Chris K held another DBA afternoon. The games were themed round the15th century. Sort of. And then we had a playtest to do as well.
I played Richard M with a Wars of the Roses army each.
I don't care for the list, to be honest, as it makes you take artillery, and there was no artillery at Edgcote. Nor at Hexham. My artillery is in a stupid place, because I misremembered the rules.
I advanced to make contact, with the aim of using my cavalry/knights to turn Richard's right flank.
Then I found out I'd also misremembered the archery rules. Last time I had a bow armed army (this one in fact) it shot lumps off a cavalry army. They are less good against foot.
I lost a bow unit to artillery and archery fire, whilst I hauled my gun up a hill. I got the width of the table wrong, and my cavalry got crowded out. And I also had one of those dice that only rolls 1s.
I'm losing bases everywhere. At least I've got a shot with my artillery now. Couldn't hit anything.
Then I lost some more bases and only killed one of Richard's. That made it 4:1. Game over in a spectacular failure. It has to be said I made some silly set up and game play errors, then got out rolled. The outcome therefore wasn't really a surprise.
After that we did a playtest on the new DBF, which WRG have a development team working on (which does not include Phil B). It's trying to upgrade DBA3 and combine it with HOTT for fantasy and regular games.
Yeah. Not impressed. Too much chrome, don't like the points system for army lists. In respect of DBA3 there are supposedly some corrections to what DBA3 gets wrong, but as it is a compromise anyway you aren't ever going to fix it for everyone. Can't really see the point, and it is moving away, it seems, from what makes DBA a great game.
And it doesn't have an army list for my gnomes.
The problem with the DB* game designs - brilliant as I believe them to be - is that they form a happy hunting ground for the rules lawyers and cheese merchants. And, of course, they are used in what too many in the war games fraternity call 'competitions', the point of which is completely lost on me.
ReplyDeleteBut whether you want Fantasy (High or otherwise) or to play it 'straight', I recommend HotT. Several years ago I entered a comp (25mm - mainly to drool over the imaginative armies presented by others) with a plain old ordinary 7YW Russian army. No flash coves like flyers and gods. Had a ball (3 wins, 2 losses, satisfactory). Had some fun writing the whole thing up as a narrative of an army marching somewhere into the vastnesses of Siberia to encounter all sorts of weird adversaries...
Cheers,
Ion
As always, if you play with friends then the "rules lawyer" thing doesn't apply. With DBA the rules are sufficiently tight that it isn't rules lawyering, it's how the game is intended to be played. If you find it cheesy, then play something else would be my advice. HOTT is fun, I agree. I haven't really played it for years. It would be good to cry havoc and let slip the gnomes of war again.
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