D B Fiddling About

The latest rules set from WRG is out. It's called "De Bellis Fantasiae" (DBF). It's not written by Phil Barker, but by a trio of writers who are active in the DBA circuit. We did some playtesting within our group prior to publication and submitted feedback (Chris K gets a mention in the acknowledgements for arranging this). It was explained to me at the time that the rules - which had Phil Barker's blessing - were intended to bring the DBx Fantasy game of "Hordes of the Things" in line with DBA 3 conventions, the most prominent of which is that DBA 3 uses Base Widths for measurement, and HoTT uses the old "Paces" system.

I wasn't necessarily going to comment on the rules. I don't do a lot (any?) fantasy these days, so wasn't going to get involved with the finished product as subject wise it wasn't ticking any boxes I was interested in for now. The rules come in at nearly £30, which is money from the wargaming budget I'd rather spend elsewhere at the moment. 

And then one of the authors popped up on a DBA chat group, which was discussing issues with DBA 3, and recommended using the "improvements" made in DBF, especially in respect of late medieval armies - and I have quite a few DBA late medieval armies. (BTW Improvements is in quotation marks, as those are the words the author used. I'm not being sarky. Personally, being a modest sort of chap, I'd have gone with "changes" or "alterations" as improvement is often in the eye of the beholder). We discussed this after the game on Tuesday, and Phil kindly lent me his copy when we met up at a Battlefield Society meeting on Thursday, so I could have a look. He also remarked that the writer concerned has a particular bee in his bonnet about how poorly served late medieval armies are by DBA. I guess we all think that about our favourite armies that never win. And don't get me started on south east Asian elephants. 

Anyway, it would have been rude not to have made use of Phil's kind gesture, so I've read the rules and done some thinking. I have to be honest straight up and repeat what I've said elsewhere about DBA 3. It's a closed, balanced system. We all have our pet hates, but ultimately the fine detail of armies doesn't matter. It's all broad brush and over in under an hour. Which is what I want from these rules. So what did I think? Rather than just ramble round seemingly at random I've collected my thoughts under a number of headings, and compiled supporting evidence where I've expressed a view that's quantative not qualitive.

Production
It's a "Print on Demand" book from Lulu. It's an A4 soft back and has a spiral binding [This is not the case for normal copies, apparently, and was a special arrangement for playtesters]. That's a sensible option if you aren't producing a hardback and want it to lay flat. It comes in at 127 pages, including diagrams and army lists (DBA 3 is 142 pages). The rules take up 52 pages, compared with 28 for DBA 3. That's not a fair comparison, however. The print size in DBF is a whole lot bigger, making it much easier for my old eyes to read, and it's done with two columns to a page, so there's a lot more white space. The rule writing is in plainer English, and takes longer to say what it is saying. The actual rules in DBA 3 only cover 5 or 6 pages, depending on how you count them, whereas DBF is closer to 40. DBF is probably easier for a beginner, but it's a shame there's no QRS given the amount of pages taken to tell you what to do (you can actually play the battle part of DBA 3 by only referring to 4 pages of which you only really need two).  I have no way of knowing if dropping Barker's legalese will result in fewer arguments over interpretation. Until we get a critical mass of several thousand players around the world we're unlikely to know the answer to that. What they have done with DBF is include the diagrams in the text, rather than a separate section, which makes a whole lot more sense. I'd also record a comment by Phil, who as a dyed in the wool DBA player knows that rule book really well, who remarked that reordering the sequence of the rules has caused him some annoyance when trying to work out what he needs to do under the new rules.

Overall on Production: 4/5

Army Selection & Game Size
On reading the rules you are confronted with a major change to the way armies are selected compared to DBA & HoTT. Whist HoTT dumped the simple 12 element method for choosing armies and introduced a simple points system, DBF has gone further down the points system route, and looks much more like a traditional points based army system you'd find in DBMM, Armati, Impetus etc etc. This has enabled the writers to move the game off the previous fixed 24" x 24" size game board, scaling it up for use with more points. It isn't completely clear what a typical army size is supposed to be. The board increases in width (but not depth) from 24" wide with 100 points, adding an extra 24" for each further 100 points added. In the rules the standard size for the game is 200 points lasting . At this point it's clear that the game isn't DBA nor is it HoTT in scale. The intention is to have armies with multiple commands.

