)
As ever, it was a fun day out and worth the five hour round trip by car. My only regret was that with only a thirty minute break for lunch, there was not enough time to visit the Cheshire Cheese Inn for a pie and a pint. 😦
Footnotes
Any changes currently being discussed will not affect DBA 3.0 for the forseeable future but will probably work their way into the next version of DBF. So if you think that DBA is too simple and needs improving, just put the army into DBF and use those rules to play historical games.
My position regarding competitive list choices is that that should be expected. If you go to a competition expecting an easy ride, then that is a mistake. I was struck by how friendly the DBA community is. The worst that you can expect is a bit of overly enthusiastic dice rattling. I even managed to miss my own dice tray with a particularly ill-aimed roll. fortunately it didn’t disturb anything on the table.
It was nice to see another proper steppe army, the II/61dKhitan Liao, doing well coming in second place. All the more remarkable as they had eight light horse, two cavalry, a cavalry general and a skirmisher. Kudos to Stephan Finn.
Nail Art Crosses on Minifigs man-orcs with cut down shields.
This week has seen me raid my packets of Goth Nail Art skulls and crosses to provide embossed shield designs for the LotR armies mentioned in the last blog. They are ridiculously cheap and if your freehand painting skills are dodgy but don’t like decals, they can provide some unity and uniformity. I just glued them on with contact adhesive, although most folk will probably use superglue. They could be used “as is” but I plan to paint mine …… eventually.
Nail Art Skulls and crossbones on a recycled stompy elephant with new Howdah
The ranking-up solution is aided by my engineer’s blocks. It ensures that there are a minimum of limbs waving outside the confines of the base. Horses’ noses and tails are the biggest problem.
Please do not stick limbs outside the confines of the base when fighting.
It has always annoyed me that gamers model elements with pike and spears sticking beyond the front of their base. You cannot close up to them, so they say “Oh we know where they are” but then recoil back half a base width from your own frontage, not their own. Grrr! This is from the same school as “Gentlemen don’t need to wash their hands.” To be fair, some of the bigger castings are impossible, which is why 80mm frontages are becoming more popular.”
I have been the beneficiary of a large pile of Lord of the Rings plastic and metal minis, gifted by Steve Churchus and Graham Evans, which are returning back into service for Hordes of the Things (HotT) and the new iteration of De Bellis Fantasticus (DBF).
Elven fast blade with king, again as originally painted.
This has not been an entirely smooth operation in our group as Phil gets very grumpy when forced to play non-historical games and Graham doesn’t like adding up army points, preferring pre-made DBA armies with added pick-and-mix.¹
The Gondor solid longbows don’t rank up too badly.
Nevertheless, I made a promise to Steve so the work goes on. The compromise is that I mostly use the figures as proxies for DBA armies. (Phil grumbles at this too, but there are limits!) All of the low-hanging fruit has already been based – namely Graham’s Minifigs, which rank up nicely on a 60mm frontage.
The Gondor spears are more of a jostling scrum, with shields.
It is time to tackle the Peter Jackson Plastics. The anatomy is excellent and the animation is lively. This isn’t such a problem for the orcs and goblins that rank up as fast elements with three to a base, but the Warhammer Night Goblins and Gondor troops really need to be based as solid troops with four to a base.
The Goblins behaved themselves and squeezed into line to rank up as spears, as did the Gondor and elvish archers. The elvish blades are tall slim chaps with overhead Samuri-style katanas, so they fitted together fairly easily, but Gondor … oh my Lord!
Gondor solid blades. “Stop waving your sword in my face, will you?”
The Gondorian blades and spears demanded a bit of creative thinking to fit four on a base. Additionally, some of the poses had succumbed to Disco Dancing Action Figure Syndrome (DDAFS), needing the shields and arms repositioning to put them where they should be – in front of the figure, protecting it. I baulked at repositioning the sword arms to put them in a more useful position, down low, ready for a thrust. Consequently, they look rather like a rugby scrum with swords or spears. – everybody’s nightmare in the bar after the match.²
By contrast, the dwarves, who are clearly solid blades, being wide little eighteen stoners with very little fat padding out the muscle-y little bricks that they are, can only fit three to a 60mm element. Clipping the bases does not help – their elbows and beards get in the way!
Fast Knights. It looks a bit crowded on the left.
