Board size

[Michal Ciemniewski]

Hi,

I played my first BDBA battle yesterday. It was a great fun but I had a problem to set up all elements. 120x60 board seems to be a bit to small. What is You experience with board size?

[David Kuijt]

I played my first BDBA battle yesterday. It was a great fun but I had a problem to set up all elements. 120x60 board seems to be a bit to small. What is You experience with board size?

After playing and running a lot of Big Battle tournaments over several years, the consensus arose in the central and eastern parts of North America agreeing with your assessment. In 2003 (or so -- I'm not certain of the date) a group of experienced players and tournament directors was put together and considered the issue; the result was their recommendation to use a 24" x 60" board (150cm x 60cm). Virtually all Big Battle tournaments in the HMGS-GL and HMGS-East regions since that time have used the 2' by 5' board.

The recommendations of that group were adopted by NASAMW and are available on the NASAMW website at: http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/guides/NASAMWBigBattleDBA.html

[David Kuijt]

Here is a cut-and-paste of the meat of the matter (although the preamble, which describes the motivation and justification for the changes, is worth reading). The changes to v2.2 are three:

Board width increased to 60". In brief, the 48" wide board made every battle a frontal assault, which was unrealistic (unhistorical) and uninteresting. Heavy foot still have the advantage in Big Battle on the 60" boards, but battles of maneuver can and do occur.
The 2.1/2.2 deployment was a giant step backwards (not nearly as good as the 2.0 deployment); the reversion is to the better system. For a lengthy justification, see the link I gave in the previous post.
A minor change to the victory conditions to correct some funkiness. Again, there is a discussion on the website link given earlier.The committee (Dave Schlanger, Dave Zecchini, Roland Fricke, and Mike Demana) seem to have done an excellent job, because these modifications have been very successful. They have been heavily (HEAVILY) tested in the last five years and no further changes seem to be warranted.


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.


(note that there is also a scoring system for scoring tournament games of Big Battle included on the weblink).

[Maerk]

Last Friday, Haroldo Hic and myself had our first BBDBA Game: It was Seleucids with Galatian Ally against Polybian Romans with Numidian Ally. We used the NASAMW BIG BATTLE SPECIAL TOURNAMENT RULES and it perfectly worked for us:
We had a terrific game, ending in a very tight Seleucid victory and we were both surprised by the additional tactical depth of the big battle game. BBDBA is much more than 3xDBA!

[Haroldo Hic]

Ay!
The Seleucid high-pip centre-command lost their Sub-General in the mid-game, the Numidians (Roman Ally) got vaporized by the galatians, the Romans took the Seleucid camp, the Seleux took the Roman camp, and towards the end we forgot that the Seleucid light-and-fast low-pip comand (with the C+C) actually got demoralized (it only consisted of 9 elements). Maerk, I guess you should have won...:o

It was a blooody battle. I think over 30 elements got killed (19 Roman elements+Camp, 14 Seleux-elemants+Camp). It was a dramatic movie-style race against time

And we say "yes" to the NASAMW BIG BATTLE SPECIAL TOURNAMENT RULES!

I'm still shaking.

And the Elephants didn't fight once, as usual...

Menic

[Michal Ciemniewski]

100% true. BB DBA is much more than 3xDBA! I decided to collect BB DBA armies right after the first game! I have 7 element painted after a week :P

I like the BB DBA "clarification" of yours a lot!

Any tips&hints for begginers?

[Mike Porter]

Check out the Two David's BBDBA page; it's a great resource and provides some well-thought-out analysis. Here is the link (http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~kuijt/BBDBA/index.html).

[Bob. (and his dog)]

I generally am against making rule changes for games, unless for special scenarios, but the NASAMW BB changes just make the game play better. Not just for tournaments, games in general. 3 armies on two boards is just too cramped. Why Phil changed the better 2.0 BB start and finish, to what is in 2.2, I have no idea. I know of no one asking for these, let alone any "movement" as there was for BUA change or Wb in BG mods.

[Michal Ciemniewski]

Thanks for the link. It is full of cool stuff.

I do not like house rules either but the soft changes to deployment or board size are very cool.

[TeacherDude]

I know this is about the BBDBA boards, however, I am hoping I may receive an answer to the following:

I understand the when playing 40mm frontage DBA expanding the board to 30" seems to give a better game.

Can the same be applied to a regular 60mm frontage DBA game? If so, what size is the original 3x3 board expanded to?

Thanks for any help!

[David Kuijt]

I know this is about the BBDBA boards, however, I am hoping I may receive an answer to the following:

I understand the when playing 40mm frontage DBA expanding the board to 30" seems to give a better game.

Can the same be applied to a regular 60mm frontage DBA game? If so, what size is the original 3x3 board expanded to?


The 60mm frontage game (25mm scale) was played on a 48" board for a very long time. When pressure mounted to increase the board size on the 15mm-scale game, one of the arguments was that the 25mm scale already played on 48", which scales down to 32" equivalent in the 15mm-scale game. So instead of upping the 15mm scale board, Phil downed the 25mm scale board to the current 36", which pissed off a number of big-toy players.

So use 4x4 boards. Many of the 25mm-scale players never switched to the small boards in the first place, and still use 4x4 boards.

[TeacherDude]

Thanks David, I had thought the 3x3 just looked way too small.

4x4 boards make more since and thanks again!