Historical battles just using 12 on 12

Peter Sides wrote a series of booklets with historic battles, and I believe they include both 12 vs 12 match-ups, as well as different element count lists based upon available historic information, intended for DBA and/or DBM.

A member of Fanaticus also published a series of historic battles, but I don't recall if it was 12 vs 12 or larger battles for DBA.

Try searching Fanaticus for "historic battles".

Folks?

This is a very interesting subject.

I myself am a great believer in the 12 element-a-side format, where each base represents 1/12th of an army, no matter its size.
After all, Alexander the Great with 47,000 men (4,000 per element) wasn’t afraid of 150,000+ Persians at Gaugamela (roughly 12,000 men per element...mostly poor quality troops), so why should we?

Many people try to re-create an historical battle from the bottom-up, and start with the numbers of men involved...if you can find such detail from ancient accounts, which vary widely. But DBA is unique in that it is an ‘Army Level’ set of rules, that starts from the top-down. Thus every army can be split into 12 parts, no matter how many men were actually present.
This greatly simplifies historical simulations, even if a bit abstract.

Here are some of the tips I have found when re-creating an historical battle:-

Pre-Programming: we know the outcome of an historical battle, and we know how the winning side achieved victory.
So I like to ‘pre-program’ a battle by setting the element choices and their positions so that the outcome and how that battle played-out is reproduced on our wargames table...even taking into account the effect of adverse die rolls where possible.

Natural Formations: I think it is very important that both armies be deployed in what I call ‘natural formations’, or on the very first bound a player will simply move their elements about. For example, trying to re-create Cannae with the Roman Blades two elements deep in columns (because the historical accounts say they were deeper than usual, and it allows Hannibal to overlap and envelop the Romans) won’t work. The Roman player will simply use their first bound to lengthen their line...unless you make special artificial rules preventing this. The natural formation for a Polybian army is to have 6 Blades in a line in the centre, the Cavalry on the wings, and the Triarii in reserve, with the velites either out in front skirmishing or also in reserve. That is their ‘natural’ formation...it is what players would do naturally.

Another case in point (and one that demonstrates why numbers and extra elements can actually distort a battle) is the battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pharsalus). Here Caesar was outnumbered by Pompey by 2:1, but the length of both battlelines was equal, because Pompey’s legionaries were twice as deep as normal. If you give the Pompey player twice as many elements, he’ll just outflank Caesar, and adopt a ‘natural formation’. So now you have to make special rules saying why Pompy can’t actually use his extra elements but must keep his Blades in columns.
Why give Pompey twice as many elements, but then tell him he can’t actually use them!
Ah, but using DBA’s clever 1/12th element system, it’s easy. Both sides have 12 elements, although Pompy’s represent more men.

Excessive Numbers: if the idea of having both sides with 12 elements, even though in reality one side outnumbered the other bothers you, then here is something you could do ---> have what I call ‘decorative double bases’. These are two normal elements on a temporary card base in a column, but they are purely decorative and the entire two-base column acts just like a single element...it just looks impressive.
So the Roman Blades at Cannae and Pompy’s legionaries at Pharsalus, and even the Persians at Gaugamela, could all be on ‘decorative double bases’, but still only really be 12 elements a side (but boy, do they look imposing!).
Here is an example of ‘decorative double bases’ in action: fanaticus.boards.net/post/10770/



Some Helpful Downloads can be found here: fanaticus-dba.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Reference_sheets_and_epitomes
And here is the latest Jan 2019 FAQ: fanaticus-dba.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ_2019_1st_Quarter

Thanks for all the replies.

From what I am gather from the above, it is more important that I focus on the terrain involved in the battle and the composition of each army, rather than the size of each.

My first crack at doing a historical battle will be the Battle of Til-Tuba (battle of the Ulai river), and if I am fortunate enough, next week I will go to the British Museum and get to see the actual wall reliefs of this battle!

To do historical battles with 12 elements aside I did the following. I would research numbers involved on each side. Then for the side with the highest troop numbers I would divide the number of troops by 12. this gave me a rough number of troops per element. I then divide the number of troops per element by the number of troops on the other side this gives me the number of elements the opposing side would have.

I have also worked out common troop types such as Blades, Warband, Cavalry etc where the information is available so you have a near as possible if abstracted historical force.

For many years I ran matched pairs historical battles at the big east coast conventions. I used the historical terrain, abstracted, with the standard 12 element DBA army. Many were based on those of Peter Sides. Most of his were not 12 elements, but the terrain was good. See below.  Some games had special situations such as an element changing sides, or late arrivals or not standard face to face deployment.   In the tournament, each player took a turn at each army in the 2 games, so played all four armies.  All in all these were very successful games.  I probably did 20 different battles over a 10 year period.  I do regret I neglected to document them for future use

www.scribd.com/document/333493415/Peter-Sides-Ancient-Historical-Battles-1479-B-C-378-A-D-Gosling-Press-OCR

Yes, I overlooked the SOA for quite a while but I have since bought a few very interesting publications from them. Oh, and I must say they are very prompt at dispatching merchandise which is nice. Have fun with your battles!