I have left the cavalry until last. Fitting three beefy horses with flowing caparisons into a 60mm frontage is quite a squeeze.
Footnotes
He used to work for Nationwide Revenue Protection, (making sure that the traders didn’t gamble our savings away on Big Cyril’s Wacky Scams.) After accounting for all the million pound bearer bonds at the end of a day’s trading, he has had quite enough of adding up. (I may have oversimplified and exaggerated this bit!)
Look, mate. Just put your sword down and have a beer! The bar’s over there.
There were four of us tonight, and we managed three games each, continuing the theme of Steppe Armies with a minimum of two light horse. We are finding that with lower-scoring armies where 2s are common, the dice play a larger role and gaining a flank or tactical advantage makes a bigger difference than it does with higher-scoring infantry lines that just seesaw backwards and forwards.
There were two Avars and a General here a moment ago!
For those who like match reports (I include myself), here are the accurate annals of the battles according to Eggbert, the monk.¹
This is what a pile of Avar casualties look like.
III/13b Avars (Steve) attacked II/80a Hunnic Attilan Horde (Chris), losing 2-5 against the dice rather than the Huns. The Avar battle plan of massing their nine cavalry elements on both wings, leaving a hollow centre should have worked, but a number of sixes versus rubbish throws thwarted them. The Hunnic psiloi and light horse were absolutely heroic! 🙂
Solid warband trudging off in the vain hope of contacting enemy foot whilst the psiloi do the heavy lifting and the general (Big flags) sees off impudent cavalry in front of him.
III/13b Avars lost narrowly against IV/75 Timurids (Phil) scoring 3-4? The confused Timurids were unable to count the Avar dead as they were scattered around the board, but thought that it might have been three.
…And this is what a pile of Mongol (L) and Hun (R) casualties look like!
II/80a Attilan Huns defended against a IV/35 Mongol Conquest army (Graham) losing 5(G)-3. I could complain about the dice, but the Mongols outmatched me in almost all the combats, executing a well-timed pincer that left my centre unsuccessfully trying to shore up both flanks and bouncing off flank combats that I was expecting to win.
II/80a Huns line up against IV/35 Mongol Conquest Army.
My initial setup was restricted by rocky terrain in the flank zone, so I double-ranked my warband, planning to shake them out later. This was a mistake – I should have double-ranked the light horse or simply placed them in front of the warband as they can move for 0 cost in the first move and use a pip to shake out if they need to. They are also useful when in support of their front rank. In the end, the warband never got the chance to expand, the second rank were locked in by the enemy’s LH ZOC, so were wasted.
The Mongols have always been tricky to use, being very manoeverable but lacking punch, so when they are handled competently and turn up at the right place at the right time, the general can deservedly claim that it was skill that won it, rather than luck. Mind you, the same can be said of the Huns. Both of these armies, with their high aggression factors of four, do best when attacking.
Light Horse battles can look spectacular. IV/35 Mongol Conquest (Top) vs III/80a Huns. (Nearest to the camera.)
IV/75 Timurids attacked the IV/35 Mongol Conquest army, winning 6-3. See earlier comments regarding the Mongols. They are a tough army to defend with.
The IV/75 Timurids went on to attack the III/80a Attilan Huns, winning 4(G)-3. The elephant proved decisive as I had unwisely hidden my psiloi in an edifice rather than putting them where they should have been, behind my general. As it was, the general had to front up to the elephant, dying heroically in the process.
An epic battle between III/13b Avars and IV/35 Mongols.
The result of the III/13b Avars against the IV/35 Mongol Conquest attack comes from an eyewitness account, winning 4-1 if you can trust a Mongol scribe from a subject nation not to flatter his master! 🙂
Footnotes
Apart from Graham, who is meticulous in recording his victories, our other players have the retention span of goldfishes, so unless I query the score immediately after the game finishes , they often have difficulty remembering it, or who attacked, or even the army number or name! Eggbert’s accounts can therefore be considered as hearsay at best. I have been ploughing back through links, correcting erroneous army numbers from the days when I didn’t double-check what players told me. 🙂
I have recorded who owns the army. That does not always mean that the owner was the commanding general, as we like to switch and play with each others’ toys. Phil’s pre-stroke armies are always a popular choice, beautifully painted as they are. His post-stroke style is of necessity, looser, but it is a pleasure to see it evolving as he comes to terms with being a one-armed bandit (Phil’s joke, not mine.)