I think the points system is intended to create more granularity and so deal with some issues in DBA where armies are regarded as "total losers". By way of example I costed out my main DBA & HoTT armies using the points to see what they came out at. Given that 100 points is intended for play on a 24" x 24" board I expected this exercise to show them coming out in that sort of area. This was not the case, as the table below shows (BTW I have the full army selection breakdown on another spreadsheet, which I could post if there's sufficient demand. 

The top three are HoTT armies, based on 24 points. The others are all standard 12 elements. They aren't really getting near the minimum level of 100 points, and it looks like the intention is that 12 elements comes out at around 60 points. It might be with the DBA armies that if I add in the spare elements I have for the "all the options" army packs I might get close enough to field a 100 point army. You can see that (assuming DBF plays a lot like DBA), what the authors think of the Army List balance in DBA.

A more detailed breakdown of troop types and equivalents is given below. The points system lets you add in a variety of options, adding barding to horses, making troops ferocious or timid. All in all much more granularity and flexibility. The magic rules (of which more later) also allow for different grades of "Mages" and you can boost their level with points. However, even maxing out on the optionals I'm going to struggle getting to 100 points I reckon. And I can't put Barding on my Mongol Horse archers really.

I have to say that I'm not a fan of this for the DBA/HoTT equivalent type of games. If I'm playing a quick play game, all of this seems unnecessary faffing about. For a two to three hour game - where DBF is possibly rubbing up against DBMM in terms of scale - perhaps I could learn to love it, but I reckon I prefer the old HoTT points system. That rated a basic element as 2 points, and then all other types were multiples of half multiples of that.

Overall on Army Selection: 1/5

Troop Types
In terms of troop types there are some extra ones in the new book and some changes too. We've lost Gods (shame! what will I do with my thunderbolt?) and now we have Fast/Solid for Knights & Cavalry as well as most types of infantry. Flyers and Beast from HoTT now have sub categories based on size. Because of rule changes there aren't exact equivalents for some of the troop types across all three sets of rules, but the table below has the best matchups I could work out, based on figures on bases and abilities within the rules. The big difference DBA/DBF is the loss of the double ranked elements like 6Kn. I'm not a fan on these anyway (even tho' they look great at times) and it's a bit of a rules fudge in DBA.

There are somethings that mystify me. Why do we now have Fast Spears, but no Fast Pikes? The Welsh Army list says they have "Long Spears" and applies some rule modification for the army. Isn't a "Long Spear" sort of a Pike? There are things in here (and also in the rules) that have the sound of axes being ground. There are little odds and ends - nothing fundamental - that look like the sort of things that come up on forums and chat groups for everyone's pet army. I'll say one thing for Barker, he never let that sort of thing influence his rule writing, and his active absence from this publication is obvious, despite his short Preface paragraph endorsing DBF as a set of rules carrying on his work. 

Overall on Troop Types 3/5

Army Lists
You get 60 army lists. There are 71 in HoTT, and 318 in DBA (excluding all the sub categories) but those in DBF are more detailed and mostly take up a whole page. Of these 17 are mythological versions of historical armies, the rest are fantasy. Some are generic elves/dwarves etc, there's a whole load of Hyborian Age armies and some for a set of fantasy books I've neither read nor was aware of. Obviously there's issues with copyright (how did Barker get away with it in HoTT?), but I'd like to have seen some more from the fictional armies covered by HoTT (actually I think there should be all of them or a statement as to why they're missing), and maybe some from more modern Fantasy writers, like those in Moorcock's Runestaff tetralogy and perhaps some from David Eddings Belgariad. However I suppose you have the tools to put these together yourself...more or less.

I say "more or less" because there's been an outbreak of Warlord Games disease across the armies. Each one comes now with special rules that you get for choosing the army. For example, the Dwarvish army counts all hills as good going. I couldn't see a points cost for getting this benefit, which is odd, given the granularity elsewhere, which is unhelpful if trying to write a list for a fictional army with known special characteristics.

