NASAMW
Big Battle DBA Tournament
Rules & Scoring System

By David Schlanger
NASAMW Assistant DBA Umpire


Big Battle DBA has become a favorite of many players at NASAMW Conventions, as participation has consistently risen since the original release of Big Battle rules in DBA 2.0. Running Big Battle DBA tournaments efficiently and effectively is more difficult than regular DBA, and puts more pressures on tournament organizers. For a successful BBDBA tournament, it is important that the majority of games be resolved in a timely manner. Therefore, Bob Beattie, NASAMW Umpire for DBA, appointed a committee consisting of David Schlanger (chair), Mike Demana, Roland Fricke and Dave Zecchini to recommend changes. These are all experienced DBA Big Battle players. They consulted with other players and have suggested the following changes for tournament play. These changes have been approved by the DBA Umpire and will be used in NASAMW sanctioned tournaments during 2004. At the end of the year they will be evaluated.

The NASAMW Special Tournament Rules Text takes the best of both DBA 2.0 and the amended DBA 2.1 rules for battlefield size, deployment, and victory conditions in an effort to allow for balanced and timely game play in the tournament environment. These alterations to the Big Battle DBA rules are not intended as a criticism of the normal rules of Big Battle DBA, which is an excellent game in its own right. These Tournament Rules are solely for the purposes of running efficient and timely tournaments using Big Battle DBA at NASAMW conventions.

The deployment changes revert to the BBDBA 2.0 deployment language with the addition of the 1,200 paces restriction from 2.1. The remaining changes in the 2.1 deployment rules have been found to unbalance the game for tournament play by favoring high aggression combined arms forces, and slow down tournaments by consistently placing the defender in a conservative, reactionary posture. They also encouraged extreme terrain choices that could severely slow play. Also, we have eliminated the 0-2 element exchange for the defender because of the advantage of placement of the last defender command.

The victory condition changes are a compromise between BBDBA 2.0 and 2.1 that closely follows the model of the regular DBA victory conditions. There had been significant resistance to the C-in-C command breaking or the C-in-C element death always resulting in a loss of battle as in BBDBA 2.0. However, under 2.1 the C-in-C death never resulting in loss of battle caused game length problems and odd instances where all three commands could be broken and the battle not "officially" lost. The NASAMW special tournament text solves these problems, while keeping as close as possible to the original vision of DBA.

The battlefield size increase from 48 inches to 60 inches has been tested at the last two major NASAMW conventions and is the preferred board size by most NASAMW Big Battle DBA players.

Finally, the NASAMW Big Battle DBA Scoring System is presented. This scoring system was implemented to help differentiate between finished and unfinished games. It allows a tournament organizer to quickly and easily assign point value for battles. The system was designed to encourage quick and attentive play. In order for the system to function properly all games should be played out until victory conditions have been reached, or official time has been called.


NASAMW BIG BATTLE SPECIAL TOURNAMENT RULES TEXT

BATTLEFIELD SIZE AND TERRAIN: The width of the battlefield size is increased to 60 inches.

DEPLOYMENT: The defender places the terrain and the invader chooses which long side will be his base edge, the defender taking the opposite edge. The defender deploys 2 commands including that of his C-in-C, then the invader deploys all his commands, then the defender deploys his remaining command. Each element not in a BUA or camp must be within 1,200 paces of its command's general. [The defender may not exchange 0-2 element pairs of its elements.]

WINNING AND LOSING: An army whose cumulative total of lost elements at the end of any bound other than Scythed Chariots, camp followers or denizens is at least half its original troop elements and has also lost more such elements in that bound than the enemy, or an army whose C-in-C's command is demoralized and has lost more elements than the opponent, has lost the battle.


NASAMW BIG BATTLE DBA SCORING SYSTEM

Victory Conditions Met

Winner: 100 points minus Loser points total.

Loser: 2 points for each enemy element killed or fled off map.
1 point for each enemy element demoralized.
4 point for taken and occupied camp serving one command.
8 points for taken and occupied camp serving two commands.
12 points for taken and occupied camp serving three commands.

Victory Conditions NOT Met

Each player/team:
2 points for each enemy element killed or fled off map.
1 point for each enemy element demoralized.
4 point for taken and occupied camp serving one command.
8 points for taken and occupied camp serving two commands.
12 points for taken and occupied camp serving three commands.

Point ranges

Winners (51-100 points)
All others (0-49 points)
Maximum point total for non-winner is 49 points.


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Last Updated:  12 January 2004

Questions, comments, suggestions welcome.
Send them to Chris Brantley, brant@erols.com.