Reviving DBA armies - a heady mix of nostalgia and lemsip!

Despite being laid almost completely low by man-flu this week, I managed to stick some grassy finishing touches on to a project that I've been enjoying over the last month or so.

Fairly recently Steve (of Steve's Painting Shed) posted some Facebook pictures of some 15mm Greek DBA armies he'd been renovating. (obviously gorgeous!)

Although I pretty much only ever played DBA solo, (or maybe because I pretty much only ever played solo) I loved it. I played out a couple of mediterranean campaigns, and the first ever wargaming experience my son had (when he was about 3 or 4), was charging elephants into Roman hastatii. 

That was a while ago. Fred's 21 now and the figures have long been consigned to a rather scarily disorganised and uncared for pile of 15mm memories in a box in the loft.

Inspired by Steve's posts, I dug them out and worked out that I could salvage Roman and Carthaginian armies, (all Essex I think), and cobble a strange collection of Donnington Italians into II/8a italian army.

Following his advice, I picked up DBA 3.0, which definitely brings a few changes that I've had to get my head around, both to the rules, but also some small army list changes. I ordered some new MDF bases from warbases... and a few weeks later we have two DBA armies ready to rock! 

Nearly twenty years since they last met!

Polybian Roman II/33

Later Carthaginian II/32a

My old 2x2 board has been given a repaint, and a few bits of felt and stuff will provide the scenery for now, as I add suitably shaped and modelled bits. I've got an old scratch-built BAU which will work as a city but 3.0 brings some new BAU types, so that's something to look at.

Falling back in love with these little armies, no doubt mostly due to a heady mix of nostalgia and lemsip, and looking forward to playing more DBA. (next up, finish the Italians, then plan the next armies)

Like falling off a bike, or something.. (a return to the blog)

I'm at that age now when any event marking the passage of time prompts me to declare "Blimey!" .. for example, apparently it's 25 years since Alanis Morissette released Jagged Little Pill ?!

Conversation in recent months about wargaming blogs made me realise that it's almost five years since I last posted here!

Blimey!

So, I've been sitting on my typing hands for a fair bit of 2021, wondering whether I ought to start this blog up again, and where to start etc, as the realisation dawned upon me that this really is a 'first world problem' and considering that nobody is likely to read the thing anyway.. why not just pick it up again as a way of recording and encouraging myself to keep up hobby momentum!

I won't try to recap the last five years.. games have been played, new shiny projects have come and gone.. but in fairness, playing with trains definitely took precedence up until around 2019.. and Youtubing became very much my route to 'share' hobby stuff, rather than using a blog. (See my channel here by the way, I've even posted a couple of solo Dragon Rampant games, which hasn't pleased the model railroad followers!)

I got talking to Tom and James at one of the shows, rolled some dice.. and we started organising games..Tom's covered much of it on his excellent blog. 

Lockdown happened which has obviously had an impact on all of that, although like many people, we managed to get some virtual games done too.. including a fun Muskets and Tomahawks campaign set in the French Indian wars played out on Zoom.

Tom and I are planning a Chain of Command 1940 campaign (we've even built terrain pieces and painted armies!), so looking forward to that.. as well as trying out some cold war gone hot with Scrivs, newly returned from the colonies..

So.. I'm going to try to post regularly again.. even if it's brief and rubbish.. I think it might be a good exercise.

A super-brief highlight reel of some stuff that's passed over my table in 2021 so far (excluding Zoom games):

Painting up Perry Wars of the Roses army.. 3D printing stakes for archers.. starting a 'Bag the Hun' collection for the Flying Tigers.. building, painting and rigging 'Black Seas' ships.. building and expanding fantasy Dragon Rampant armies for my own 'Nordmark' setting.. getting some HeHe based and realising how many more I need to start playing 'Death in a Dark Continent'.. building up a British BAOR force in 1/144 using Northag plastish models and 3D prints (and 3D printing Soviets) to play 'Seven Days to the River Rhine' with Scrivs any time soon! .. rebasing some ancient 15mm 18th century stuff for some ImagiNation solo games...

Playing some solo 1866 games using 6mm armies and Neil Thomas 19th Century rules.. starting a big project to rebase and re-arm my Arthurian armies back to WAB.. 3D printing tanks from 1/300 to 1/48.. more Dragon Rampant.. scratch building and kit building real estate for 1940 games.. and painting up gorgeous Aventine EIR romans for Infamy Infamy (which I will probably never play)

(the buildings are all actually the right way up in real life, that is to say, with roof skyward.. but I thought I'd get you to tilt your head to one side, just for fun!)

The Battle of Tribola 147 BC at Hereward wargames show

Made my first trip to the Hereward show in Peterborough yesterday, putting on a To The Strongest! game with James Morris and Simon Miller, along with Matt and Doug. 
James devised a scenario based upon the named action, where a column of Romans impetuously followed their Lusitanian foe into a valley where they were properly ambushed. I supplied the Romans, Simon is the author of these rather spiffing rules, and James brought his lovely Spanish army and all of the scenery - including the rather special mountain that was, of course, Keren in a previous life.

