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Post by felixs on Jan 28, 2020 21:36:33 GMT
Thank you for the offer - I will probably have another look at D3H2 and comment on it in some detail. I do like the idea of it very much. And I understand that it is a lot of work (which I have been too lazy to do myself). So take my criticism with some salt, please.
I don't think "solid" spear represents Hobbits well at all as they were very good in mixed terrain. I
Not quite sure on what accounts we have about Hobbit Spears. In my imagination, they are OK as Solid Sp. Solid Ax would be another option. Fast Pk might be worth a thought.
Hobbits are probably not a very good point of reference anyway, since they are notoriously hard to get "right" (whatever that is) in almost any set of rules that I know of.
I do like how my Elves work - even though they do not have Sp at all - and the possibility to actually play games with them motivated me to finish that army, including decent basing. I also re-did huge parts of my Undead, which look much better now. Orcs might be next in line. Not yet sure what flavour of Orcs I want, but I think I tend towards a Wb-ish interpretation of Orcs. Solid Wb might actually work quite well for Orcs.
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Post by felixs on Jan 23, 2020 7:32:32 GMT
As to Hobbits, you need to get a bit out of the box if you don't want just a generic version where Hobbit Spears are the same as High Elf, Spartans, Swiss Pike etc. versions. The point about using DBA 3 for fantasy is to just accept that troop types are a bit generic and that the rules do have some limitations. I have found that there are no rules out there that work exactly as I would like them to. And I do now much prefer a solid and proven set of rules that works for most of the things I want to depict. I can live with some limitations, which is mostly due to my preference for more "muted" fantasy gaming. That has not always been so and I would have insisted that fantasy rules should be able to depict more detail. But for the moment, I am just happy to play a set of rules that work for me as they are.
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Post by felixs on Jan 23, 2020 7:27:36 GMT
Yes I'm interested in any unfinished wholes you have found in D3H2 - I've gotten lots of feedback on it and all positive with not one finding anything but minor typos. You complaint about Knights & Knaves was that it used programmed learning using learn as you go games based on historical battles. I've found that new users like to stop and play a game as they grind through a rule book. More experienced players can just skip the programmed learning (though they will miss some great battles if they do). Experience players are likely to mostly use the alphabetical glossary with has all the important rules in easy to look up alphabetical order - which I find works better than parsing through a rule book. Thomas J. Thomas Fame & Glory Games
I have found more problems with those rules than just that. But I do not wish to discuss that in this thread.
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Post by felixs on Jan 21, 2020 9:37:09 GMT
Targaryens were a House in Game of Thrones - groomers and owners of dragons.
Ah, OK. So they would need one or more ways to depict dragons, I assume.
Not quite sure on how to do that. For light flyers, I find Light Horse to work OK. For heavy flyers, there is no good solution.
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Post by felixs on Jan 18, 2020 23:22:33 GMT
So how would you handle flyers and dragons in DBA v3 fantasy? I am thinking Targaryens here, as well as Eagles.
Not easy. DBA 3 clearly has some limitations as a set of rules for fantasy battles.
Eagles could be depicted as Light Horse, I find that unproblematic.
Dragons are hard. I have no idea on how to depict flying, powerful dragons in DBA 3. Flightless dragons could be 6Kn or El.
I do not know what "Targaryens" are. |
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Post by felixs on Jan 17, 2020 21:46:07 GMT
And another list, which is pseudo-historical in part:
Old Choseon Korean (Hilly, Ag. 2)
Kn Gen (general on Chinese style chariot), 2x Kn (charioteers), 4x 3Pk (loose order pikemen), 3x 3Bw (loose order bowmen), 1x Ps (skirmishing bowmen), 1x El (Tan'gun in his form as a giant bear or tiger).
There is very little evidence of what actual Old Choseon warfare might have looked like and the dimension and significance of that state or polity (if it did ever exist at all) is vastly exaggerated by Korean historians. However, the foundation myth is fun, the few bits and pieces found in the (very late, thus mythical) records are interesting as well - justifying a tentative view of Old Choseon as a medium power in early North East Asia. And I find the army to be a good way to use the rather odd and completely ahistorical, but beautifully sculpted, miniatures that Magister Militum sells as "Han Chinese". So the army really is inspired by myth, sketchy records from unreliable Chinese and Korean sources and by a small bunch of otherwise useless miniatures that I had at hand.
