De Bellis Societatis Antiquorum

An update. I realised the justification wasn't correct, and while I was at it, I corrected the quotemarks by replacing 'typographer's quotes' with 'straight quotes'.

A fascinating document and it is remarkable how this ruleset has evolved from this basic iteration. I find it interesting how many of the central tenets have been retained and how, for instance, combat values have ebbed and flowed over the editions. Wb a +3 against everything... 😁

The fact that rivers were ‘defined’ as not being good or bad going tickled me, after all the debates that have raged on this topic 😉🤣

P

I always took these to be a one-off ruleset for a specific event which were well-received and later grew, but thinking about it, and reading the paragraph at the botton of the first page, it's pretty clear that development of DBA was well underway. Far more likely that this was a stripped back version to simplify things as no-one had ever played it before, and it was to test the basic mechanisms in an actual tournament.
No doubt feedback from this event influenced the actual release just months later, but I think it's safe to say this DBSA version also served as an advert, or free sample to let everyone know what DBA was like.

I ran a few wargaming sessions at my son's primary school a couple of years ago using DBA 3. In hindsight, I think I would have preferred to run it using this set as a bare-bones starter,with enough of the game there, but without all the special clauses and detail from the full game.