hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2593.txt

Episode: 2593
Title: HPR2593: Intro to De Bellis Antiquitatis
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2593/hpr2593.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:19:12

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This is HBR Episode 2,593 entitled Intro to the Melanitic Wittarties and is part of the series, Tabletop Gaming.
It is hosted by Tutoto and is about 27 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is short Intro to Tabletop War Game Call TVA.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15. That's HBR15.
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Hi and welcome to the Hacker Public Radio. I'm your host Tuka and this episode will be about
the Telly's Antiquities or short for DBA. What is DBA?
I got an inspiration for this episode from Klaatu who has been doing episodes recently about
all various board games. Surprisingly or not surprisingly, DBA is a board game or Tabletop game.
It's a Tabletop War game for two players that is fairly easy to learn, doesn't take tons of time
or doesn't need big amounts of space. It played on a 30 inch board with two armies of tiny
miniatures. And those miniatures are one step on currently painting so if there's any
or poses in the recording that they are probably because I'm in middle of doing something
complicated or delicate thing. So in DBA you have two armies fighting each other on a table of
stuff. And the difference between DBA and some other board tabletop programs is that DBA is
a fairly small and doesn't take much time or space. Each army has 12 elements or units
and there's armies consists of. And one of those armies throughout the time starting from
the 3000 years PC all the way up to the 1480. So there's an ancient Egyptians,
burial from an army, architects, samurai, you name it. The way the DBA handles different
different eras is that like there's nothing prevents you having anachronistic
battle of, for example, friends, older than versus postmonger samurai or versus ancient
Kusheid army. And how the DBA managed to do that is that they don't, the game doesn't model.
The game models are the various units not by the armament but how they were actually used in the
battle. So if you have a unit that is shooting lots of arrows, it's both in the
game. And it doesn't matter if they are shooting crossbows or if they're shooting longbows,
they're they're both in the game. And if you have an army unit that
fights in a close formation using plated weapons, they are plates in the game.
I played samurai with swords or Roman Legionnaires or dismounted knights, for example.
And this is really nice because it allows players to concentrate on how how you need was used,
how certain type of unit was used. They don't have to think about about the armament or how they
would differ between units. Just the idea is to concentrate on how the how how certain unit was used
and play accord accordingly. So there are various various units in the play, for example plates,
hordes, those are huge. Lots of people who are not skilled in fighting
couriers, which is which are just a special case of cavalry, knights that are cavalry that
is very inventive, they like to charge through the emirations, so on.
So each player has an army and each player has the same size of army. In every game,
both players have an army of 12 units or elements. This makes it easy to sort of balance the game
because you don't have to have rules for balancing army with lots of units, lots of low-quality units
against the army of few high-quality units. Of course, it also means that if you have
if all units are not all units, all similar units between armies behave in the same way. So if you
have a stress, those are units that fold with a big field and a pointy stick, basically.
So if you have a Spartan stress unit, it will perform equal level as any other stress unit,
there aren't any differences in armies. So how the game goes, so two players, it's with the army.
The goal is to win the opponent by either winning the defeating the general,
which is one of the units on the table or by destroying one third of the army without
each suffering, more equal amount of damage. So if you win the opponent general
and you haven't lost more units and you have lost less units than the opponent or if you
have won one third of opponent's army and have lost less units than the opponent, then you win.
And why is this, of course? And unlike in more complicated games, there isn't any
reason or the face, the game runs by turns and on each turn, player throws a 1d6,
600 die and gets a amount of command points that the die tells him. So and those command points
are used to move the units on the board. This is used to simulate the
confusion and difficulty, difficulties of communicating with the units in the mid of the combat.
It's awfully frustrating sometimes to be playing and have you really create
a battle plan destroyed because you keep throwing lots of 1s and 2s in this phase, but that's
how it goes. Luckily the game is really fast. So if you lose a game, you can just set it up again
and have another goal, difficult games take less than hour to finish. Sometimes even faster,
sometimes they end up in a matter of minutes defending on your luck or your plan or combination of
the other. One funny way to lose the game is to have your general following a elephant and having
the elephant to lose in the combat and start retreat crossing your general, because in the game,
in the game elephants are dangerous to both sides. In theory they are less dangerous to you,
but than your opponent, your own elephants, but you still have to be mindful that they are slow
and hard to control and can cause damage if they decide to back up.
