DBx/HOTT/WRG/Warrior/Phew!

[skars]

Starting a separate thread to discuss the various Wargames Research Group games and successors.

Such as:
Wargames Research Group Ancients 6/7
De bellis antiquitatus
De bellis multininudas
De bellis magistarum militias (hah spelling?)
Hordes of the things
Warrior (wrg successor)
Dbr - renaissance

[flightcommander]

I'm keen on trying DBA because it seems relatively straightforward, covers a huge historical period, is unit-based as opposed to figure-based, and seems pretty flexible: yes you can play the 12x12 tournament game but you aren't required to.

I'm also interested in ECW, does DBR cover that?

[chicagowiz]

Jan 21, 2020 20:14:11 GMT -6 flightcommander said:

I'm keen on trying DBA because it seems relatively straightforward, covers a huge historical period, is unit-based as opposed to figure-based, and seems pretty flexible: yes you can play the 12x12 tournament game but you aren't required to.

I'm also interested in ECW, does DBR cover that?

I found this about DBR, it sounds like a mixed bag, heading to absolute trash, for ECW w/DBR. theminiaturespage.com/rules/ren/dbr.html

[skars]

Jan 27, 2020 7:34:02 GMT -6 chicagowiz said:

Jan 21, 2020 20:14:11 GMT -6 flightcommander said:

I'm keen on trying DBA because it seems relatively straightforward, covers a huge historical period, is unit-based as opposed to figure-based, and seems pretty flexible: yes you can play the 12x12 tournament game but you aren't required to.

I'm also interested in ECW, does DBR cover that?

I found this about DBR, it sounds like a mixed bag, heading to absolute trash, for ECW w/DBR. theminiaturespage.com/rules/ren/dbr.html

I dunno, Bob Beatie gave it the seal of approval in that thread and he was a long time us pike & shot gamer so your mileage may vary. TMP can be hit or miss. The nice thing about Barker rulesets are they are generally fast play without written orders

[Starbeard]

I suppose some links are in order, for the sake of those peeking in:

WRG's front page

Current list of rules/army list offerings

Phil Barker's (here and here) and Sue Laflin-Barker's personal pages of their own games, books and writings.

History of WRG
This page is great, as it has downloads for every edition of WGR Ancients (1st through 7th), DBM 3.2, and the first editions of DBA, WGR "Napoleonics" (1750-1850) and WGR Infantry Action (1925-1975).

[Starbeard]

At this point I've played all editions of DBA, and have enjoyed each of them very much. Personally, I don't think any one of them is so superior to the others that anyone who's already familiar and happy with one will gain very much by switching to another. The main reason to switch to 3rd is for tournaments and to be on the same page with new players—that being said, I do think 3rd is overall the easiest to learn, but not 100% and not across the board.

I still need to try out DBM and DBMM. I've played one game of WGR 7 and enjoyed it, but I would really like to find some likeminded players to dive into a WGR "March through History," where we try out all of the editions in order to get a real feel for its development.

Warrior was actually my first game in the WRG family (here's the game's About page explaining the connection), and I believe it was my first ever "real" historical wargame, alongside Killer Katanas which I picked up the same day. Both were specifically because they were marked off cheap. I didn't have the money for minis, so instead I cut out units out of pieces of cardboard and sprayed/painted them on each side to represent different types of elements. I also didn't have anyone to play with, so I just spent a lot of time conducting solo battles.

[skars]

Jan 27, 2020 19:10:50 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

At this point I've played all editions of DBA, and have enjoyed each of them very much. Personally, I don't think any one of them is so superior to the others that anyone who's already familiar and happy with one will gain very much by switching to another. The main reason to switch to 3rd is for tournaments and to be on the same page with new players—that being said, I do think 3rd is overall the easiest to learn, but not 100% and not across the board.

I still need to try out DBM and DBMM. I've played one game of WGR 7 and enjoyed it, but I would really like to find some likeminded players to dive into a WGR "March through History," where we try out all of the editions in order to get a real feel for its development.

Warrior was actually my first game in the WRG family (here's the game's About page explaining the connection), and I believe it was my first ever "real" historical wargame, alongside Killer Katanas which I picked up the same day. Both were specifically because they were marked off cheap. I didn't have the money for minis, so instead I cut out units out of pieces of cardboard and sprayed/painted them on each side to represent different types of elements. I also didn't have anyone to play with, so I just spent a lot of time conducting solo battles.

