Quote from: Ian AbsentiaYou're kidding, right?  For Warhammer, what you see in the video is positively sedate.

This one time, Luke forced his way into our game and forced us to listen to Enya....he also insisted we game in Pretty Woman drag.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: StuartSome units can take more advantage of terrain than others.  Wood elves for example.  Some other armies... not so much.

Yeah, and, well...fact of the matter is that the terrain kind of slows things down, so it's often ignored.  Especially if the engagement is dealing with large unit movement.  If you're playing with individual units in a skirmish terrain becomes more desireable, even critical.

!i!

again, what's DBA?  :confused:  die blau (blauen?) auge or something?

Terrain is also more handy in 40k where your units don't have to be in block formation so it's easier to actually use terrain instead of having to often work around it.

Quote from: beeberagain, what's DBA?  :confused:  die blau (blauen?) auge or something?

Everbody!

Sie hat so himmel-, himmel-, himmel - blaue Augen... :haw:

This is Settembrini playing a wargame:

Quote from: beeberagain, what's DBA?  :confused:  die blau (blauen?) auge or something?

http://fanaticus.org/DBA/faq/index.html

DBA pwns the ancient, as opposed to fantasy, minis scene. It is played by gentlemanly old farts in a spirit of golfclap cameraderie.

Or so it is said.

Quote from: droogThis is Settembrini playing a wargame:

Kriegsspiel!!!!  

I'd kill for that gaming setup...



TGA

Quote from: droogThis is Settembrini playing a wargame:

*Image snipped*

Actually I think that's Sett just getting ready to read the WotC site and then posting about it here...

Quote from: beeberagain, what's DBA?  :confused:  die blau (blauen?) auge or something?

DBA is short for an ancients miniature game called De Bellis Antiquitatis.  It is a very fiddly kind of game that is derived from a game called De Bellis Multitudinus that appeals to the most wonky of historical miniatures players.

I am somehow ashamed of this knowledge.  


TGA

Re: picture. I feel flattered.
That´s pretty close to me playing Traveller. But I don´t wear my uniform for it. But we had a campaign in the Barracks once, and that definitely looked like it.
In Hex & Counter Wargames, you don´t use topographic maps. For Traveller I do.

Re: DBA. There´s quite some sniping going on agains Warhammer players by "sophisticated" Historical Miniature Players. I thought it was overblown, especially as the Warhammer Games I´ve observed were calm and gentle events, too. But the video definitely is a downturn.

Re: Fiddlyness. I´m only starting the DBA-Hobby, but the games I played so far really underlined that it´s very slick, very elegant a rules system. No counters, no bookkeeping, much maneuvre and much hyperdimensional rock & paper & scissors going on.

Re: Old Farts & Golf Club atmosphere. That´s a good description for what I´ve experienced so far at the local DBA-HQs.

Yes, there are plenty of spoiled and immature Warhammer players, but what do you expect when the game is targeted primarily at teenagers? The club I've played at has an 18+ age restriction, and all the players I've met there are gentlemen.

Of course, games played at home over beers tend to involve trash-talking and juvenile behaviour -- even domesticated greybeards can behave like kids in the company of close friends.

As for the Warhammer rules, it's a fairly dice-dependant game with a heavy emphasis on army optimization. If you're a Wargamer (capital W) then you'll probably find it frustrating, because even the best laid plans can be spoiled by unlucky die rolls and min-maxing opponents.

Terrain serves mostly to block missile fire and create chokepoints. Army selection and initial setup are probably more important to the game's outcome than actual maneuver.

1000-point games using standard rules (as depicted in the Youtube video) are probably the least fun variant, because the rules encourage huge movement trays full of minis, but 1000 points will only buy 3-4 units. So maneuver & flanking options are extremely limited in smaller games.

Re. DBA, not having played it either, what gives me pause is the following (it's about DBM, but I'm assuming the basic approach is the same?):

QuoteDBM also broke with ancients ruleset tradition by defining troop types by function - defining troops as bladesmen rather than Roman legionaries for example - allowing a higher level of abstraction to be used across 5,000 years of warfare.

Hm.

Also:

QuoteDBM evolved from the earlier WRG 7th Edition Ancients ruleset, using its mechanism of fixed size elements as the basic fighting unit rather than individual figures, each element representing the smallest coherent fighting group possible.

"Element" means base, yes? And there are so and so many figures per base, depending on army and unit type? And just how many actual soldiers a figure represents is variable, depending on... uh, something?

In any case, it seems that just as a given figure isn't really a specific historical soldier (Roman legionnaire etc.), so a given figure isn't really a specific number of such soldiers.

Is that correct, and does not liking that make me some kind of dinosaur?

EDIT: quotes are from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bellis_Multitudinis

Quote from: SettembriniRe: Fiddlyness. I´m only starting the DBA-Hobby, but the games I played so far really underlined that it´s very slick, very elegant a rules system. No counters, no bookkeeping, much maneuvre and much hyperdimensional rock & paper & scissors going on.

To be fair to DBA, it is not nearly as fiddly as DBM, which in turn is lightyears better in this department than the WRG Ancients rules.  To each his own taste, but I played DBM (and many variants thereof) for quite a while, and thought that DBA would be an improvement.  In the end, the fixed number of elements turned out to be a problem rather than a feature for me, so it never lit my fires.

To be honest, almost all miniature wargames (and miniature wargamers by extension) are fiddly to one extent or another.


TGA

Quote from: Pierce InverarityIn any case, it seems that just as a given figure isn't really a specific historical soldier (Roman legionnaire etc.), so a given figure isn't really a specific number of such soldiers.

Is that correct, and does not liking that make me some kind of dinosaur?

You are correct.  Some people would consider this a feature rather than a bug, particularly if you want to fight out big battles, have a very wide range of potential armies to play, and you want to finish a game pretty quickly (in fact DBA is the natural evolution of this tournament or "I have 2 hours to play a game" demand).  In my experience with DBM fighting with a Roman army is pretty much the same as with several other historical armies, and this is true of any armies of broadly similar type (frex all light cav armies will play the same).  

If you want something that feels more accurate for any particular army you generally have to trade simplicity, wide-ranging choice of time period, and quickness of play.  As I said, the DBx series appeals to a lot of people.  Just not me so much.


TGA