View from the mountainside

The Spanish start to realise that the Romans aren't running away!

Simon doing the wargamers point

Simon explaining finer points of the rules

All in all a very successful day. I didn't actually play - mostly hovering about chatting with punters and helping the gamers who joined in.

We all expected the scenario to pretty much lead to a Roman squishing, but the first game went on for ages and actually very nearly turned into a Roman victory as Tim (I think) , took grave offence at the audacity of these Iberians, and went on the offensive, not trying to withdraw his army at all, but rather crush the Lusitanians in toe-to-toe combat!

The Romans get offensive!

In the afternoon, a rather smaller engagement was played, using the leading legions , and I believe this went a little more to plan, with Matt being assisted by a young lady who took the glory.

I had a bit of a look around the show but didn't buy anything. (apart from a bacon cob!) It's noticeable how many smaller games there are these days - lots of 'big skirmishy' type of things - not that that's a bad thing - people seemed to be having a lot of fun over both halls, and many games were still in full swing as the traders were packing up after 4 o'clock.

Having picked up Sharp Practice 2 this year, I've yet to have a game, and I'm starting to work out the best way to do it. (I'd really like to collect stuff for the 'Maximillian adventure' but cost is a limiting factor).

A few crappy pictures from around the show..

This was actually a very loud and fun game, doesn't look like it here does it?

Culloden

I was just thinking.. 'Could I use Sharp Practice' for Mars? And Yes, yes you can.

A real masterpiece this one - Benfleet

Now that's what 'Saga' should look like!

A few more pictures just didn't come out very well, but there were some other nice looking games on display.

Roman in the Gloamin'...

Strewth it's been  long while!! Quite a few reasons.. kind of lost my mojo and there have been some pretty big family issues to deal with. I have been able to keep up a little with some rail modelling, painting the odd figure (finally got my fourth Italian Ala painted up).. but haven't had a game in months. Until this week...

The mounted Lusitanian flank apply pressure

James Morris was in touch recently and I've signed up for putting on a Romans in Spain game at the Hereward show in a couple of weeks, with Simon Miller (we'll be using his 'To The Strongest! rules) and Matt Moran.

Simon has tweaked the Roman infantry rules, or at least, provided an alternative, to try to counter the frailty of the small legion units, and to reflect some recent thinking in "Slingshot", the journal of the Society of Ancients. The Hastatii and Principes join to form a standard unit and have some special rules that allow them to swap places, bolstering the saves and re-arming the pila.

I was keen to try the new rules out, and just to have a refresher really, as I'd rather be fairly au fait once punters turn up at Hereward and ask what we're doing!

Anyhoo.. the other evening I drove over to James' house and we spent the evening playing a very enjoyable 155 point game with my Romans vs his Lusitanians, and of course, chatting generally about gaming, history, figures and basing, and ideas for the upcoming demo game.

James setting up the Lusitanians (Romans opposite) note the attractive cloth with subtle grid

I won't provide a battle report, as James has done a cracking job of that over on the Lead Adventure forum, along with some nice photos of the game in action.

See here:

Lusitanians vs Romans - TtS! Battle Report

A bit of a catch up on two recent games.. Seven Years War and Rome vs Seleucid

A brief update on two recent games at the club..Less burble.. more pics.. all on the phone, so apologies for that.. must remember to take the camera along.

A couple of weeks ago, Steve hosted a rather spiffing Seven Years War game using his collection of traditional toy soldiers... it's hard to convey the spectacle of these lovely toys with crappy phone pictures.. but at one point in the battle I did stop and think I felt as thought I'd stepped into the pages of one of those Grant and Featherstone books I used to read in the library as a kid!

We were using the Piquet 'Field of Battle' rules and Steve and I lead the Austrians to an ignominious defeat. (Being a Prussian sympathiser, I was secretly not too disappointed with Greg and Pete's victory!)

Last week Steve and Scrivs had a go at To The Strongest! with Steve's new Pikey army.. being less than pleased with his new army's turnout, I suggested a game against my Republican Romans last night, fully expecting his huge pike blocks to roll over my little maniples.

Things didn't quite work out that way. We had an enjoyable game, Greg joining Steve. As ever, there was a bit of bad luck that had some influence.. the Seleucids struggling to get hits in during the early part of the battle. Tactically, I decided to forgo my instinctive method of trying to maintain some kind of line with my Romans, and went for a chaotic 'get in amongst them' approach.. using my lights to cause as much disruption as possible. 

I had some good luck against the Seleucid cavalry, my Italian allies pretty much taking one flank whilst over on my left, the elites made a right nuisance of themselves, getting around the pikes and scaring off the elephants.

In the end it was a Roman victory. not by a lot.. I was down to half my medals.

postscript - I realised that I had priced my maniples using an older list, so points-wise I had a slight advantage as the units cost 1/2 point more these days! (and give me less victory points too)

Moving Pictures?

