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Post by hodsopa on Mar 23, 2024 21:51:07 GMT
Ken, you and I can't agree on camels but we can agree on one thing: no one can reasonably be expected to win with a Tamil army with Sinhalese allies (5 El). At least if defending in the deep dark forest. I think you’ll find you can Paul as I won with them against you. You did, Bigus Yinus, and deserved to, as my Ancient British warbands fell into your cunning trap. (Killing the screening bows and charging your elephants.) But although you had to get out of the enclosures, you were at least not obliged to wend your narrow way between large patches of foul forest.
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 23, 2024 19:06:35 GMT
Ken, you and I can't agree on camels but we can agree on one thing: no one can reasonably be expected to win with a Tamil army with Sinhalese allies (5 El). At least if defending in the deep dark forest.
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 23, 2024 8:35:42 GMT
I'm in Starbucks in the city centre - sun and rain are fighting it out. The ground is about to thunder with the marching of my Psilois' elegant little feet and the falsetto neighing of my light horse as we head for the bus stop and Stannington.
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 18, 2024 16:34:44 GMT
I would instinctively play that it remains in column, but I think it has to be a FAQ because the rules seem silent.
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 16, 2024 19:55:55 GMT
You can play DBF with different points values, you don't have to go to BBBDA sorts of levels of army size. Playtesting, I was mostly around 24+ elements, though, and I don't know if others have tried it with fewer elements.
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 8, 2024 16:23:52 GMT
I once played in a DBA competition at Rueil (near Paris) where one of my opponents had an army of Asterixian Gauls. The figures had come free in cereal packets. He must have eaten a lot of the French equivalent of cornflakes.
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 4, 2024 17:13:15 GMT
Tom Whitehead, of course, is a lurker with only two tournaments played so far. He beat me fair and square in our game in Newark on Saturday.
I'm looking forward to Steel Warriors. Checking the laxness of my psiloi's slings and the smallness of the pebbles they will fire. Pete, are you sure you can't make it?
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 1, 2024 15:50:15 GMT
I think you are right about the Artillery point, Menacus. I've seen that in the beta version of the DBF rules the authors address this by saying that you can never shoot from good going to good going if any part of a hill is in between. That seems to me to be a good rule.
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 1, 2024 15:48:29 GMT
I think we need to distinguish between where the rules as written need supplementing and where they might need changing. There seem to be plenty of examples of things in the rules that need supplementing. Having no definition of “uphill” for close combat is clearly an example. Players have to decide how to interpret this and it is good that a common definition has been reached. There are also, in my view, plenty of things in the rules that could advantageously be changed. To give one example among many, when two LH in column receive a “flee” result, both should flee rather than the front one being destroyed. But I think that the advantages of playing the rules as written, of having a single reference point that everyone can turn to, outweigh the advantages of changing them on particular points. Concerning the way in which gentle hills affect shooting and command distance, I think the rules are clear. Hills are required to have “a centre line crest”. You can’t shoot, and command distance is reduced, if the element you are measuring to is “entirely beyond” a crest. Up to now, I have found it helpful to think of hills in DBA as being shaped like cornish pasties. The crest line runs all the way from one end to the other, rising to a bulge in the middle and then falling. This has seemed to me a natural interpretation of “a centre line crest”. With hills shaped like this, the shooting rule as written certainly produces an anomaly. An element at one end of the hill can shoot, over the bulge, at an element at the other end, provided that both are on the same side of the crest line. But I think this is quite a rare case, and not worth changing the rules for. Maybe I’m reading the rules wrong, and they are not as clear as I think. Maybe they’re clear but the anomaly, for example in the case of conical hills, is bigger/more serious than I think and is one of the cases (which should presumably be rare if at all) that could justify moving away from the rules as written. In any case, interested to hear your view. Depends slightly which way the pasty is pointing, hodsopa . If the crest (?crust) is roughly parallel to the base edge troops can hide behind it. However, if it runs parallel to the side edges, one could get some improbable results, including Artillery being able to hit troops on flat ground (Good going) on the far side of the hill.
