Historicon playtest

Saturday July 11th I was invited over to Bob B.'s to play test a game he is planning to run at Historicon this week. We were playing a modified version of Big Battle DBA. The scenario was a large Hussite army (about 80 elements) against a similar sized Polish army. I had command of 3 units of Hussite reinforcements on the right flank. One unit was several war wagons and several elements of blades. The second unit was knights, cavalry and light horse. The last unit was knights, light horse and foot that came on the board later. The bulk of the rest of the Hussite forces consisted of a Wagenburg of war wagons, artillery and 2 units of foot troops. The Polish had 5 units on the table totalling about 60 elements and 1 unit of reinforcements to come on the board later.


The pictures show the game about 2/3 of the way through. The first is the board from the Hussite side and the second is a closer look at the right flank from the Hussite side. This is where most of the action was going on.

We played for about 3 hours and reached a point that
we could see how it was going to probably end.
We all discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the senario and how it could be changed to make it play faster and more balanced.

One thing that struck me about using DBA for a battle of this size is how slow the units move and how important initial setup is. It is very difficult to redeploy a unit if it is not where it is needed. Another this is that war wagons are much stronger than I expected and are very effective for "funneling" the opponents troops.

Dave S., who I played against at Drums in May, came and played. This gave me a chance to get his email again. (I have not been able to find ANY of my notes from the Drums convention. I think I would lose my head if it was not sewn on, with really good stitching.)

My Dad and I played with Bob B. to the late 80's and early 90's, until careers got in the way. So it is good to be back in touch with him.

I hope to hear soon how the game at Historicon went.