Very cool! DBAol (DBA online) was where I was able to get the most games in but have played the wrg line of rulesets for as long as I have been in the hobby (mid 80s). The only other ancients ruleset that I recall or own that was a competitor during wrg6(my favorite of that series btw) and it was called Newbury Rules - Ancients.

Since then, I have gotten judges guild war cry and others specific to later periods like tancio. Honestly, it would be a ton of fun to do say a biblical campaign using all the various rulesets over the years like you described

[chicagowiz]

Jan 28, 2020 20:32:07 GMT -6 skars said:

Very cool! DBAol (DBA online) was where I was able to get the most games in but have played the wrg line of rulesets for as long as I have been in the hobby (mid 80s). The only other ancients ruleset that I recall or own that was a competitor during wrg6(my favorite of that series btw) and it was called Newbury Rules - Ancients.

Since then, I have gotten judges guild war cry and others specific to later periods like tancio. Honestly, it would be a ton of fun to do say a biblical campaign using all the various rulesets over the years like you described

I forgot about DBAol! It looks like that it's not up anymore, that's too bad!

I've never been able to find anyone locally who 1) plays DBA and 2) would be interested in Ancient Biblical from Book 1. I've two armies I1a and I1b - and no opponents!

[Starbeard]

If only Hollywood had produced a Gilgamesh blockbuster during that revival of historical epics in the 90s-00s, then maybe there would be more wargamers into the period.

[chicagowiz]

I've been doing a "HOTT 52" project - playing a game of HOTT a week - and posting recaps of the battles. All the posts so far can be found here: chgowiz-games.blogspot.com/search/label/HOTT52

I've been relearning the rules and some of finer points! I play mostly solo, so I'm sure I'm still making a few mistakes. I've got a terrain generation system (mostly) and army generation system. My armies are set up for my D&D campaign world of Etinerra, so right now it is a lot of Humans v Orcs.

This project has me reinvigorated to do 15mm, so Alternative Armies just got a big order from me - going to beef up my Chaos Men and create Land Elf and Sea Elf armies! Plus finally have heroes for the humans.

[skars]

Sounds awesome, chicagowiz, I just placed an order from amazon.uk to pickup hott 2.1 and a couple dbmm army books. I am thinking about getting a couple of my forces up to big battle DBA/ dbmm and looking at my Bedouins and their biblical opponents first. I have a lovely new tablewar 6x3 mat that will be perfect

[Starbeard]

I never had the chance to try it out as anything other than solo playtests with printed paper units, but I once put together campaign rules for HOTT that were intended to allow everyone to play through the whole campaign in a single day, at the same table. The inspiration came from a post I read that's long lost to memory now—I can't remember if it was on someone's blog or a post on TMP, and I can't remember if it was HOTT or DBA, Arthurian Britain or Norman Invasion (but I want to say it was British of some stripe); all I can remember is that it was played on a big circular table, with all sides continuously spawning elements from their strongholds and vying for control of the table in one big fluid game.

The basic premise is that players roll for two types of pips: the usual 1d6 Command AP, and 1d6 Administration AP. You spend Admin pips just like you would your Command AP, but they are used recruit elements and generals, construct special BUAs (which might have an ability and/or unlock an element type for you to recruit), and activate commands (groups of up elements, totalling up to 24AP, under the command of a single general). When a command is activated for the turn, your roll your 1d6 Command pips as usual.

If the whole command is outside 12" from any enemies, then movement rate is doubled, but you must stop as soon as you reach 12".

I took the old Warcraft 1 & 2 strategy games as a theme, so the races were human, dwarf, elf, gnome, orc, troll, ogre, and goblin. Each had a separate army list, and a separate building list. For example, the humans could construct Villages, which did nothing but increase the maximum Army Points you could have on the table at once (by +12, I think). Trolls could build Troll Camps: cheaper and weaker, and increasing your army by only +6 AP, but they could be activated to move, and they increase command radius like wifi hotspots.

Unfortunately I've completely lost the notebook where I wrote everything up, so I'd have to do it all over again from scratch if I wanted to try again.

[chicagowiz]

That all sounds fantastic! In the past, I've used Berthier (a computer campaign management tool) to manage my D&D world's wargames, and then when contacts are made, I would play them out using HOTT or the Neil Thomas One Hour Wargame rules.