“The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things …”
Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland
So the last thing that I did in 2025 was to visit my local dealer for some grass … Burnt grass, rather than the stuff that The Caterpillar was smoking. And the first thing that I did this year was to trawl through the boxes to stick it onto bare bases. It turns out that there were rather a lot of them scattered about – testimony to my haphazard batch processing of purchases in stages in order to get them battle ready rather than completing things to varnished and done.
Santa had a Christmas message for all you boys and girls out there.
Children, tidy up your toys!
So I did. Anyone who has a sad life and trawls through my sidebar (apart from me, obviously) may have noticed that I have done a 2025 update for a lot of my boxes. Some of it was prompted by the need to flag up the DSO orbats for easier access on NQM. Some of it is just tidying up fifteen years of ramshackle posts on an evolving game system. Along the way, a lot of lost toys were reunited with their comrades. Ulysses still hasn’t made it back to the Achaean box though.
Speaking of Cabbages and Kings, Lazerpig is on particularly fine ranting swear-y form regarding the Trump class battleships. Congress seems to agree with him, although far less alcohol would have been used to reach broadly the same conclusions. I can’t see even a single keel being laid down in the next two years or, given the stunning success of the Zumwalts, at all.
Moldovan Carlevana Orange primitivo.
And speaking of Cabbages, Wellingborough has England’s only (to my knowledge) Moldovan wine merchant. Oh, sure, lots of places sell Moldovan wines now, but Cristina and her husband, Constantin, only import from Moldova. They run tasting evenings, and I take notes that tend to meander about the page towards the end of the evening! This primitivo describes itself as an amber wine, tastes of oranges and has a balanced, surprising flavour that lasts all the way to the end. We drank it with a lamb shank for New Year’s Day. Eat your (own) heart out, Hannibal Lecter.
Our Epiphany Feast menu with friends, was inspired by a wine tasting session, but with beer, as we have collected rather a lot last year. It looked like this :
Welcome to the House of Pies
–o0o– Proprietors: Chris and Suzanne Kemp –o0o–
Opening Times: Tonight only!!!
Dear Guest, tonight’s event is a wine-tasting evening, but with beer!
The Pie taster menu includes : Home-made* Beef and Ale, Steak and Kidney, Steak, Ale and black Pudding, Pork Chorizo and Butterbean, Chicken Ham and Leek – contents may vary.** Sausages***
–o0o–
Baked beans from a tin and Frozen Peas with Curried Bisto Gravy
–o0o–
Apple Sponge and Custard or Cream****
The Beer Menu
Will be served progressively in tasting glasses. Wine is also available in BOTH flavours, red and white.
In the end, we only managed to sample half the list before the writing became illegible! So with the midwinter season of feasting and jollity over, it is time to pump up my cycle tyres and to see how much weight I have gained, Andiamo ragazzi!
Frankfurt am Main is the financial capital of southern Germany and is the largest in Europe, housing the European Central bank, the Frankfurt stock exchange, and a whole raft of other banks, whose managers want to be within dining distance of each other. Due to extensive unplanned urban demolitions, the centre of Frankfurt was largely destroyed, but, in a heroic enterprise rebuilt between 1945 and the 1960s, with the rubble from the centre piled into a mountain and recycled.
The new Altstadt.
The end result is a new old town that is a mix of reproduced buildings in the original style, with some original material in them, and modern buildings in an interpreted style of the originals. (Think Coventry Cathederal.) The end result would horrify English Heritage, but works for a modern city and attracts tourists. It is not to everyone’s taste but the dedicated concrete sniffer will find much of interest.
For corporate supervillain architecture Norman Foster’s your man,
Towering over all are the new corporate headquarters of modern Supervillains, with the Norman Foster-designed Commerzbank rocking the Despicable Me vibe perfectly. The European Central Bank clearly finds this all a bit crass and has wandered off along the riverbank to be on its own.¹
The European Central Bank. I’m so wonewee!
We went for the Christmas markets, traditional German cooking and beer, Pygging ourselves in the evening and walking it off during the day. Over the forty years that we have lived in and visited Germany we have noticed changes. The Schnell Imbis has largely been replaced by donner kebabs and gyros. We managed to find one – it was very posh with flowers on the serving counter, marble tabletops and jazz music playing.