Armies with "Mages" also get spells for use with the "Ritual Magic" rules. Whereas in HoTT spells were just a type of ranged weapon (and they can be in DBF) these are spells that have specific effects, such as modifying dice rolls, changing an element to a hero, causing an avalanche and so on. Some are shared by armies, some are unique to them. It makes Mages something more than a trench mortar, but the magic rules now come with an added level of complexity as to how many PIPs you are going to allocate against the spell cost. Having spells like this on a table top for a full sized battle has always been a bit of a challenge and never entirely satisfactory in my experience, so interesting to see how this works in practice.

[Edit: The authors are running a "new army lists" page on the dedicated DBF website here: Extra Army Lists ]

Overall on Army Lists 2/5

Rule Changes
The rules engine for the game is DBA3 rather than HoTT, although they both obviously have the same D(B)NA. The basic combat numbers are from DBA, with missing troop type values (like Heroes) taken from HoTT. The HoTT increase of Bows/Shooters to +3 has gone. There are slight changes to the Tactical Factors, ramping up the power of "Warbows" and "Crossbows" in shooting and a new Solid Auxilia modifier to allow for being partially Bad or Dangerous going (Dangerous is a new type of Terrain which can kill you). The outcomes of Equal/More Than/Doubled are broadly the same as DBA with the troop type exceptions from HoTT added.

As mentioned above there are a number of Special Rules. These allow for Horse Barding, Heavier Armour, troop quality, different kinds of Artillery (mortars/volley guns) and significantly troop quality modifiers. The jury is out for me on these. They seem to run contrary to the DBx principal of function over equipment. My personal view is that if you want period specific flavour then use period specific rules rather than a generic set. To be fair to the authors they say that if you want a simple game then ignore the Special Rules.

For some inexplicable reason Ranged and Close combat are now split out into two sections, with the handy "Combat Outcome" paragraphs from HoTT / DBA now a thing of the past. This is true of the website QRS

Overall on rules changes 1/5 

Conclusion
Until I play a few games I'm not really in a position to say whether I think the changes are improvements or not. If the idea is to keep a game of DBF to the same length as DBA/HoTT then my feeling is that they won't. A game on a bigger table with double the elements and so on is going to take longer. The "standard size game" according to the rules is 200 points. Based on my number crunching above that means about three and a bit DBA/HoTT armies on a 4' x 2' table (although I haven't looked at how many points you might spend on all the magic stuff). 

But what I will say is that some of what is different definitely (for me) falls into the "changes" category and not "improvements".

Overall score: 12/25

[NB This assessment is based upon a few play test games several months ago and a reading of the rulebook. If I've got something FACTUALLY wrong, let me know and I'll correct it. If a factual correction changes my views, I'll change them too.]

Update - Extra Changes to DBA noted when going over QRS
[QRS available from DBF website here DBF QRS ]

• Optional terrain now 3-5 pieces, with extra Terrain Features added to Types
• Plough now called Fields, and now BG on a 1,2
• Rough Hills are now a type of Terrain Feature
• "Dangerous" a new Terrain Feature (it can kill you!)
• "Waste" a new Terrain Type
• Command Range for Light Mounted is 16BW, not 20BW
• If using the light troops extra move you now only can't enter a Threat Zone. Previously you had to be outside 1BW all round. THIS IS A BIG CHANGE. You can now use this extra move to pin a unit with your own TZ.
• No replacement for loss of double based units. Wb, LM, and Pike can still add a second element as support. The adding of a second rank is now called "Mass", "Shooting Circle" and "Phalanx" respectively.
• Two rank Pikes now get +1 vs Skirmishers/Psiloi
• Some factors are the same, but now have names. Side support is either "Shieldwall" or "Retinue" depending upon troop types.
• If scores are equal, everything is now recoiled by Pikes. Except Pikes. And "Behemoths" flee from bows.

I think there may be some that I have missed due to the changes in terminology and the substitution of words for what you might call a clear statement of what is happening. The "Shooting Circle" term threw me for a while, as it is used once, and it isn't in the index. The new layout, reordering of paragraphs and so on makes it a bit awkward to do a comparison.