So you get a command point when you throw a right hand. That is used to move your units around.
Typically one unit, moving a one unit takes one element, one moving one element takes a.
One command point, there are some special cases like if you need this far away from your
command of general, then it takes one point more or is there in the middle of the forest or you
can generalize in the middle of the forest for some other reason, because then the leading of the
battle is really hard for the general. Then movement costs one more and so some units like
artillery, these are catapults and ballistas and even some primitive cannons later in the game.
Moving those takes one extra point.
Because you cannot move that many units, even if you throw, if you move them one by one,
you can move them. You can have a middle group battle formation and hold formation moves in as a group.
And of course, as soon as you encounter forest, you have to adapt, you cannot march in a
midline through the forest, you have to be a column or you have to go around the forest or you have
to break up your army or battle line. Same thing as soon as you come. It is easy to march in a plain
field, but when you encounter the enemy and you start throwing a pushing, then your battle line
starts to fall apart. And what else? As soon as you collide with the enemy, you start throwing a
die about who wins the combat. Some units perform better against some units and some units are
not so strong. Like light horse, for example, these are units that ride with the horse pro
light spears through with the light bows and then run away or ride away. They are not strong
by themselves, but they are also very hard to catch because they are so fast. And they are
really great at harassing the slanks. For example, they are really horrible in the forest, but they are
really great in the open plains. So as soon as you get into close combat, both players
throw a die, compare one or two tables to see which side wins. And sometimes nothing happens,
sometimes your opponent bags up a little bit, sometimes they start, free, sometimes they are
and are removed from the play. And some units, if the opponent sees, or
bags up a little bit, follow them. Night for example, that's how input in the tables
or either to engage that they are impossible to control. As soon as they get into the combat,
they just start running after the enemy or riding after the enemy. Warbands are the same.
And close combat isn't everything that they use. There's also two types of misal fire,
bows that shoot on every turn. Like when I move, they don't move them. As long as they're somebody
on the range, they shoot them. And they also do the same thing on my opponent's turn.
And then there's the artillery that only shoot on my turn is the artillery, of course.
And can't shoot if they have moved, because these are slow and cumbersome. These are huge,
huge hits and since for example, primitive cannons that take time to set up.
And well, that's basically this, of course a little bit special rules. They have forest,
they have swamps, they have different kinds of hills. Heels are nice. They
provide the advantage on the unit that is on the high ground and they break the line of sight
and they also look nice on the table top. Because part of the, big part of the draw for me
for the game is that you get to build and paint and do all kinds of creative arts and crafts.
Of course, you can just buy the, buy the, for example, the hills from the gaming stores,
countless of different kinds of hills and, for example, model railways, model railways, stuff,
works fairly well with the game. But I just like building stuff by myself.
And what else? Well, that's pretty much it. Players, players alternate between
each, each turns, like, first I call and then the opponent calls and then I call and
it keeps repeating them until one side wins. Trolls aren't really possible in this game.
Because of this, a situation where it's a draw, it just keeps going until one side wins.
Like that. I'm currently painting horses for the ancient, pretty, pretty army that I'm building.
So that's the sound of me washing the grass in the mean of chasing colors.
Tentes are, if self-units isn't, isn't big enough, you can play a variant called
Pit Battle DPA where you have three armies. But I have on each side, but I have never tried that.