Try saying Shöfferhofer after a couple of glasses. (Sherffer-hoe-fer is only vaguely close)
Both sorts of beer at the 12 Aposteln. The brewery is through the window at the back.
The 12 Aposteln is a Tap Stube, with both sorts of beer brewed on the premises – hell AND dunkel!
They don’t do children’s portions for grown-ups at the klaane Sachsehäuser.
The old part of Sachsehausen on the south bank of the river is a maze of streets that has been colonised by trendy bars for Kool Kids, serving shots and alcopops, but the Stubes hang on in there, like your parents sat in the corner of the room at a family wedding, enjoying a sensible conversation whilst everyone else gets drunk and talks loud b*ll*cks.
It gets dark early but the walk home was a delight.
Apfelwein‘s closest English equivalent is a still, dry fine cider. It comes in half-litres or ceramic pot-bellied flagons and creeps up on you. Very refreshing in summer and an excellent accompaniment to heroically-sized Schweinshaxe! The Klaane Sachsehäuser was full of oldies working on their next heart attack from overeating. The chestnut soup was superb.
You could see the Turm from our saluting balcony.
A day out in Bad Homburg was just thirty minutes away on the U-Bahn. The gardens are really a summer visit.
Karikatur Museum.
It was not all fun; we visited the Karikatur museum. Yes, the Germans do have a sense of humour that does not always translate well into English.
Kitsch in Bad Hombugh Christmas market!
We visited the Palm Gardens for the exotic orchids, architecture and warmth on a chilly day, then it was time to come home from dry overcast and sunny weather to rain.
No, no, we’re not going there to get ideas for wargames scenery.
Be warned, it can take three hours to pass through check-in, passport control and security, which is pretty normal for German airports, in our experience. We were surrounded by Americans fretting about missing their flights and some of them did but the Germans are not sympathetic to attempted queue jumping. “Did you book priority boarding? No!
Roman goddess and attendant nymph at Bad Homburgh.
We made it with 15 minutes to spare having allowed three hours from hitting the airport and an hour to get there, which was eaten into by an unscheduled diversion on the S-Bahn. Delays of an hour or more are common nowadays on the Bundesbahn. Ho hum!
Refreshingly honest!
Delays at the airport are currently exacerbated by biometric data collection and folk thinking it will be quicker to skip the self service booths and go straight to passport control. It isn’t. On the plus side, once your details are collected it should be possible to use the automatic entry gates … in a few years time … perhaps. Merry Christmas to you all!
Footnote
I will be politer to bankers when more of the wealth starts to spread out a bit.
Seljuk Turks vs Timurids – The Timurid General dies in a hail of arrows. The Seljuk general is feeling bold and takes on the Timurid elephant.
Steve and Graham were away so it was round to Phil’s for a three way between Tim, Phil and me : Three games, with each of us playing two. We continued the steppe theme, and the cavalry, light horse combination again proved very slippery to pin down and more resilient against knights than might be expected, especially if they managed to gain the uphill advantage. Having said that, the Alans lost both of their games. The last game, where both sides had equal numbers of light horse (7), was closely fought, with the Timurid knight/elephant combination losing narrowly against the cavalry/bow/auxilia of the Seljuks. As always, the winning tactic proved to be rolling lots of sixes!
I/43c Massagetae defended against II/58Alans, winning 4 : 3.
In this battle the Alans took an early lead on their right flank, before the dice turned against them on the left.
The Seljuk cataphracts flank the Timurid elephant, are recoiled but charge in again in the next turn.
I/43c Massagetae defended against II/58Alans, losing 3 : 4(General).
A hard-fought battle, in which the Alan cavalry lost narrowly to the Massagetae Knights. They made the mistake of trying to match the knights in the centre with cavalry instead of putting light horse against there and using their cavalry to overpower the flanks.
This is why nobody likes standing next to elephants!
The Seljuks attacked aggressively, killing the Timurid general with bow fire. It looked as if they had bitten off more than they could chew in the centre before a bold flanking attack by their cataphracts recoiled the elephant, taking Timurid knights with it to win the battle.
The Alans (R) briefly triumph before their left wing falls apart.
The troops used were all Phil’s. He is painting more light horse to cope with the need for steppe armies.
