Slackers Playing Guide

Introduction

This guide is aimed simply at easing a player through Wargaming with the least hassle, in terms of playing an army. I have structured it into 5 sections, the first 3 are more generic but the last 2 are much more DBM/DBR specific: Why am I qualified to talk on this topic? Mainly because I wrote it, but also because I have 2 small children, so time is very limited and you get pretty darned good at finding the shortcuts.

·         Army Selection

·         Basic DBM/DBR Command Structuring

·         Basic Playing Tips and Techniques from bitter experience

·         This is boring, Return to Home Page

Army Selection

There are 4 Big Things that the Lazy Player needs to know when choosing armies:

·         Will it be Fun? Quite simply there is no point in building anything you don't get a buzz out of using. So what gives a buzz? Well, the classic advice is "get an army you can love if it loses" which means it had better have emotional merits other than "Is this a killer?". Period Romance, Heroic Leaders, Great Figures, Good Looks are all part of this, but there are some more practical considerations....

·         Is it a complete Dog? Every ruleset has its dogs. Typical Dog factors are: Is its' command structure usable? (all ally generals, or differing grades of impetuous troops are romantic, but frustrating in practice after a few games). Other fun flatteners are low mobility (Irregular heavy infantry armies, poorly trained regulars), low flexibility (single troop type armies), and any army with only inferior troops. Better rulesets have points values so you at least get some trade-offs of quality vs quantity, but others don't. The most disheartening is when the owner of the all-time period kick-ass army says "I know, we'll both have 10 battalions each and see what happens" and you have the original Dog Army. I remember a particular WW2 " battlegroup" tournament organised by just such a chap who used (naturally) German Waffen SS.

·         Is it Moi? - Armies actually have differing characters, and its a good idea that it matches yours. Duke William of Normandy staked his kingdom on a battle, if you can't then don't play Normans. Conversely, if flair and elan is your scene, then Romans and Napoleonic Russians are not!

·         Does it Morph? In other words, are a lot of the figures usable in other armies, so if you don't like this army there are lots of others you can use the same figures for. I have provided the "Good Morph Guide" as an aid.

There is also the little matter of winning occasionally!:

·        Are there "Killer" Armies - In general most people are seduced by the army of a Great Captain like Caesar or Napoleon, but are often disappointed as often the army itself is pretty average (and whisper who dares - the opponents were sometimes quite poor), and the superior performance was often due to the leader him (or her) self. An exception is the Napoleonic French or WW2 German army (at least according to most rulesets). But, before painting up the Napoleonic French or Waffen SS, consider that most other gamers are doing the same - so its better to paint up the opponent as you have more chance of getting a game. This also plays into the hands of the Lazy Gamer, as often the less favoured lot have simpler uniforms to paint - white coated Horse n Musket Austrians, ACW Union forces, WW2 Americans etc. By the way, here is another Hint - in most European post Renaissance periods a strong alternative option to the Period Hero is the relevant Russian army.

Decent Warhammer 40k armies – Warhammer 40k lore is that Space Marines are the ideal starter army. Our own experience is that Necrons were a better starter army, Space Marines are actually harder to play well, and the Eldar and Dark Eldar armies are the most complex but most powerful if used properly. Orks are the weakest army in the current rule version (IV), one plays them for a laugh rather than any serious expectation of winning. The main thing to watch out for in 40K armies is to not fill your armies with the expensive (points and pounds) esoteric troops and the big expensive tanks. Take lots of the basic troop types (Tau excepted – take kroot and suits), sheer volume of firepower is important unless fighting on very cluttered and small tables where combat is assured.