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 1, 2024 15:46:46 GMT
I think we need to distinguish between where the rules as written need supplementing and where they might need changing. There seem to be plenty of examples of things in the rules that need supplementing. Having no definition of “uphill” for close combat is clearly an example. Players have to decide how to interpret this and it is good that a common definition has been reached. There are also, in my view, plenty of things in the rules that could advantageously be changed. To give one example among many, when two LH in column receive a “flee” result, both should flee rather than the front one being destroyed. But I think that the advantages of playing the rules as written, of having a single reference point that everyone can turn to, outweigh the advantages of changing them on particular points. Concerning the way in which gentle hills affect shooting and command distance, I think the rules are clear. Hills are required to have “a centre line crest”. You can’t shoot, and command distance is reduced, if the element you are measuring to is “entirely beyond” a crest. Up to now, I have found it helpful to think of hills in DBA as being shaped like cornish pasties. The crest line runs all the way from one end to the other, rising to a bulge in the middle and then falling. This has seemed to me a natural interpretation of “a centre line crest”. With hills shaped like this, the shooting rule as written certainly produces an anomaly. An element at one end of the hill can shoot, over the bulge, at an element at the other end, provided that both are on the same side of the crest line. But I think this is quite a rare case, and not worth changing the rules for. Maybe I’m reading the rules wrong, and they are not as clear as I think. Maybe they’re clear but the anomaly, for example in the case of conical hills, is bigger/more serious than I think and is one of the cases (which should presumably be rare if at all) that could justify moving away from the rules as written. In any case, interested to hear your view. Depends slightly which way the pasty is pointing, hodsopa . If the crest (?crust) is roughly parallel to the base edge troops can hide behind it. However, if it runs parallel to the side edges, one could get some improbable results, including Artillery being able to hit troops on flat ground (Good going) on the far side of the hill.
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 1, 2024 11:25:58 GMT
Looking forward to seeing the boards in real life!
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 27, 2024 11:34:59 GMT
I think we need to distinguish between where the rules as written need supplementing and where they might need changing.
There seem to be plenty of examples of things in the rules that need supplementing. Having no definition of “uphill” for close combat is clearly an example. Players have to decide how to interpret this and it is good that a common definition has been reached.
There are also, in my view, plenty of things in the rules that could advantageously be changed. To give one example among many, when two LH in column receive a “flee” result, both should flee rather than the front one being destroyed. But I think that the advantages of playing the rules as written, of having a single reference point that everyone can turn to, outweigh the advantages of changing them on particular points.
Concerning the way in which gentle hills affect shooting and command distance, I think the rules are clear. Hills are required to have “a centre line crest”. You can’t shoot, and command distance is reduced, if the element you are measuring to is “entirely beyond” a crest.
Up to now, I have found it helpful to think of hills in DBA as being shaped like cornish pasties. The crest line runs all the way from one end to the other, rising to a bulge in the middle and then falling. This has seemed to me a natural interpretation of “a centre line crest”. With hills shaped like this, the shooting rule as written certainly produces an anomaly. An element at one end of the hill can shoot, over the bulge, at an element at the other end, provided that both are on the same side of the crest line. But I think this is quite a rare case, and not worth changing the rules for.
Maybe I’m reading the rules wrong, and they are not as clear as I think. Maybe they’re clear but the anomaly, for example in the case of conical hills, is bigger/more serious than I think and is one of the cases (which should presumably be rare if at all) that could justify moving away from the rules as written. In any case, interested to hear your view.
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 25, 2024 22:35:42 GMT
Dear all, as the issue of hill rules came up in my game with Diades yesterday, I've just had a read in Fanaticus of the Great Uphill Debate that followed the Bakewell Winter Warmer in February 2020.
Not having run into this discussion before, can I – at the unintended risk of reopening settled issues - tentatively summarise as follows?:
(1) Elements in close combat get an advantage if they are uphill, but the rules do not define what "uphill" means. This has made it necessary for players of the game to agree on a definition.
