DBMM - Ankara re-fight

Hi,

Last week one of my fellow Kirklees crusaders suggested that we do a re-fight of Ankara, using the DBMM rules - probably the 240AP variant (similar army size and playing area to BBDBA); pitting his Timurids against my Ottomans.

I thought it was a pretty cool idea and did a bit of reading about the battle to get an idea of troop numbers etc - as is the case with a lot of battles from antiquity, troop numbers vary considerably between sources so, in order to keep our first attempt as simple as possible I felt that sticking to the element minima and maxima in the DBM Bk IV lists, with compulsory Serbian allies for the Ottomans, should give us fairly representative armies.

DBMM already has rules to cover the effects of thirst etc, whilst other features of the battle, like Timur i Lenk's diverting the course of the river, deployment "switch", and buying off of some of the Ottoman forces, were things that could be modelled very easily by creating a number of Ankara specific stratagems (cunning tricks in DBMM that can be used by generals to give their army an advantage). I've included the stratagems I created below in case anyone fancies trying them out. In our Ankara game these will only be useable by Timur i Lenk, but there's nothing to stop them being used in other "what if" games...

“Poison in the well” 5AP – Through sabotage, or ingenious engineering, the enemy’s water supply has been poisoned/diverted. All enemy elements suffer from thirst (-1 combat disadvantage) after 12:00. Can only be used by a Brilliant General, and only in Warm or Dry climates in Summer or Autumn.

“The wild goose chase” 10AP – Can only be used by a Brilliant CinC as a Brilliant stroke. After a circuitous forced march you manage to seize the terrain advantage. Terrain is placed as normal but you decide after placement which long table edge will be your base edge. All other set up rules as per the DBMM rules.

“Turncoats” 10AP – The CinC expends 2 PiPs & uses a Brilliant Stroke at the start of his bound in an attempt to “buy” the loyalty of 1d6 enemy elements. Each affected enemy element dices, changing sides on a roll of 1-4, staying loyal on a roll of 5 or 6. Elements switching sides can move as normal during the bound in which they change sides. Affected elements with 400 paces of their CinC add 1 to their loyalty roll.

With a little bit of tweaking these "stratagems" could easily be incorporated into DBA/BBDBA.

I wanted to keep the Turncoat effect as random as possible to maintain suspense and keep the game interesting even after multiple re-fights, whilst still allowing for occasional big swings/huge flops..

We will be playing our first game on Monday and I'll post army lists and a battle report after that..

cheers
Bob Mcleish

...and posts Pics too...lots of them!

Originally Posted by Tony Aguilar

...and posts Pics too...lots of them!

will do, although if the outcome is historical I fear that all you will see are the backs of my fleeing Ottomans...! ((

Unfortunately my opponent couldn't make it tonight, so the re-fight will have to wait until next week... ((
Instead of DBMM I played British Grenadier!, an excellent set of rules for gaming the AWI, although better suited to scenario & re-fight games rather than anything remotely competitive.