Decent World War Two Armies – The best all round armies are usually British and Germans. The USA suffers in many rulesets as the writers forget (or ignore) the US tactical mantra which was that tanks were not for fighting enemy tanks ( that was the job of the artillery, air force and tank destroyer units ) so the rules often ignore aircraft and off-table artillery, and the poor old Yanks have to face the Panzerphiles with Shermans. Do not fall for this trap! Field (M36 Jackson) tank destroyers , no tanks, and as much Artillery as you can - then sit back and wait for the protests as your Big Guns pound the Tigers into the dirt from extreme range. As command and control is also hard to manage in rules the Russians tend to do far better, since their equipment was fairly good on average. (Fact – despite the Russian T-34 being far better than the Sherman *in theory*, the Sherman loss ratio vs German tanks in combat was half that of the Russian tank.)  The Italians and Japanese do OK in the early war as the equipment is comparable, but they are usually totally obsolescent by c 1943 so you need to love cover, the harder the better.

Decent DBM Ancient Armies - Ancients is a bit more daunting for the newbie, as there are literally hundreds of armies to chose from! I wouldn't possibly suggest that you might want an ancient "killer army", but if you were inclined that way here are a few tips for DBM. I will take it as read you will go for a fairly mobile army with Regular generals and no allies. By looking at the way the DBM rules are structured you can also make a few other generalisations - Firstly, superior (S) troops in DBM are the key - especially Bows, Knights, Cavalry, Auxilia and Warbands. Secondly though, it is important to have a number of different types in an army due to the "Rock/Paper/Scissor nature of DBX. Thirdly, as the DBM army command runs away at 1/3 casualties, its not enough to have just "S" troops, the army must have large amounts of "Useful" filler stuff - Sp, Bw, LH, Hd(O). Fourthly, freebies are Good (Dismounting ability, Psiloi rear support etc). This is not a sure fire guide, but most of the armies that score highly in these categories are pretty strong. There is also a subtle difference in DBM between 15mm and 25mm scales, in general 25mm favours heavy frontal armies whereas 15mm favours manouvre more. In addition the points allowed makes a difference, smaller points games favour lighter (ie bigger), mobile armies, higher points values means more men on table so the frontal nutcrackers are much better.

So what does the Newbie Lazy Gamer do? Well, a few armies consistently appear in the DBM favourite armies list, and are also very morphable.

·         My top picks for DBM are Late/Patrician Roman, Ottoman Turks, Medieval Spanish/Portuguese, and Abbassid Arab. Good, easy to use armies with great morphing potential. Strong non-morphers are English Wars of The Roses armies, Neo-Assyrians and Samurai.

·         Don't try these at home - In general, DBM irregular, impetuous armies are not ideal for beginners, especially those with (F) troops like Celts or Normans. This is not to say they are not effective - they can be - but they need a lot more DBM experience to use well, and will go awry very fast if mistakes are made.

Basic rules for DBR army selection are similar to DBM, except that army breakpoints aren't as low so filler is less critical, and some of the (F) troops (Lancers, Sipahi, Shot and Artillery) and (I) troops that shoot are much more effective than their DBM equivalents.

·         My DBR Army Picks - the French Pike and Shot armies are tough customers and very morphable. Though less morphable, Colonial Portuguese & Venetians are also tough customers. Of the eastern armies the Ottomans, Persians, Poles, Russians and Moghuls have all proven their worth. There is however less of a "killer army" effect in DBR, this could be simply that there is less experience to date.

Basic DBM/DBR Command Structuring

The aim is to maximise the ease of use and the resilience of your commands. There are 2 key things to keep in mind, ie PiP Drain and Command/Army Breakpoints.

PiP Drain is simplest - the more things you need to do with a command, the bigger the pip drain. So, the fewer troop types with different moves that are penalised if moving together the better. Also, a command that is designed to do a few things is better than multi-purpose commands. Different speed impetuous troops in the same command are a complete No-No.

