Sunday, April 28, 2013

Dux Bellorum - Macedonian War Edition

After seeing Craig's post about using Dux Bellorum for the Punic Wars, I decided to try to do the same thing. I worked out a formula to convert Impetus stats into DB stats, and we gave the conversion a spin this afternoon.

The Romans in formation, with their Pergamene allies to their right.
The Carthaginian-Macedonian alliance.
In general the rules worked OK - the cavalry battles on the flanks came to a conclusion early, but the infantry fights were a grind, since I gave Deep Units (an import from Impetus) +1 support for its rear ranks, and we allowed up to 3 Leadership Points to be used to cancel hit - we are planning to use the optional rule to reduce this to 2 next time.

The forces used were around 300 points in Impetus terms, and to me it didn't feel like a epic ancients battle yet. We will probably have to work towards a 500 points fight eventually.

Added: You can see some photos of the game at wahj's blog here.

2 comments:

Dale said...

My only problem with DB is the LP mechanism, which is probably its claim to fame. An Lp used for Aggression really is only 33% effective (depending upon the target), but used for canceling hits is 100% effective. So using LPs tactically all of a sudden has no tactics behind it. If you save LP for combat, it makes sense to spend them only on canceling hits. They need to change the rule to put some balance back in.

captain arjun said...

Yes, a Shieldwall unit with 3 LP can be hard to break, which is why there is an option allow a maximum of 2 LPs to be used to cancel hits.