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| Barney looking for me down that rabbit hole or possibly digging out the rules from my filing system! |
Those rules were pretty much the only game in town, as it was a couple of years before competing rule sets arose. Those I tried were no improvement and were often worse than WRG. At best some were Ok but for whatever reason they came and went while the WRG sets soldiered on year after year. I started playing using 3rd edition and as each new edition appeared switched to the new set. The core mechanisms stayed pretty much the same right through to 6th edition. They were detailed and often slow to play and most games I played struggled to come to a natural conclusion in a single session. Part of the after game ritual was the discussion which usually started with 'well if we had time to play another turn I would have....'
It was 7th edition that made dramatic changes to core mechanisms. Basing as elements and no figure removal (as with DBx) came in with that set, although the weapon and troop classes remained the same. The command rules became more detailed and there was less scope for changing things on the fly. One of the issues that confused me was that although units were based as elements some formations required troops to be based in part elements (such as wedge or rhomboid) which partially defeated the element concept. For a lot of gamers the 7th was too different to earlier editions and it simply wasn't WRG ancients anymore.
Phil Barker's original concepts had stayed unchanged from 1st through to 6th edition ancients and similar concepts were used by scores of other sets as well. Combat focussed on the armour type of the target unit and the weapon system used by the attacker. Units lost figures once the casualty calculation reached multiples of 20 casualties (as each figure represented 20 actual men). This had drawbacks as units tended to contract along their frontage which isn't how things worked in reality as casualties would be replaced from the rear ranks to try to maintain a units frontage. In 7th the actual number of casualties was determined but was then used to determine if the unit became fatigued and influenced immediate reaction to the combat. Then the casualty slate was wiped clean. Instead fatigue carried forward and impacted on the unit's performance in future turns. No figures were (or could be) removed so frontages stayed intact.
WRG didn't develop their ancients set any further then 7th edition although others did (Warrior were, I think, developed from WRG 7th edition). Instead Phil Barker wrote DBA. Then he bolted on additional chrome to DBA to create firstly DBM and then DBMM, in effect he started to move back to something like a simplified 7th edition but from the other direction.
About the time 7th edition were published I drifted out of figure gaming for a while due to the usual reasons, young family, change of job and my gaming group breaking up to take new jobs in different places. I bought a copy of 7th, read it and made notes on the mechanisms, but never played it. To be honest I couldn't get my head around the newfangled idea of basing as elements and the lack of figure removal as that had been at the mainstay of every other set of rules I had ever used until that point. My 25mm collection stayed based for 6th edition and didn't morph into DBx armies.
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| My 25mm Late Imperial Romans based for 6th Edition. These are a mix of Hinchcliffe, Prince August hand casts, Irregular miniatures plus a few Essex |
Having looked back over the old rule sets I can see what the design objective with 7th edition was. I even wish I had had the chance to play them as there is a lot of good in them. Strangely when I came to write my homebrew ECW rules many of the concepts from 7th solved design issues I had and addressed some of the playing decisions I wanted to focus on. Looking back I can see the first glimpse of DBM, DBMM and related games like ADLG in those rules. Personally I think that Phil Barker recognised that there was tension between detail and playability and wanted to address it with 7th. I don't know that he achieved that to the satisfaction of players. The fact that he turned to DBA as a new starting point and them developed rules more akin to 7th with DBM and DBMM suggests that he was close to what he wanted but couldn't quite get there with the mechanisms of the previous sets. None of which really matters when looking at whether DBA and it's further developments deliver a good game or not, but it is interesting to see how we got to the place we currently occupy with WRG rules. I suspect DBA 3.0 is the last hurrah for WRG ancient and medieval rule sets but 1969 to date is a damn good run by anybodies standards and many of the current rule sets for the period owe a lot to the work done by WRG.
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| Over 20 years gaming right here in one place - WRG 4th - 7th editions |
Interesting post Elendril. Seems a fair assessment.
ReplyDeleteI entered wargaming, and it was the ancient period, about 1 or 2 years before 6th ed.I played 6th but never moved on to 7th. My 25mm armies are still based for 6th ed and I play occasional skirmishes now. My current circumstances space wise is limited.