(2) The definition which seems to have concluded the Great Uphill Debate, at least for tournaments in England, is the one given by Simon in a pre-Bakewell post on 21.11.22: "An element will count as uphill if any part of its front edge is on the hill and if a straight line drawn from the central point (conical hill) or the nearest point of the ridge line (ridged hill) to the centre of the combat passes through that element first."
(3) Some think it is better for hills to (a) rise to a single point and (b) take the form of a cone when they do this. (a) is compatible with the requirement in the rules for hills to rise to a "centre line crest”, because a point is just a special kind of line. But this is not a necessary part of defining “uphill” – the definition in Simon’s post applies to both types of hill.
(4) The Great Debate only dealt with how hills affect close combat. It did not deal with how they affect shooting or command. That makes sense because, unlike for close combat, the rules on shooting and command are already complete and clear. Hill crests can block shooting and line of sight, and the rules explain under what conditions this happens. There is therefore no need to supplement or alter them.
(5) It is worth pointing out, however, that under the rules a (non-difficult) hill will only be able to block shooting or line of sight if it rises to a full crest line and not a single point.
Am I missing something?
Paul H
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 24, 2024 20:29:16 GMT
The formula was to play three times with the army you brought, three times against it. I brought the later Ghaznavids (III/64b). It was interesting to see, for example, how some people would use the army's elephant assertively while I would skulk with it. In total my army won two games, drew three and lost one – a worse record, then, than the Nabataeans.
In my first game my Ghaznavids attacked Steve Etheridge’s Melanesians – who had ten auxiliaries and two psiloi, good grounds for my elephant to skulk. It took a while for my cavalry to get in amongst his littoral landers. Eventually that battle on my left was a 2-2 draw. On my right, my two LH made a rash attack in column on his two psiloi. It failed; they hard flanked me; I had the luck to survive that and then to ride them down for a 4-2 win. Could easily have gone the other way.
The second was a winning draw, close-fought, (3-2) in which I defended with Tony Green’s Sassanids against my Ghaznavids. Our elephants fought each other and mine won. If we’d had five more minutes we’d have had a winner, I don't know who. Both in this battle and the previous one, the Ghaznavid’s opponents’ camps incorporated pigs.
In my third game I attacked Chris Kemp’s early Polish army with my Ghazavnids. Both these armies have 4 cavalry and 4 bows. While the Ghaznavids then have an elephant, a fast blade and two light horse, though, the Poles have four Sp. Defending, they put woods down in each corner of the battlefield; this meant we were both cramped; he was crampeder. His Sp didn’t get into the battle and I scraped a 4-3 win.
In the fourth I attacked my Ghaznavids with Tim Rogers’ Bosphorans. Despite the Bosphoran knights’ foolish valour, I held on for a 3-3 draw. This time the bell may have saved me.
In the fifth I fought against Martin Myers’ Massagetae. LH and gentle hills all over the place. I don't understand the rules on how gentle hills affect shooting. This lack of understanding (which persists) slowed us up; the battle ended in a 2-3 losing draw.
Finally I deployed Martin Smith’s renowned Nabataeans (6 Bw, a couple of useful fast auxiliaries and other stuff including a camel which, it seems, hardly saw combat the whole day long) against my Ghaznavids. The Ghaznavids’ elephant advanced and had the bad luck to die at the hands of an auxiliary; their fast blade advanced and advanced and advanced and had the bad luck not to kill the Bw it faced; the Nabataens' Bw and Ax did well and eventually won the battle 4 (+general)-1.
The scoring system was 5 for a win; 3/2/1 for a draw depending on whether it is winning, equal or losing; 0 for a loss. Timing was an abrupt call for “no more PIP dice” which is the method I prefer though today a couple of times it frustrated me.
Thanks a milion to the organisers - and as always to our fellow fighters, it was a good day.
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 7, 2024 7:57:19 GMT
Last time I went to Cold Ash I stayed in a hotel in Newbury and got a taxi to Cold Ash on the Saturday morning. Will probably do the same this time, and we could share - Paul
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