Massagetae vs Avars with a Massagetae elephant causing havoc!
Year eighteen saw the tribes convene for a series of tourneys on the steppes, to see if the light horse rule changes for a potential upcoming DBA 4.0 have broken the system. Spoiler : They don’t seem to have done, although light horse are even more annoying now if handled correctly. Excellent! Five of us convened with steppe armies that contain at least two light horse elements.
I had two enjoyable games. The first saw my II/46a Kushan Empire army built from Indians and Huns against Graham with a IV/35 Mongol Conquest horde containing six light horse and six cavalry. This is an army built for swirling around the flanks of slower armies, so my task was to pin him and kill elements before I became flanked, whilst protecting my foot troops. My plan of putting the four foot elements and the elephant into a clump in the Built Up Area (BUA) worked after a fashion, in that it tied down six of Graham’s light horse, giving me an seven-six element advantage.
The Mongol light horse taking the long way round
I thought that I had it in the bag when my knight general and cataphracts managed to contact Graham’s cavalry, with my two light horse blocking any chance of outflanking me on my left wing. Of course, that’s where the wheels dropped off the wagon. A quirk of fate had put three terrain pieces into one quarter, so Graham sensibly chose to hold there. All the combats were one or two points in my favour but I couldn’t manage more than recoils on the cavalry, due to the slopes being against me, and the dice being largely in Graham’s favour where it mattered.
My Khushan elephant advances to contact to support the ragged line of cataphracts. My light horse are having a hard time
My elephant joined the fray and managed a kill.
The elephant makes its kill just before my general dies gloriously, surrounded by barbarians.
By this time however, it was too late as Graham had punched a hole through my light horse on my left flank by the simple expedient of winning both combats, then doubled back onto the rear of my general. It was all over very quickly as I managed to lose all the combats and the 4 (General) vs 1 score did not reflect the closeness of the match. It was an enjoyably good-natured game, despite the score. I need to play a few cavalry/light horse-only games to see how they pan out and rethink how to counter the greater mobility of an all-cavalry/light horse army.
My second game against Steve went the opposite way entirely, with Steve swarming me with his IV/46 Ilkhanids containing nine light horse, despite being in defence. He bounced off my III/68a Early Hungarians because the hills were in my favour. I managed to march my spear line around his flanks and win the combats, scoring 5-0 despite Steve having a sound battle plan and getting stuck in early on in the game. Steve was stoical in defeat, as befits his gentlemanly nature. Handshakes all round.
The other games played by Phil against Steve, Graham and Phil were :
I/43c Massagetae defended against III/13b Avars, winning 5-3, then defending again, winning 4-0.
IV/43c Later Hungarians attacked the IV/35 Mongol Conquest horde, losing 3-5
Footnotes
The links between armies are being built up slowly, mainly for my own benefit and will only cover the armies that I own or play against citing fair use. There are no plans to publish a complete list of all four books and no copyright challenge is intended to Wargames Research Group – the copyright owners.
Han (L) and Tibetan (R) armies clash. The Han artillery has disrupted the Tibetan spear line.
This was an averagely quiet year, in which, in quick succession the Empress fought the III/15 Tibetans (560 -1065 AD) in the southwest with a II/41a Chinese – Han(202 – 189 BC) army.¹
The Han General is dead, swarmed by Tibetan blades and dismounted spears.
A close-fought battle saw the attacking Tibetans swarm and flank the Chinese general – Han-kee – pulling him out of his chariot to secure a narrow 4-2 victory before the Chinese crossbowmen could shoot enough armoured death-letterboxes off their horses to force them to retire.
Four to the Tibetans, two to the Han.
Her generals then rushed north to fend off more annoying hairy unshaved barbarians in the shape of the Mongols, but alas the invaders retired before the Chinese arrived. The Empress continued to command her distant troops from the comfort of the Imperial Palace, in front of a roaring brazier.
A II/19a Selucid 4-2 win against the II/03b Indians.
–o0O0o–
II/19a Selucids (L) and II/3b Indians (R) line up. It will be messy!
Elsewhere, the II/19a Selucids fought the II/03b Indian Classical Army in a big stompy elephant-fest that saw the Selucid pikes holding their own against the Indian elephant general and his chums in the centre of the line whilst the flanking Selucid elephants made short work of their opposing Indian chariots.
