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Monday, December 15, 2014

Dux Bellorum game

With a game day up tomorrow I decided that I'd better actually learn the rules we're going to play, so with that in mind I had to pack up Ukraine '44 and get Dux Bellorum to the table.

My Dark Age armies are not yet painted, so I used Gauls and Romans (of the Caesarian variety) to test the rules out.

Initial impressions are positive. There's room for skillful play and it is about the same level of complexity as Basic Impetus. It seems to include the things I liked about Basic Impetus (smaller game, discrete units, fast-ish play) while removing the things I didn't like so much (those nasty post-melee tests!).

What does concern me though is the balance between the various troop types. Will have to look at the odds a bit more closely and play a few more games before coming to any conclusions however.

This game was played out of period of course, but it still seemed to work OK.

Here are a few shots (the little flocked things with arrows/spears in them are casualty markers; the other green disks mark Leadership Points):




I also did a stop motion video of the action which you can see here:




8 comments:

  1. Now that was excellent!!!!! More More More!!!

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  2. Interesting. I await your full battle test.

    For Basic Impetvs, what did you find so nasty about the post-melee morale tests? Is the Cohesion Test failure and VBU loss due to die roll differential (DR - Critical Number) what causes the issue?

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    1. It's been a while since I played Jonathan, but yes, that was the roll I didn't like. You'd throw stacks of dice but it all came down to that one roll in the end, and as I'd frequently duff it, it got a bit frustrating!

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    2. I modified that roll so that a player could not suffer more hits in the Cohesion Test than in actual combat. So if a unit took two hits in combat, the most VBU lost would be two even if the differential was greater than two.

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    3. I think I remember reading of that modification somewhere else, too. I would certainly enjoy the game more playing that way I think!

      Cheers for mentioning it!

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