Something a little different this time. I do occasionally post videos relating to model rail stuff.. However,  this evening whilst I had my Romans out for a little box-shuffling, I thought I'd video them..

Generals and Heroes

If productivity (hobby-wise) comes in peaks and troughs, my wargaming activity of late has been somewhere on the valley's side. Just one of those things, I think, I'm somewhere in between bouts of inspiration. In fairness, I've also been fairly busy lately starting a new day job and cracking on with a model rail project.

Anyway, one little project I managed to get finished off today, is the painting and basing of a selection of generals and heroes for my Republican Roman army.*

*I say 'finished', although of course, seeing cruel close up photos means that there are still some finishing touches to be done! 

Too many chiefs?

I already had a few 1st Corps mounted generals on round 60mm bases, but thought it might be good to have some commanders mounted up on square bases to represent 'Attached' generals when playing To The Strongest! (and use the circular based chaps for 'detached')

The foot command figures here are Aventine, and despite my worst efforts to paint them, I think they are bloody lovely figures, full of character. I selected figures that look to be attired in a slightly more exotic 'Allied' look.

 

1st Corps figs

Aventine Heroes

I've done some Aventine Roman and Allied cavalry too, so I ought to post some pictures of them next!

A Roman camp

At the back of my mind as I've been putting my Roman army together, has been the need to provide some baggage, or  camp. We haven't used these in our games at all yet, but perhaps ought to. On a practical note - it's a good place to keep your spare ammo chits and perhaps victory medals for To The Stongest!

I thought I'd start with a single camp 'unit' which in TtS! is  a 'deep' unit. I knew that I would want to fortify this (we are Romans after all!), so decided to combine the camp base with three sides of fortifications. I had considered building the two parts separately, but figured this would be more practical and I can always make up some more field fortification pieces later. The base, therefore, was a piece of hardboard cut to size - 180 x 150mm. This will fit fairly neatly onto the 150mm grid we use.

In best bodgy blue peter style, I took a sharp knife and glue to some foamboard, a load of cocktail sticks, applied wood filler and paints and finished up with this. The groundwork is painted up to blend with the arid look on the rest of the army.

I think field fortifications cost 2 points per grid edge, rather than per square, in which case this would cost 6 points, plus the 1 point for the camp.

it does remind me of a DBA camp element.. in fact I'm sure I have one just like this in 15mm somewhere!

To The Strongest! Punic Wars game

Last night Scrivs and I had another game of the upcoming 'To The Strongest!' rules by Simon Miller. I fielded a Republican Roman army and Scrivs had a mixed Carthaginian force, not based on lists, but what felt right and representative. I am pretty sure that Scrivs will be posting a battle report, along with OOB shortly.. so just some pictures really and a brief overview...

These rules do treat the Romans slightly differently to some other sets I've played (not a bad thing!) They are not invincible war machines. In fact, the small units are quite fragile so I think there is definitely an art to learn in using their greater flexibility to effect. (Having said that, the two games I've played so far have seen me consistently draw terrible 'save' cards and lose a lot of units to single missile attacks).

I suspected that this battle was heading the same way as our first Punic battle, but managed to make some headway after early losses and turned a complete rout into a narrow defeat. (Only a couple of victory medals in it at the end). Scrivs and I mused on the fact that from our memory the Romans did lose a number of battles to the Carthaginians but were able to keep coming back for more! We played at 130 points and I wonder if perhaps I would be better to field just two legions with more support next time.

Enormous thanks to Simon who was able to respond to a rules query mid-game! 

 

The opening moves, Carthaginans (Blue) are made up of four commands; I Gallic, II African including Veterans and led by Hannibal!, III Numidian Light Horse, IV Spanish. The Romans had I and II Legions led by the Tibunes Marcus Corvinius and Gaius Flaminius, and III an allied contingent under  Lucius Anonius Opimius

Roman I Legion under Marcus Corvnius anticipate the Spanish attack

The Gauls in the Carthaginan centre struggle to rout the stubborn Velites

The Latin Allies on the Roman left were about to suffer the hardest fighting

from the Roman right flank

Hannibal, in the hour before he was slain!

Latin allied contingent advance, leaving their command in trouble behind them!

It was definitely time to send in the Triarii

Toward the end of the battle:

1. The Roman left saw some terrible setbacks, with the Numidian javelins causing all kinds of chaos, but the command just about held until it's general was caught in the last turn.
2. Stiff fighting in the centre. Losses on both sides and..
3. One unit of Principes failed to capitalise getting in on the flank of the Carthaginian Veterans.
4. The Spanish pretty much sweeping away any real resistance on this flank

One final thought was about my Agema Romans. I really like these figures, great poses and real character. However, as I suspected, the fine detail is unfortunately a little fragile and I need to do some repair work on a few helmet plumes and pila today. The Victrix figures are perhaps a little more static in pose, and the detail is heavier, but that gives them a robustness which I think will pay off.