The second Indian recoil saw the Selucid scythed chariot take out an elephant, destroying both!
The madboy in the Selucid scythed chariot crashed and burned spectacularly as usual. Interviewed after the battle, he professed to have had a “cracking” day out!
Footnotes
“Perfectionists might detect some slight deviation in their respective periods or eras, but what are a few hundred years among so many?“
p. 75. Donald Featherstone
(1962) War Games. London : Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd. (ISBN 0 09 064901 X)
Following on from last week’s DBA(F) game, the Whelks came round enmasse with matched pairs of armies, containing auxilia, light horse and psiloi. We discovered that there had been some changes to psiloi, light horse, warbands pike and auxilia, the upshot of which is to make warbands and pike more effective at the expense of auxilia. The net effect should be to make warbands and pike more popular than hitherto, and to make auxilia and psiloi (relabelled skirmishers) more nervous around cavalry.
II/21a Chinese Chi’ang defend vs II/32a Carthaginian
The BUA is about to come into play.
In a bizarre match-up, I had assumed that two book II armies eleven places apart would be contemporary in time but this was not the case. Ho hum! We had a fun match as Steve’s elephants behaved in their usual bull-in-a-china shop fashion. Incidentally, they are 13.5mm – what, why? They don’t look too bad fighting against 15mm opponents, though. 1.5mm in height translates into a large difference in bulk!
One elephant succumbs to crossbow fire in the near right.
Confusingly, we removed the BUA halfway through to facilitate play. It all hinged around the BUA with the Chi’ang having the defender’s advantage. My bows looked set to be trampled by Steve’s elephants, but the Pugillistic Pachyderms were perforated then flanked.
The surviving elephant is pinned by solid blades then flanked by Crossbows. It falls to blades and the dice!
Defenders win 4-3
III/1c Slavs – Southern defend vs III/29 Byzantine – Thematic
It is important to say that the proposed changes are not fixed in stone and the writers are keen to ensure that they do not break the system. Reaction was mixed, as might be expected, ranging from “Do we need these changes; it’s fine as it is?”, to “That has fundamentally altered the game balance.” In general, we were broadly in favour of things that sped the game up and simplified it, and against extra chrome or things that slowed the game down. Graham got quite technical and took copious notes, firing an email off to Paul Murgatroyd. Paul’s reply indicated that the changes are the usual amalgum of conflicting opinions, feedback from tournament players and designer dislikes. It is also clear that there is a strong desire to align the historical and fantasy sides of the rules so that there is as much commonality as possible and a desire to avoid “super troops“. It is certain that we will see some favourite tournament armies take a step back and new ones stepping forward.
My three key questions are :
1. Do the rule changes add anything to improve the game? If so, what?
2. Will they attract new players or are they to retain and satisfy the hard core of regular players who are already committed? (The answer can of course be both.)
3. Is game balance achieved/retained?
I shan’t have an opinion until I’ve played a few more games and seen a few more match-ups of the key troop types.
Autumn leaves are falling, rain spatters against the oiled rice paper of the palace windows and the Empress has come indoors from her Pleasure Gardens and decreed that her Imperial Guard be made ready for the new campaigning season.¹
Han Chinese with the Empress Centre rear.
Year Fifteen saw the II/41 Han Dynasty Chinese (202 BC-189 AD) ride out against the II/61d Khitan Liao (350-1000 AD) incursions from the steppes, meeting them on the northern border of her realm.²
The Chinese right flank deploys to meet the threat.
She was met by a vast horde of Light Horse surrounding a core of Knights. Undaunted, her freshly raised cadre of armoured solid crossbowmen deployed to meet them, flanked by Cavalry and Light Horse. A brisk melee developed on the Chinese right flank. The Empress cunningly protected her open flank with her cavalry reserve deploying into a refused flank.
A brisk melee develops on the right flank.
The usual confused battle followed with the dice causing groans of anguish from the Khitan general and Empress alike. The battle ended as the Empress rode out personally to bolster her crumbling left flank, but arrived too late to prevent it collapsing. 4-1 to the Khitans in a surprise win!
The endgame – as the Empress rides out to the exposed left flank.
We were having our first playtest of some proposed modifications for DBA 3.0, prior to letting the WHELKS loose on them. No spoilers based on one game, but there will be more to follow.