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Post by felixs on Jan 16, 2020 7:44:05 GMT
BUT under DBA the Mongols are pants! Why waste a month painting an army I’ll never use in competition? I also have a Skythian army which is beautiful and a complete favourite but equally bad on the table. So why add another?
For those that are not interested in competitions, the answer might be easy: Because they are fun to paint, fun to play and provide an interesting challenge.
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Post by felixs on Jan 16, 2020 7:40:33 GMT
For 3H2 I might re-read the rules and compile a list of problems - if you are actually interested.
For K&K (Olde Worlde), re-check your private messages - we discussed that some time ago.
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Post by felixs on Jan 15, 2020 18:44:50 GMT
Another list that works very well for me: Halflings (or Hobbits) (Arable, Ag: 0) Sp (Gen), 5x Sp (halflings with spears), 4x 3Bw (halflings with bows, 2x Ps (halfling scouts, rangers and dogs). Feels about right to me. Arguably, 4Ax might work even better than Sp for this army. Might be worth a try. The good thing about using the DBA 3 rules here is that by giving the army a low aggression (which fits very well thematically), chances are very good that they will be the defender and that they can choose terrain that will help them against armies with a lot of mounted troops. At least it helped against Mongols  |
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Post by felixs on Jan 14, 2020 21:50:55 GMT
Felixs: I'm interested in why D3H2 did not work for you. It has all the DBA 3.0 elements (so we do differentiate between Pike & Spear) plus the HOTT elements. So you can get Heroes, "Shooters" (Bow that is +3 v. Foot), Dragons, Flyers etc. but all using DBA 3.0 rules. I've also done a more general game using DBX mechanics (though completely redone) that does incorporate all the Warhammer type elements (including Banners & Musicians, elder races etc.) - A Game of Knights & Knaves with the Olde World Expansion. You can use just DBA 3.0 elements (or just traditional HOTT elements if you want) but it seems better for the purposes of fantasy to have access to all the types so I'm curious why you rejected D3H2. Thomas J. Thomas Fame & Glory Games
We did discuss both sets of rules, as you might remember. To put it short - both sets of rules are (to me) not usable as they are. D3H2 is unfinished and causes more problems than it solves. A Game of Knights and Knaves suffers - IMHO - from bad presentation and convoluted modularity.
These are personal opinions. We had a short discussion, if I remember correctly, which led to nothing. I am still watching how both rules develop, but at the current stage I am not interested.
DBA 3 is a well-presented, usable set of rules that is more or less finished and works well enough. That is why I do currently prefer to use that set of rules.
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Post by felixs on Jan 14, 2020 17:18:51 GMT
Yes, the changes from HotT 1 to HotT 2 were pretty minor. But then, the changes from DBA 1 to DBA 2 were not that drastic, IMHO.
Interesting point about Strongholds - I did not know that.
This site is not the place for me to discuss the rules that I am writing, otherwise I would say more.
Please do say more. In a private message, if you like. I am very happy with DBA 3 for fantasy battles so far, but the quest for the holy grail of fantasy rules is not yet over.
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Post by felixs on Jan 13, 2020 16:30:09 GMT
Good comments everyone, thanks!
Interestingly, my taste in fantasy wargaming has very much been nurtured by the aesthetics (not so much the actual game) of Warhammer. HotT, however, does not really portray Heroes, Magicians, Paladins and Clerics on an appropriate scale. Neither do I like the whole Stronghold concept - feels a bit like the DBA city rules in being out of synch with the scope of the rest of the rules. But that is a matter of taste.
What really works great for fantasy armies are the nuances of troop types. The "Fast" - "Solid" differentiation and the introduction of double based elements helps a lot with portraying all kind of fantasy troop types. 3Lb are a much better depiction of elven archers than Bw in HotT. 4Bd for dwarves works perfect if orc elites are 3Bd or 3Pk. 6Kn should be perfect for non-flying dragons, non-replacing hordes of DBA 3 are very good for undead and should work equally well for goblins and the like.
My handful of games with fantasy DBA 3 were - so far - the best fantasy wargaming I had in 10 years or so. Only thing that more or less matches the fun of that experience for me is a set of house rules for a fantasy version of Impetus - but that game requires quadruple the tablespace that DBA does and takes three to four times as long. I would (normally) rather play three shorter games in that time and still have time for some friendly chit-chat.
Felixs,
There is a variant of HOTT done by Tom Thomas which uses the current DBA rule set. Titled D3H2, this has all the refinements of DBA3 messed with the key HOTT features. You can request a copy from medievalthomas, here at the forum.
