The small city of Timaru has an extremely active wargaming club with around 30 members. With respect to historical gaming, specifically Ancient gaming, they have a particularly strong following. Even without the full compliment of local DBA gamers the Timaru club fielded nine players for Tagcon. Clearly a strong and growing Ancient membership which many other New Zealand clubs would be pleased to have. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here?
Anyway, a report of my competition games at Tagcon can be found here.
Following the competition two large Big Battle DBA games were the run. I played in one where my Greek army of 400BC faced a Persian army of the same period. This was my first large DBA game in well over 15 years and the first time in many years the Greeks have been out on mass. The battle, involving six players, used the standard BBDBA rules. Each army comprised 36 elements deployed in three unequal commands. The enjoyable game ended in a Greek victory. I now look forward to further games using the BBDBA rules which are, for those not aware, part of the standard DBA rule book.
Loved the report, particularly the way you created a narrative out of the series of battles. I suspect Agathocles was insufficiently pious in taking the pre-battle auspices, given the unfavourable PIP rolls!
ReplyDeleteI was also interested in what you said about the Timaru club having a younger membership and DBA being part of what was attracting them. I've not been involved in clubs in Auckland enough to say if they're aging or not, but I'd agree totally that DBA would be a great way of interesting new players, for all the reasons you gave. Not many rules would allow you to play 7 games in a day!
Indeed, the dice gods will need to be considered in future Syracusan adventures.
ReplyDeleteAs to attracting younger historical gamers I would suggest that the Timaru Wargames Club have a good formula for both attracting and retaining historical wargamers.
Some Ancient Wargamers of course feel FOG will be the answer, with better presentation. I am not convinced and suspect more can be done with DBA given the right support from other Ancients wargamers. Even if people disagree I do hope my comments will encourage some reflection.
I can really only offer a personal opinion of what attracts me to figure wargaming and why I think DBA has a lot going for it. But I think a major attraction of it is the ability to play a number of games quickly and to created themed competitions, even campaigns in which the number of figures required is not prohibitive.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine more interest being created for those new to the hobby at conventions when some sort of historical refight is offered, a series of battles, perhaps, and spectators can watch them come to a result quickly, or even take part themselves. A number of Alexander's battles, or those of 1066 are ones that come to mind for me.
To me that's much more interesting than watching Carthaginians slug it out with Patrician Romans over a number of hours (or even less interesting War of the Roses English versus Ancient Egyptians).
I can see the prospect of getting a DBA army for someone who's watched one of these games being much less daunting than getting a DBMM/FOG army. And if you're still a fan of those systems you could view DBA as a way of getting new players interested and in time perhaps being willing to invest in the bigger armies.
Mark, you raise several very good points.
ReplyDeleteI agree that DBA is ideal for providing a quick game between historical opponents. This in itself is likely to be an ideal mechanic to capture some of the appeal historical gaming has for many people. In fact this was what attracted me into 15mm Ancients 20 years ago. Other Ancients rules seemed to complex and armies to large. DBA was simple and I could build an army in a reasonable amount of time.
Strangely today, after so many years, the split between DBMM and FOG combined by my desire for historical opponents I find myself again looking at DBA, DBA campaigns and BBDBA.
For those gamers interested in other rules systems I do wonder if they have considered using DBA as a way of growing the hobby and perhaps growing their own opponent base as new players armies expand.
As I said in my article the trip to Tagcon really did make me think about how I can support the hobby.