Footnotes
The Empress’s pleasures gravitate more towards quiet contemplation of fuschias over a nice cup of green cherry tea nowadays. Don’t worry she is not planning to use her vast wealth to sue Games Workshop or France over copyright. She is confident that the Chinese had Imperial Guards long before Napoleon or Games Workshop.
Scholars are certain that Eggbert the Monk has mistranslated Song Dynasty as Han. The Song, Sui and Tang were contemporary with the Khitan, but as Eggbert Translated them as Kyttens and thought that they had cat ears as helmet decoration, all bets are still open!
I have put each DBA army onto its own page so that clicking on a link in the text will bring up the army list – it saves a lot of typing.
The surviving “allied” bank bridge towers at Remagen.
Every year, the Empress’ Imperial Court goes on tour.¹ This year, she expressed a desire to follow the course of the Rhine into the Moselle, with perhaps the odd glass of fermented grape or grain to be sampled en route. Rather than a blow by blow account, here are the highlights. If anyone wants to view my extensive private gentleman’s collection of destroyed Rhine bridges and tanks, they are available for a small consideration.
Auxiliary cavalryman with parade/arena mask. Note the javelin case, which I doubt was slung over the throwing arm or shoulder.
Xanten was our first stop – the rebuilt northern Roman colony of Colonia Ulpia Traiana. Since our last visit in the 20th Century little has changed.
Parade or Arena helmet – real hair was used. I didn’t know that!
The archeology has continued at a glacial pace and a new boat shed has been added – worth the visit alone. The trees are 25 years older.
Full sized reproduction River Galley.
We meandered southeast through the lesser byways of Nord Rhein-Wesphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, passing Nurnburg but missing a drive round the ring.
Bad Münstereifel in the Erft valley
Two things surprised us, one being the scale of devastation wrought on the Erft valley by the 2021 floods that is still being repaired and the other being the demise of the family-run Gasthaus or Pension.
Bad Muenstereifel September 2021.
Bad Münstereifel is typical in this respect – the picture of the floods does not show that the whole streambed and roadway had been ripped out and eroded by the force of the water. Further down the valley, the railtracks were still being relaid.
We had wrongly assumed that we would be able to stop en route and book overnight stays, as we did of old, but passed numerous closed establishments. Vacation apartments and hotels have replaced them, and these were often fully booked. We never actually had to sleep in the car, but it was a close-run thing on two occasions. Covid-19 and the floods have killed off many places that always ran on slender margins. Many of the places that we did stay at were clearly freshly refurbished, or surviving by taking in migrant workers. Remagen was a must-stop for concrete sniffers.
Wacht am Rhein.
We camped for four days on a bend in the Rhine at Rudesheim am Rhein, alternately walking and stuffing our faces with Schnitzel, Wurst, Pommes, Pudelkäse (Puddle Cheese – a sort of sharp, young cottage cheese) and organic Jakob Christ wine. The local supermarket had a bakery and café, so cake for breakfast was a no-brainer.
After that, we headed North again to Marburg (Northampton’s twin town) – a university town with nowhere to park, but excellent student bars featuring a lot of tobacco-stained wood, good beer and substantial cheap food. East took us past our old stamping grounds of 1 (BR) Corps until we crossed onto Holland and another green university town – Enschede.
Het Paradis – a Vegan restaurant worth going to.
Yet again, we were after a student bar – De Strood – reached down a dimly lit alley cluttered with bicycles. Inside eight pumps served regional real ales, but Suzanne dived straight into the walk-in fridge to marvel at a room full of Belgian beer.² Enschede also hosts the vegetarian Het Paradise. You could be forgiven for thinking that you had run into a Hobbit eatery hosted in Rivendell.
Not your run of the mill fast food joint!
Our last stop before coming home via the Hook of Holland was the Prinz Henrick. Holland has “Brown Bars” and this was the brownest of them all. We ordered coffees and stuck to the floor on the way to our seats. Excellent!
Prinz Henrik
Footnotes
The title of this post might be Pygges on Tour, but do not make the mistake of thinking that the Empress will answer to the title of ‘Miss Pyggey’. 🙂
This is beginning to sound like a travel brochure-come-restaurant review. Suzanne nearly got locked into the fridge!
Pygges in Spaaace 