Beda Fomm - Board Game Play - Play Testing

You read the set of rules, they seem straightforward (but even ten pages can contain a lot - now don't get me talking on DBA's six pages of simple rules needing seventy two pages of fan based explanation spanning several years of collaborative argumentation - over the meaning of rules after well-meaning and competition gamers get their mucky little hands on them) but until .. you get the playing pieces out on the board and start moving them around .. you don't realise the limitations of the brain's short term memory in understanding stuff. All good fun when play testing with friends though (see below, Beda Fomm set-up after what we thought was an accurate turn one - but looking at the board, flicking back to the rules and then reading the small print we realised "how wrong we were"): 

In the above you see an overuse of the "Move - No AT Fire" marker - which looked messy and we thought that cannot be right. Reading the rules again we find this isn't needed for all troops as not all troop types have AT fire capability (makes kind of sense). So particularly with respect to infantry, AT and Artillery if they do have inherent AT capability and they move they get a marker (tick). Art, AT and Regular firings are split out into different phases so this is an  fiddly but important "aide memoire" for the game (and as I sit typing I could not tell you for sure if that also applies to armour - I don't think so as it represents set-up time for guns etc but I will have to check). 

Secondly stacking limits really make this a "puzzle game" (as per the comment in the video I watched), but the Italian has some crazy "battalion sized truck units" (that represent feeing Italian non-fighting admin units) that have "minimal combat value" (aka the mighty "1") and serve mainly to get in the way of Italian unit movement and be VPs for the British and Commonwealth player. As it is a battalion size it will block another battalion from moving through them on the road - but the Italian has the option of "parking by the road" (stacking value zero but an auto kill if in combat). On the game test we even read simple movement values wrong, as we saw one Italian unit had a movement value of eight which translated into thirty two road hexes (wow) .. but only as we were packing away did we discover other units had a value of six (twenty four road hexes) so the convoy would really have travelled at the speed of the slowest unit until "first contact" with the enemy. This meant that the above board is wrong and a turn one encounter is impossible which also explains why our first move looked so unhistorical (as historically British and Commonwealth infantry blocked the road while the armoured cars prowled the flank shooting up "parked" lorries - but as we were playing it, the infantry would not have time to get there). 

As a design comment I can so see Frank Chadwick's interest in morale (which came through hard and fast in the later Command Decision set[s] of rules), as each formation (not counter) has its own morale tracker. Some of the Italian (mostly infantry) start really low at 6 (and as morale checks are equal to or under this value on 2d6, they are already behind the curve). Lots of combat results ask for "morale checks", lose one and you can die or retreat - and losing a morale also check means your formation "morale tracker" goes down by one and as continual combats keep asking you to pass a "morale check" - life becomes very hard vey quickly, which makes a nice vicious circle. With all these vital statistics captured on the board with small counters on tracks, it is a game that you don't want to play around cats or small inquisitive children! Nevertheless I am looking forward to the next game test when we move onto a bit of combat. I am interested to see how the game plays for the first five turns as the game quickly board fills up with Italians facing Combeforce (the RTR start arriving for the British and Commonwealth forces at the start of turn six). 

Note: The goals here are to (a) play the game in full 'correctly' and (b) spot battalion+ sized vignettes on the table top in Command Decision.

 

The Battle of Platea 479BC : Playtest Beta BBDBA - Notes to Self II

Seen from the Persian side of the table, the Greek line of Battle (see above), Spartans to the left and Athenians to the right with a collection of "other" Greeks back in their Camp area. Note the disconnected front line, with a large "whole" in the middle of it (the "other" Greeks had historically retreated 'too far' in a night march) which would be so, so tempting to Persian mounted troops.

The Greeks OoB: 

• Sparta: 1 x 4Sp (General), 10 x 4Sp, 1 x 7Hd (Helots)
• Athens: 1 x 4Sp (General), 9 x 4Sp, 1 x 4Bw, 1 x 2Ps
• Other Greeks: 1 x 4Sp (General), 9 x 4Sp, 2 x 2Ps

It doesn't take long before the Beotians (Thebes) heedless of the defensive terrain advantages (+1) got stuck into the uphill Athenians (see below):

Meanwhile the heavy force of Persian archers (SparaBara and Immortals) edged their way into missile range (see below) of the Spartans. The only tactical adjustment made by the Spartans was to try and seal off a portion of the gap between themselves and the Athenians, trying to buy time for the "other" Greeks to catch up.    