The game is fun, fun because you can have various kinds of armies of different eras
and they fight nicely against each other, because later armies don't have any advantage over the
early armies. Of course, the composition of the army can have some effect on how you play it,
if you have an army of consisting only of siloys or like skirmishing infantry, then it's
really hard to play on open plains. Parties, you have a lot of forest for example,
they're pretty, pretty well developed. All right, the composition of armies, that I've
forgotten completely. I should have written some sort of outline for the result, but
so like I said, every army has a 12 unit and a table and unlike in other games, you don't have
or in some other games, of course. You don't use points to purchase your army, but you have a
pre-made army list. I don't know how many, probably, probably well over 100 different army
lists in the book, rule book that are fighter, fighter, sort of country or tribe or whatever
you want to call it, like you have ancient equipments and you have Sumerians and then you have a
postmongol samurai and then you have a Aztecs and then you have a late medieval police armies
and wars of the roses army for the priests. Anyway, you have army lists for
preach and or section or group, whatever. And for a certain period of time, like for the Romans,
you have well over 10 and that's not counting the Byzantine stuff. That's just a western empire
starting from the early Roman army, the VD vote in the, what's that called?
Not cohort, not manipulpate. Yeah, I'm drawing a plank. Well, it doesn't matter.
That's the, but now it waters me, some some Greek formation, phalanx, yeah, phalanx. So you have
early Roman armies fighting in a phalanx, so consisting mostly of spheres with a little bit of
maybe one unit of horses. And then it, then you have a Marian Romans that is mostly of
legionaries and then you have a early integral Romans that is legionaries, plates and then you have
some auxiliary units, few food units and maybe a ballista. And then late Byzantine armies
to have catafracts like heavily armored horses that really excel in a plain spot, really, really
in a trouble in the woods. And within those army lists, you might have some room for
choosing a choosing elements, like they usually say, this is your core. These are the ones that you
always taking. And then you can pick from this set, like you can have choice between, for example,
with ancient preaches, you have, you have some amount of four bands. And then you have a choice
between Harriots and wall bands. And then I think there was a horse, a light horse there do.
So, while you have a premier armies to have some say to what kind of armies exactly you want to
play. And because the armies are fairly small, it doesn't take tons of figurines to paint,
that you need to paint. So, it doesn't take tons of time. Also, it doesn't take lots of space or
money to have a duplicated show, armies, people often end up with multiple armies. Like when I started,
I started this, I built two walls of roses, armies, yoke and Lancaster, which are
on a retrospect, quite big because there's a quite a bit of options. So, I built two,
buildings and painted two armies, took them to the local gaming store and asked my friends,
hey, I have this new game, I have complete set of figurines to even to play. And that's how we
started. Now there's a mostly painting I'm not playing that much. And the part is that all the research
that you can do when you start setting up your army like reading about fate, the lift and what
they did and what kind of color scene, the armies used and what kind of famous people were
in that era and settings.
That's basic basics of the DBA. There's a more complex game for the sort of sensory
stories called DPM and DPM debellists, multitudinous and debellist Magistar Militum, if I'm not mistaken.
That's a hand plate that's a little bit more complex and also a little bit.
I think a little bit more units to play. But good thing with the DBA and DPM and DPM
is that they used the same same general basing rules, rules on what size base you attach your
tin soldiers. So in theory you can start by building a DBA army and then start adding a
unit on that to get to DPM or DPM and army. I haven't done that those games, actually.
Interest me that much. They are fairly bit more complex and they have a point system and they have a
difference between different kinds of units in a way that you can have a superior quality or
inferior quality and such units. So the DBA Spartans are Spartans, Piemen are stronger than
some other Spiemen. But in DBA that's not the case. The Spiemen is a Spiemen, very that's Spartan
or Barbarian or Samurai or what. Which also makes the game easy to learn. And while the
rule book is a tin, it's extremely dense. The information is actually tightly and it can be quite
hard to read and decipher when you start. Luckily the Washington area players have written their own
guide that expands the official rule book. It has more examples and it has more
variables, explanation of rules and it has more readable papers. So if you start with DBA or
if you are interested in the DBA, I really recommend that you get hold of that that booklet
and read that because it makes the game much easier to understand in the beginning. That booklet
doesn't contain amylists so you still need to collect copy of the official rules. The current
version I believe is free. I haven't played that. I have only played the previous version 2.2 but
the difference shouldn't be that big for what I have read. I'll try to find a link to that
and include that into the show notes. But I guess that's for it for now. Thanks for listening.
Have a good one. Bye.
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