DBN Tournament Results

We had a nice time with the DBN tournament - a couple of players even ventured up from Colorado Springs!

The players were divided into 2 teams - The French and the Coalition. Each player had an individual score and contributed to the team score. In the end, the French lost the campaign, but had the individual winner! The games played were big battle DBN games with two players facing off against two players of the other side.

The French scored 42 points and the Coalition scored 47 points. Matt Vigil was the individual winniner with the best score of 9 points. Honorable mention goes to Greg Rold for going it alone since we did not have a player to partner with him.

DBN Command Element...er...Baggage?

My friend Matt V. did not want this cool little Essex Napoleonic carriage - so he sold it to me. No it does not look like The Emperor's carriage, but it is a really cool piece.

This little gem will quite possibly play a role on the tabletop in the upcoming Big Battle DBN Tournament in November. Here's the thought: In each battle, each team will have the chance to select a "stratagem" card from a small deck specifically chosen for the given scenario. One of the scenarios will include the "Royal Presence" card:

So, if one side selects this card, they play it to replace the enemy's commander-in-chief for the battle with a Royal meddler! Oh, the consternation this could cause! In addition, the element counts both as baggage and the C-in-C - meaning it is worth 4 elements if lost. But, one cannot have the Emperor's brother or cousin taken captive!

Matt, thanks for the piece, we'll be sure to put it to good use!

DBN BUA for Spain

I made this for my buddy Dave a while ago, finally got around to posting the image. It is a BUA for our DBN games. He like the Spanish campaign and had asked that I create such a BUA for him.

The dark colored building is a whole texture I located on the net, while I "built" the other portions from separate textures...which really was fun!

DBN Tournament 2010

This weekend is our wargame club's (Colorado Military Historians) annual three-day weekend. This Saturday morning, ten members (including myself) participated in a Napoleonic tournament using the excellent DBN rules.

Each person played three, one-hour games with each person scoring a point for each enemy element destroyed in their battles. Almost all of the games ended before the allotted hour was up, but there were I think three that ended at the timer, and one was a draw.

The top three players points were actually very tight, with myself finishing third. I won both of my first two battles by scores of 5 to 2 and 4 to 2, but lost my third battle 2 to 4. Silly thing is that I was ahead 2 to 0 in that last fight and ended up losing! The Gods of war are fickle!

The winner of the tournament was Terry Shockey - one of the finest gentlemen I know as well as an excellent drinking partner and gaming partner. He was awarded the DBN board I made (seen on this blog).

A special thanks to Dan Gurule and Matt Vigil for organizing and managing the fun we had and for investing their time, cash and friendship into the terrain boards we battled upon. here's Dan getting us into battle formation.

I have to say that I really like DBN.It always produces fun and challenges and does force me to make decisions while elegantly limiting my options! When people say DBA (and this is a DBA variant) is an acronym for "Dice Before Ability" I think they just have missed out on the appreciation of the system. How you set up, how you maneuver, how you get your troops to battle in advantageous conditions is what matters. Sure, you can roll a "1" and your would-be victim can roll a "6" - but that's baseball. That's what dice do - in this game and all others that have dice. The factors of the conditions of the engagements weigh on the die roll result as they should.

Here are some various shots of the gang at play...

Colin (left) and Dan

Scott (left) and Nate

Matt (background), Andrew (left) and John

Greg (left) and Terry

The gang going at it

Andrew, relaxing before defeating me

Terry (left) and Nate

Here are some various battle shots. We had 5 French armies battling against 2 British, 2 Austrian and 1 Prussian armies. Although Terry, the overall winner was an Allied player, the French actually edged the Allies in total points scored!

DBN BUA

My friend Jeff saw my Black Powder town segments (see post: http://wargamebayou.blogspot.com/2010/05/does-this-look-ok.html) and asked if I would make him some BUA's for DBN using that style. I have created and printed three such BUA's, but have only assembled one. Jeff has a nice Russian army, so one of the BUA's is themed as a Russian steppe town. Hope he likes it! It is shown below...being sacked by my Frenchmen, of course.