In the contest between Athens and Thebes the phalanxes pushed and shoved to not much discernible effect (see below - middle), traditional Greek stuff you could say. Creeping in from the bottom left unobtrusively is a Persian Auxilia element "full of evil intent" [sent by Mardonius himself, aka ME] (see below - bottom left):

"Gotcha" the classic DBA "closing the door" move hopes to see the end of those pesky Athenian archers (see below): 

Now you see him and now you don't (see below), the Athens will shortly be recruiting for more archers, no experience necessary (Score: Thebes 1 and Athens 0): 

The Athenian General on the hill is now starting to worry about a double envelopment as he has two rather open flanks. The Boetians have a Psilio overlap advantage to the left and a  fast moving Theban cavalry element threatens the right. Will Sparta stand idle as the Thebans try to roll up both ends of the Athenian line (see below)? : 

Reluctantly Sparta is forced into action off their nice safe defensive hill and into a maelstrom of Persian arrows as they "darken the sun" (see below):

Sadly (speaking as I was the Persian General [Mardonius] on the day) they had no effect on the bronzed phalanx of Sparta. Not surprisingly I was beginning to have a very bad feeling about all of this. Only the cavalry of my reserve force could be seen of the battlefield (see above bottom right), my infantry support was still far, far away and the terrible Spartans so, so near

:(

The Battle of Platea 479BC : Playtest Beta BBDBA - Notes to Self - Persians

Background as to why I am interested to game "The Battle of Platea 479BC"

Having slowly accrued the DBA armies for a "Greeks in Peril" Campaign over the best part of a decade I am keen to see these toys put to some good use. I still have high hopes to run the full campaign in 2012/13 but  as an immediate "wargaming fix" I opted to stage the major land battle of the campaign. That is Platea 479BC as a BBDBA (Big Battle DBA) "event" for some wargaming virgins (an elder brother of mine, two of his friends and an old school friend of mine [who had done some RPG with me a long,long time ago]).

However I had some major scenario design questions to answer. Would it work with two DBA Armies aside with a third in reserve? Platea was notorious for a third of both armies (Greeks and Persians are both guilty of this) "not getting involved". Therefore I elected to have the third DBA army for each side resident in their army's camp area, fairly dormant until it was somehow "activated". Each turn they would roll and accrue activation points until a target had been reached/passed. A simple enough suggestion but how would it work in practice?

Before I put the game before the 'virgins' I chose another group of wargaming 'Grognards' to blood my beta-test scenario set-up ... read on (another excuse to get the toys on the table).

The Persian BBDBA Force: 2 x DBA Early Achaemenid + 1 x DBA Early Hoplite (Thebes)

Thebes: [1 x 4Sp (Gen) + 9 x 4Sp + 1 x 2ps + 1 x 3Cv] facing the Athenians on a "hill"
Note: A pretty compact force but fielding a useful 3Cv element

Design Note: I decided to mingle both the Persian DBA armies together. I took the bulk of the Persian Infantry and blocked it as "one" DBA army force (Mardonius on the Persian left) with remaining mounted Cavalry/Light Horse plus the remaining Hoard and Psiloi infantry as the reserve "camp based" force

Persian Main Infantry Body: [1 x 8Bw (Gen) + 7 x 8Bw + 2 x 3Bw + 2 x 3Ax]
Note: I had demoted Mardonius (C-in-C) from his Cavalry and stuck him with the Immortals, despite him being mounted he was attached to a unit of a thousand infantry. Arrayed as thus, it did not look too bad (in the very words of a veteran DBM/DBMM Grognard gamer). Note: See the Spartan "long thin line" on their hill in the distance.

Persian Reserve: [1 x 3Cv (Gen) + 3 x 3Cv + 2 x 2LH + 4 x 2Ps + 2 x 7Hd]
Note: I had assume that the cavalry were being rested after all the activity they had been put to in the previous weeks of campaign and that the camp "bric-a-brac" infantry were being slowly roused.PS Please note the fortified camp/stockade complex.

Game Rule: 
To activate the Persian reserve, at the start of each Persian go a d6 is rolled. The Command activates on a 1, or else the score is added to an accumulating total. When the score reached 18 then the commanding General wakes up. Until then everything costs double points to move. Note: The infantry and cavalry were deliberately lined up in separate blocks.   

Next: The Groovy Greeks