I am aware of those variants. They do not work for me, but I am glad if they work well for others.
By the way, I believe that you will find that Hordes of the Things is not based on version 2 of DBA. It owes its origins to version 1,obviously with a huge amount of adaption, including merging many conventional troop types. I am aware that the first edition of HotT came out after DBA 1. But I believe that HotT 2 is an update that incorporates changes in DBA 2 - wrong?
The merging, IMHO, was not a good idea. The argument that authors and film-makers do not differentiate between, say, Spears and Pikes, might be sound. But in wargaming, it would be nice to have the option to portray this as a difference. More is more, to some degree.
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Post by felixs on Jan 12, 2020 22:02:34 GMT
Not sure where this belongs, so I went the safe way and put it under "rants and raves", even though it really is neither. It rather is a very brief playtest report.
Since a few years I am in search of an acceptable set of rules for gaming fantasy battles. HotT would have been my rules of choice. But DBA 3 is (in my view) much superior to DBA 2 and HotT (which is based on DBA 2). I never really liked the way that HotT handles Magicians and Heroes anyway; the "enscorceled" meta-game and the possibility of re-appearing mages and heroes never really appealed to me. Neither did HotT's take on Dragons and Gods. And Lurkers in HotT always were a bit of a pain. And I do not want to even get started on Sneakers.
But I really like Auxilia in DBA 3 and I think that Scythed Chariots (Expendables) and the different types of Warbands, Blades, Knights etc. have a lot of potential for portraying fantasy armies.
So I realized that - for me - the only thing that DBA 3 lacks in comparison to HotT are aerial units. And then I thought further and realized that Airboats are pretty rare and that Flyers could be portrayed by Light Horse in a pinch for most cases.
So no reason not to use DBA 3 as written (but with fantasy army lists) for fantasy!
It works brilliant. And this is best exemplified by an example (Hah!).
Today's game was Undead vs. Elves.
Elves (Forest, Ag: 1) were: 3Kn (Gen), 2x 3Kn, 2x 3Cv, 1 El (giant treeman), 2x 6Bd (elves with mattocks), 3x 3 Bw, 1x LH (pegasi).
Undead (Hilly, Ag: 3) were: LH (Gen, wraith and ghost dogs), 3x Cv, 6x 7Hd (skeleton hordes), 2x 3Wb (Ghouls).
Elves were defending in both games and placed a few patches of woods in both games. Looked about right. The elvish 6Bd were quite vulnerable, but the elvish treeman wroke havoc on anything in its path. The skeleton hordes fell as they should, but occasional steadfastness was a nice touch and lend a sense of uncertainty to the whole affair.
The first game was won by the undead, mostly due to extremely lucky dice, helped by the elves struggling with their rather narrow deployment zone. One 6Bd, one 3Bw and the LH died quickly, the only casualties on the undead side were two Hd. The second game was equally fast and furious, but dice luck was not as extreme. This time, the undead player (me...) made a mistake and the general was flanked and killed. Still managed to kill one 6Bd and one 3Bw, but the game ended in defeat for the undead, who lost their General, one Wb, lots of Hd, and finally a Cv.
We discussed that the 3Bw should really be 3Lb and that the undead general should be 3Cv instead. Otherwise we were very happy with the game. The pegasi as LH felt absolutely fine. Monsters and giants as El work perfect.
I will try other army lists and I feel pretty confident that even rather wild combinations should be both playable and fun. Since balance is not an issue in DBA (there just is none and no-one pretends that there is), a rule-of-thumbish approach is fine. Since battles are short, there is always time for another game or for switching the armies to see what the other side of the table feels like.
If you are interested in fantasy gaming at all, I can very much recommend adding a few fantasy elements to your historical armies, or building a fantasy army or two for DBA 3.
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Post by felixs on Nov 12, 2019 9:43:42 GMT
I do batch painting exclusively. Much quicker. And I do not believe that the difference shows at normal tabletop view distances.
Of course, if people pick up my minis to look at them closely, that is different. But that is not what I paint for.
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Post by felixs on Oct 14, 2019 16:40:15 GMT
That is my main reason to not use DBX rules for the renaissance period (actually that is more like the early modern period, but conventions are sticky once established). I find it grossly out of scale with DBA style rules, even DBR style rules, to have pike and shot on separate elements. I also dislike pike formations made out of two or three elements that can act independently. Looks and feels very wrong and out of the scale of what DBX rules portray.
So I am very interested in hearing about your experiments and whether you come up with something usable.
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