Command/Army Breakpoint is much more sophisticated, and breaks down into anumber of areas:

  • Command Breakpoint is fairly simple At a minimum, no command element equivalent should be cleanly divisible by 3 as that gives the minimum breakpoint possible.
  • Troop Types in a command require some thought - Since it breaks on 1/3 casualties, a command of 100% top class capital troops is wildly inefficient. Theoretically, you want 1/3 of the command to be capital troops and 2/3 to be cheap filler. However, most players notice that the survival of the capital trooops goes up if you have a few more of them than "optimal", so a 60% filler: 40% capital or even 50:50 split is common, or a 40:20:40 split between capital troops, secondary troops and filler (eg an Ottoman command with 4 Cv(S), 2 Cv(O), 4 LH(F)) - but bear in mind the point about PiP drain issues as you add troop types and roles.
  • Army Structure is a lot more subtle. Mathematically you can show that the whole army in one Big Command gives the highest breakpoint - 1/3 of the whole army. Unfortunately this gives you so few PiPs that your manouvre capability is zero, so you are a sitting duck (unless you are Medieval French of course, with tons of impetuous, near impregnable Kn(S) ). To start, I would go with a regular army of 3 roughly equal commands, or an Irregular army of cascading size commands of a ratio roughly of about 40:30:15:15 = 100% of army element equivalents. These are good bases to tune from. Here are the basic considerations at any rate:
    1. What you are after overall is maximising breakpoints per PiPs generated (ie % of army lost before breaking/number of commands).
    2. One huge command plus two tiny commands is the "optimal" ratio of breakpoint per PiP. Unfortunately the tiny commands are near useless as they will break as soon as they take any real hits.
    3. Theoretically the worst structure is one main command at just about 50% of the army size, as this means only about 1/6 of the army must be killed before it breaks.
    4. Many players swear by 3 roughly equal sized commands, this is a reasonable tradeoff of command usability vs breakpoints as it means about 22 - 26 % of the army must be lost before it flees but the big commands are more robust and thus less likely to take losses easily. (The optimum ratio is about 37:37:26, a loss ratio of about 26% assuming you can keep the smallest command out of trouble)
    5. Other Regular players like 2 large commands and a small "PiP dump" command where the worst dice goes. I don't like it as mathematically it gives no benefit over the 33:33:33 structure and at least I get a third usable command.
    6. Having cascading sized commands is not really useful for 3 command armies, as it is too easy to get to the "big command is nearly half the army" problem. Cascading command sizes work better with 4 commands.
    7. Unfortunately, regular armies (especially those with expensive generals) find that 4 commnds dramatically reduces the army size, so though the PiPs generated rocket, sadly the breakpoint plummets. This means that you have to hope that the extra manouvreability can make up for the increased army vulnerability (don't you just love this game?)
    8. Irregular armies however do really benefit from a 4th command at 400 points and above, I have had a lot of success with a 4 command structure that is typically 40:30:20:10 or 40:30:15:15 in nature - but you must ensure the big commands do the fighting and the small ones the skirmishing or else the tiddlers can break the army before the heavy brigade even gets started.
    9. In DBR, armies break after far more casualties so the need for filler is much less, and they don't have impetuous, irregular issues - but the same basic mathematics applies.

Basic Playing Tips

Who am I to offer advice? Well, I think I have something to offer because I am no longer a rookie, but I still know what it is like to have to learn the game. Also, if I may humbly boast (!), I specialise in doing far better than expected with decidely "dodgy" armies (see The Lore of the Fast Knight) . Besides, I'm an opinionated git and this is my Website anyway!

Before we even start, there are 3 things that most Really Good Players have off pat with their armies:

  • They know the rules - sad but true for the Lazy Player, this is a major success factor
  • They know how their army likes to use terrain and weather, and see this as an integral part of the army selection. This you can work on as a newbie or lazy player.
  • They know how to deploy their armies so they are not tripping over themselves, and minimise risks from being out of position. Again, a bit of homework won't hurt.

Now, onto some basic playing tips, collated from my bitter experience, and sage advice from good players on the global DBM-List and at UK competitions....(to be added)

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