Big Battle DBN - Austria 1809

My friend Matt and I played a big battle DBN game yesterday. Wow, what fun! We like the typical 12-point army game, but this was really so much better. We each played with a 36-point army and a long battlefield, and the difference was huge. The armies were constructed as follows:

Allied
Foot Artillery: 4 elements (1 as Elite)
Light Cavalry: 3 elements
Muskets: 15 elements
Musket/Light Infantry: 3 elements
Heavy Cavalry: 3 elements (1 as Elite)
"Average" Sub-commanders: 3 elements
"Good" C-in-C: 1 element

The French commander created three corps, each consisting of 1 artillery, 1 light horse, 1 light infantry and 5 musket elements. Under the direct command of the C-in-C was the elite artillery element and the three heavy cavalry elements. One corps was composed entirely of Italian troops, one of French troops and one mainly of Bavarians with a small French representation.

Austria
Foot Artillery: 5 elements
Light Cavalry: 5 elements
Muskets: 18 elements (2 as Elite and 6 as Militia)
Heavy Cavalry: 3 elements
"Average" Sub-commanders: 3 elements
"Good" C-in-C: 1 element

The Austrian commander created three corps. One corps consisted of all of the mounted elements. One corps consisted of all of the artillery elements and all of the militia musket elements. The third corps consisted of the remaining infantry. No elements were placed under the direct command of the C-in-C.

We set up a battlefield and rolled that the French would be the attacker. We then deployed our troops in the following manner - which we think is better than the prescribed method.

• Defender deploys 1/2 of his commands to the battlefield within 600 paces of his edge and no closer than 300 paces from a side edge. This number is rounded up if the C-in-C is "poor" and is rounded down if the C-in-C is "good". If the C-in-C is "average", then roll 1d6 to determine if it is rounded up or down. Defender then deploys any garrisons in BUAs (in addition to the commands already deployed).
• Attacker then deploys all of his commands to the battlefield within 600 paces of his edge and no closer than 300 paces from a side edge.
• Defender then deploys his remaining commands within 600 paces of his edge and no closer than 300 paces from a side edge.

We also played the "Victory Conditions" differently, as the DBN conditions do not account for the losses of a given command, only the entire army. So, here is how we played the victory conditions:

• When a command loses 1/3 of its original element count (rounded up) it is demoralized. 
• A demoralized command can only spend CAP to prevent fleeing and can no longer initiate close combat. Any element not help by CAP makes a flee movement each turn.
• A demoralized command cannot transfer out any elements to another command and cannot accept transferred elements from another command.

Regarding transferring elements, the following clarification were made by us:

• Transferring elements into a command DOES NOT change the "original" number of elements in that command for purposes of determining demoralization. For example, if 1 have 9 elements and I transfer in 3 more, I still can only lose 3 elements before being considered demoralized.
• Transferring elements out of a command DOES change the "original" number of elements in that command for purposes of determining demoralization. For example,if I have 6 elements and I transfer out 3 elements, the "original" size of the command is now considered to be "3", not "6". Otherwise, I could get cheesy with the demoralization rules - and we don't want that.

Here are some pictures (click to enlarge)!

DBN - 1809 French

De Bellis Napoleonics, DBN, is a terrific game. It is produced by KISR Productions and available from their site at DBN Wargaming. It is a stand alone game, developed from De Bellis Antiquitatis, that allows for us to quickly fight Napoleonic battles.


I hear ya, you purists out there, wargaming sacrilege. But the simple truth is that this is a good and fun game that allows me to actually play with my Napoleonic miniatures! An extra strength of the game is the excellent "large battle DBN" aspect. DBA/DBN have some simple yet elegant mechanisms - some of which have not been matched by other rule sets - for command and control. DBN takes it a little further with some fine optional rules allowing for better (or worse) generals.

I can still play Black Powder with the miniatures owing to the forgiving figure-basing notions in that also excellent game.

Pictured below is a representative French army for the 1809 campaign in Austria. The various elements are described in the image, but what is nice is that only 8 of the elements are compulsory, allowing a player to then complete the army to suit his likes.

One neat aspect of the better trained light infantry in the game is that they can be deployed as light infantry or as muskets, even changing the deployment during the game. This is really good tactically as both types have some differing advantages. The French in 1809 also have some options for "elite" troops too.

This is only a fraction of the French (and allies - Bavarian, Italian, Saxon) that reside in the combined collection of my brother and I (which, luckily for me, lives at my house!). We have a ton of Austrians too.