ReplyDeleteInteresting assessment - and the influence of WRG and the development of the DBx series is very clearly inherited by most of the sets in common use today, and presumably for the short to medium term.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI think, like you, that 7th Ed was a bold effort to move the rules in a new direction. There was a 7.5 too but I can't remember what significant changes there were. I think the problem was that the old mechanisms plus the new resulted in some serious imbalances. I remember a couple of significant problems were:
1 Cavalry was massively weakened. I remember noticing that cavalry that charged lost a fatigue. Cavalry that became uncontrolled suffered 2 more (I think it was that way around.) Therefore if you triggered an uncontrolled charge and evaded it, the enemy's cavalry were an exhausted write off for the rest of the game. I also remember trying this with Byzantines (Reg C HC) vs Islamic Persians (Irr A EHC). All three Byzantine units shot to trigger the charge, all three evaded short, all three Persian units charged uncontrolled on cue, all three charged long and hit the Byzantines in the rear. Game over . . .
2 Some troop interactions had changed. JLS were retained for every bound if there was no secondary HtH weapon. A friend used Khmer Reg C LHI JLS, Sh. They could defeat anything they faced hand to hand or break off and escape if they couldn't. I found myself thinking the only way to defeat this is to bring a whole army of Samnites (LHI front rank, LMI rear rank).
I realised if that was how the game was going to go, the rules were broken. Sad because it was an attempt to 'reboot' the system as people would say today. I dropped out of wargaming at 7th Ed and missed the arrival of DBA so came back at the end of DBM2.1 (right when the floating zone of death was about to get its comeuppance). I loved DBM, hadn't played it enough to feel it was time to move on, but love DBMM. I've looked at 'AARs' of other games (FOG, ADLG etc) but none seem to offer anything to beat DBMM. Even though I, like any wargamer, have things I'd do differently, I still feel that, for me, DBMM's the best set out there at the moment.
That's interesting John, especially about the effect of fatigue on cavalry. I can almost see the argument for retaining JLS but it comes down to trying to merge two different weapons into one stat line. Light spears would be more likely to be retained, javelins less so. Unless you are going to break ranks and pluck them from enemy casualties to use again, or you have an exceptionally good and well stocked baggage system. Personally I'm still trying to decide if DBMM or ADLG is the way forward. I will probably reach a decision about the time they both finally fall out of favour.
DeleteI really liked the fatigue idea. I just think it hadn't been thought through enough. If some of it had been able to be rallied off it might have worked, but moving away from so much bookkeeping was another objective of 7Ed. Alternatively, the points cost of mounted would have had to be reduced but tweaking point costs has always been something Phil has been reluctant to do. The JLS thing was a case of a small change having a massive impact. Eg (and my memory is a bit foggy on this) while regular JLS still fought in 1 1/2 ranks every bound with the JLS benefit (and Reg LHI were in close order but moved in loose order, Roman Legionaries fought only with "other weapons or circumstances' because they had had HTW at contact. So the LHI could lose the first round but eventually win. If they suffered too badly in the first round they could break off. LTS were worse. They fought in 2 ranks first bound if they stood but in the event that they won, they were in the same boat as the Romans above.
DeleteI can see your point that it really was the beginning of a philosophical shift in game design towards the DBx model.
DBMM, like any system, has pros and cons. It isn't easy to learn, especially from just sitting reading the rules. Being alongside someone who knows the game is really helpful. IMO though, it is worth the effort. It is a game that, as an online friend noes, gives a great narrative or story every game, and every game feels different. Tim (madaxeman) is one person who seems to be able to get that going with ADLG but for me, even with his witty accounts, the games don't quite feel the same to me. Horses for courses obviously and I'm sure it must give a great game as it's proving popular in our much more fragmented hobby and times.
One of the reasons 7th edition was such a radical departure was Phil being part of Wargames Developments at the time, attending their COWs at Knuston hall, here lots of radical ideas wargaming ideas were tried out and discussed. Phil's ideas were not always given a smooth ride. I can think of one set of rules which were abandoned after much damming criticism. DBA was of course tried out here. I talked to Phil at last years SOA battle day where Telamon was being fought using many different rule sets. Phil remarked that all the other games were derived from his 6th edition rules! Interesting that there was a 7th edition game being played. The group of players doing so said they were thinking of 'working' their way through the earlier WRG sets at future battle days!
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