Another thing I'm considering when I get the rules down, I'm going to go to my Charles Grant and Neil Thomas books that have scenarios in them and start playing out those scenarios using HOTT rules.

[Starbeard]

Berthier looks really fun, but I haven't tried it out yet. I do like the idea of playing out the Grant & Thomas scenarios in HOTT, I'd be interested to see how they go.

As an aside, I just pulled Grant's The War Game off my shelf again, it's something I've reread every few of years for a while now. I love the way it takes you through the whole idea behind the wargamer's frame of mind, by integrating history, scenario building, rules theory, and anecdotes at every step.

[rsdean]

Almost all the HOTT games I’ve played over the years have been straight up fights. Last year, I did do one scenario game to see if anything odd happened:

sharpbrush.blogspot.com/2019/05/battle-of-crossroads.html

It was fine, but I haven’t gotten back around to doing another yet.

[chicagowiz]

I've been playing with four empty Wb stands for my human army for a few months now, but no more!

[sirjaguar]

I play HOTT and DBA and love both of them. They are among my favorite table-top rules. We've also played "DBMM 100" which is a DBA-like version of DBMM with smaller armies (because we don't own enough minis to have a full-size DBMM army). DBMM-100 is like DBA with volume turned up to 11 -- more grit, more unit types, but in the big picture the same game. I've played both DBR and the DBA-hack that is a fan-version of renaissance combat (can't remember the name right now, sorry, but it is available on the web for free) -- the fan version is slightly more intuitive, and probably easier to find (I'm not sure DBR is in print), but both play well. HOTT is super versatile but still tailored for "old fashioned" armies with short range weapons. So I created a HOTT/DBA set of SF/modern combat rules for power armor, giant robots, gunships, air strikes, commandos, ECCM, kaiju and "jihadists" (we are still play testing these. I think they are great, but I'm biased.)

I live in Dallas in case anyone is nearby and wants to play DBA/HOTT (or DBMM-100 . . . or even DBR).

The best thing about these rules is the flexibility of building armies. You don't have to spend a lot of money to get an army. In fact, lots of our armies are cardstock "flats" from Junior General (so free other ink, cardstock and time to customize (if you wish), print, cutout and base). A 15mm metal army is about 40 bucks plus the time it takes to paint and base (about 4-6 hours, total), and they look AWESOME when complete.  Second best thing is the play area is 2' X 2' (option for 30" x 30" in DBA) for 15mm scale.  You can play on a card table with room to spare.

Lawson

[skars]

Feb 9, 2020 21:12:07 GMT -6 sirjaguar said:

I play HOTT and DBA and love both of them. They are among my favorite table-top rules. We've also played "DBMM 100" which is a DBA-like version of DBMM with smaller armies (because we don't own enough minis to have a full-size DBMM army). DBMM-100 is like DBA with volume turned up to 11 -- more grit, more unit types, but in the big picture the same game. I've played both DBR and the DBA-hack that is a fan-version of renaissance combat (can't remember the name right now, sorry, but it is available on the web for free) -- the fan version is slightly more intuitive, and probably easier to find (I'm not sure DBR is in print), but both play well. HOTT is super versatile but still tailored for "old fashioned" armies with short range weapons. So I created a HOTT/DBA set of SF/modern combat rules for power armor, giant robots, gunships, air strikes, commandos, ECCM, kaiju and "jihadists" (we are still play testing these. I think they are great, but I'm biased.)

I live in Dallas in case anyone is nearby and wants to play DBA/HOTT (or DBMM-100 . . . or even DBR).

The best thing about these rules is the flexibility of building armies. You don't have to spend a lot of money to get an army. In fact, lots of our armies are cardstock "flats" from Junior General (so free other ink, cardstock and time to customize (if you wish), print, cutout and base). A 15mm metal army is about 40 bucks plus the time it takes to paint and base (about 4-6 hours, total), and they look AWESOME when complete.  Second best thing is the play area is 2' X 2' (option for 30" x 30" in DBA) for 15mm scale.  You can play on a card table with room to spare.

Lawson

Very cool, thanks for the reminder of dbmm-100! I'd enjoy a peak at your dbff (far future?) So much that I'd like to try using my.okd epic scale armies with the hack. As for renaissance, some of the us pike and shot guys had great results with a warmaster riff (another favorite of mine and probably why I never really dig into HOTT in the past)