DBM 200

Genesis

I invented DBM 200 in for a one-day tournament in late 1995 for 2 reasons - firstly, I had a young child and couldn't really get away for a whole weekend's gaming, so the idea of a 1-day tournament attracted me. Also, the Rugby Wargames Club that I played at were all busy building Ancient armies up from DBA, but few people had full scale armies. Playing a 200ap DBM game seemed a good way of getting a one day tournament with 4 games, plus all the Rugby club lads could get their armies up to 200ap quite quickly. Since then, DBM200 tournaments have been played across the globe, and seem to have gone down very well (see Experiences below). I have updated these rules in the light of all the playing experience (thanks expressly to Big John Shirey). Right now I'm migrating it to a 25mm game so we can play DBM in 25mm as we build up these gorgeous Gripping Beast, Old Glory, Foundry etc figures that are coming on the market. (I don't see the need to do the same for DBR as a Condensed Scale option is in the rules)

DBM 200 Rules

1. All armies are to be 200 ap, one list per player

2. The rules curently are DBM v2.1, DBM lists 1-4 v 2.

3 Army Points are according to DBM lists EXCEPT that the command costs for generals are halved & rounded up (ie a Regular general is 10 ap, an irregular is 5). So for eg an Irr Kn(F) ally general will be 9 + (5/2) = 12.

4. All maxima and minima in the lists are halved, including allowed generals, and rounded up. So for eg an allowance of Norman LH(O) 0-3 is halved and then rounded up to 0-2. Two elements of baggage are still required per command, and will count as per normal for demoralisation (This means that losing baggage is very serious in DBM200). There are 2 special cases:

i) In the case of Allies with maxima limits, the 2 baggage elements are deducted first and then the maxima are halved (so for eg Norman Aghlabid Allies 0-16 will have 2 baggage elements deducted, and the resulting 14 maxima halved to 7).

ii) In the case of lists with compulsory Double Based Elements (DBE's) (eg Byzantines), the halved minima and maxima are rounded up to the closest number of complete DBE's. So for eg, Byzantine DBE Themata 6-14 becomes 4-8

5. Only one sub-general is allowed. Any other general must be an ally. If, and only if, the army fielded has no allies in the list then you may field one of the Sub-Generals as an ethnic ally (with the 1/4 of compulsory troops etc) so long as the original army list allows 3 Sub Generals before halving for DBM 200. (This is because at 200 ap, 3 regular dice create too much mobility)

6. Terrain - I suggest that DBM 2.1 terrain rules are used as standard, except that the total number of terrain pieces allowed is halved.

7. Time and Weather will be played, unless both players in a game agree to waive it.

8. 15mm Table Size will be 4 foot wide by 32" deep. Attacking and Defending forward deployment zones will be halved to 3" and 6" respectively. Flanks will continue to be at 6" from table edge.

9. 25mm Table size will 6 foot wide by 4 foot deep

They work pretty well, read the Experiences of others below if you don't believe me.

Experiences

The first tournament I ran had 40 players, and preset terrain with about 1/3 of the tables in heavy terrain, 1/3 moderate, and 1/3 open. The range of armies was very wide, and I think the smaller tables and points size meant the heavy infantry and Irregular warband armies did much better than usual. Tim Stubbings won with Ottoman Turks, but Gauls, Romans and Sub Roman British all did fairly well. Quite a number of tournaments have been run worldwide since, all report very good results. One interesting adaption recently is to allow people building 25mm armies, which take a lot longer to paint than 15mm, to start playing before they have finished a full size army. I will add others' experiences at a later date.

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