DBA on a grid

Thanks Stevie.  I have been playing around with Bob Cordery's Portable Wargames ancients from his Developing the Portable Wargame book.  I am interested to see if it is possible to load the DBA system onto a grid.  I agree that a 40mm square is better.  I am having a think about how wheeling might work if you limited facing to just the sides without any 45 degree facings.

Simon

Thanks for that link Simon...an excellent find. 

However, there is one thing that both John of JohnsWargames and myself have omitted...
...having a single one of your elements using their Threat Zone to pin two enemy elements.
(Important when trying to defend a wing with inferior forces, or to prevent being hard-flanked)

This could be done by using what I call ‘overhang’, where an element in a grid square is allowed
to have a tiny part of itself ‘overhanging’ into an adjacent empty square to its side as a visual aid
indicating that it is pinning two enemy elements with its TZ, like this:-

The * shows 'Z' overhanging into the adjacent square

Here element ‘Z’ is pinning Cavalry ‘A’ and ‘B’, as well as preventing ‘A’ from hard-flanking as
it is not beyond the line of ‘Z’s’ flank edge...but Cavalry element ‘C’ is.
Of course, once in close combat, elements have to align corner-to-corner, and any ‘overhang’
will disappear.

And getting rid of any 45° orientation would look better and be simpler, but I need to do some
calculations in order to get roughly the same effect as the measuring system (perhaps, unlike
DBA, allow the end element of a wheeling line to use its full movement and not be restricted
to moving at the speed of the slowest, so that the right kind of 3 element line can wheel 90°).

Although troops with a movement of only 1 BW should not be allowed to go from an overlap
to a hard flanking position in a single bound...but that can be simulated by saying they must
start in mutual side-edge contact as they spend their one-and-only 1 BW move to turn 90°.

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I am really glad you brought this subject up, as I have fat fingers and hands like a bunch of
bananas, and I too detest ‘micro-measuring’. So this grid concept is well worth looking into.

(And, as I’ve said before, they say that people with big hands have a big...er...heart! )

Hmmm...I don’t think so Snowcat.
　　You have to pre-measure Command Range (or how many PIPs can you spend?).
　　You have to pre-measure Shooting Ranges (or that target may not be eligible).
　　You have to pre-measure Threat Zones (or you may be moving where you shouldn’t).
...hell, you might as well pre-measure everything.

It’s not as if it gives people an advantage, as both players will be doing it.

... although in practice I'd say that most distances are fairly obvious by eye and pre-measurement isn't always necessary.

Simon

How about using a grid of hexagons? Then you would get your 45° turns.

I think there's a basic incompatibility between DBA's combat system, which is focused on elements directly in front of other elements, and what's more practical in grid-based systems, which is to walk away from squares and embrace hexagons.

Any square-based game will find serious problems trying to reflect manoeuvres, as stevie points out for 45 degree turns. The square grid severely distorts movement on the plane, and correcting it in a manner that still reflects "grid-less" movements is far from trivial or convenient in the middle of a game (it essentially boils down to the difference between Manhattan and Euclidean distance metrics, complicated by restricting valid positions to a finite set in a grid). Honestly, I think it'd be probably easier to restrict positions to parallel and perpendicular to the board edges and limit other movements to a reduced list.

Something like this: