On this page you will find links to DBM resources on the web, information
on DBM at the DGG and the DGG DBM player rankings. Click on the links
below to go straight to the desired section.
17-Jan -2002: This page has moved to
iworg.com and this version will no
longer be updated.
See
the Middle Earth Madness Competition Report
DBM stands for De Bellis Multitudinis, a set of wargame rules for the "Ancients"
period 3000BC-1500AD. It is published by WRG (Wargames Research Group) who
have developed the most popular rules for Ancients since the early 70's.
WRG also publishes a number of other rulesets related to DBM: DBA (fast-play
ancients), DBR (renaissance), Hordes of the Things (fast-play fantasy) and
DBF (fantasy). Collectively these rules are known as the DBx family. All
of these rulesets use similar mechanics which are based on six-sided dice,
no record keeping and quick-flowing game play that models a large battle
(10-30,000 men a side). Although the fundamentals of DBM are easily grasped,
the game is difficult to master and it rewards practice, tactical skill and
good luck!
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For more introductory material on DBM, see
here
and our section below DBM Resources on the
Web.
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To buy a copy of DBM in Ireland you will have to mail-order it. Two
good online places are Leisure Games
(London) or Essex Miniatures
(Essex!). The current version of DBM is version 3.0 (£5 stg.). To play
you will also need at least one of the four army list books. These are arranged
chronologically; Book 1 (Biblical), Book 2 (Classical), Book 3 (Dark Ages/Early
Medieval), Book 4 (Medieval). You should ensure that you order the 2nd edition
of the army list books (£6 stg. each).
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Army costs for DBM depend on the size of game played and type/quality
of troops used. 15mm miniatures typically sell for £1.50 stg for 8 foot
or 4 mounted . Approximate cost for a 200 point army is £30-£40,
for a full-size (400pt) army it costs between £60 and £100. For
a listing of manufacturers see
here.
In general I would recommend playing a few games and talking to an experienced
player before deciding on an army (there are about 300 different army lists).
If you want to charge straight in, I'd recommend
Essex Miniatures as a good
manufacturer (and don't buy a classical/roman army :-).
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Magnetic basing material is best bought in bulk from suppliers of
magnetic material for display signs. In Ireland, you can order it (by the
metre!) from Robert Horne Ireland, tel. (01) 450 8900. Ask for "Gloss
white faced magnetic PVC, 2800gsm". This can then be cut up and super-glued
onto bases. It costs £10-£15 per metre. A metre will do 2-3 DBM
armies.
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Second hand armies can be (relatively) cheaply (£100-£400)
bought at major conventions in the UK. Online there are a couple of places
you can pick up armies. Of course most of these are buyer beware and you
do see occasional messages about armies never turning up. However most people
are honest. In general armies bought from the USA will be more expensive
(and have higher postage) so you are better off concentrating on UK offerings.
With those warnings in mind, check out:
Wargames Forum (in the Bring &
Buy section, UK), Hinds
Figures (UK, good selection),
Bartertown (not much historical
& mainly USA),
Gajo Enterprises
(USA, not cheap!), Deus Vult (not
much stock, UK) and of course eBay (USA,
almost never cheap). Some of these places also have unpainted lead going
cheap.
There are lots of sites with DBM material, figure reviews, historical background,
etc. I've just included a few here, you can use the links on these sites
(particularly the DBA Resource Page and Society of Ancients Pages)
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The Irish DBM Ratings Page: This
site holds DBM Glicko ratings data for Irish Players, information on upcoming
Irish DBM competitions, general information useful for Irish DBM players
such as DBM200 rules and Army List notes.
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The Official DBM Home Page:
Maintained by one of the authors, Richard Bodley-Scott. Not really that useful
but it does contain official errata and clarifications and a good "Beginners
Guide to DBM".
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The DBA Resource Page: This
is a fantastic page which is updated every 2-3 days and although it is focused
on DBA has lots of DBM stuff. See the Links/Gamers section for loads of DBM
sites. The Bazzar section has a huge list of miniature manufacturers with
links to their pages and reviews of figures.
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Nunawading Wargames Association
DBx Page: This page is a must for both new and experienced DBM players,
the section "Battle Drills and Tactics for DBM" is a goldmine of information
on moving troops (including scale diagrams).
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The Society of Ancients: This is the
homepage of the SOA who publish a great bi-monthly magazine which contains
articles on military history, DBM and other ancient wargame rules (join now!).
Their web page is free to all and includes a large links section and scans
of many historical miniatures.
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The Wargaming
Pages by Alan Patrick: This page gives good guides to choosing, painting,
organising and playing DBM armies. Also the father of 200pt DBM. The 200pt
rules are on this site.
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The DBM mailing list:
This is a very high volume mailing list! It concentrates on DBM but some
DBR and a tiny bit of DBA are covered. It is a good place to ask for rules
clarifications, although you might get a bunch of different answers.
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The British Historical Games Society:
Has unofficial UK/US/South Africa DBM clarifications, also alternate (0-32)
scoring system for large competitions, listings of major DBM competitions
in UK, UK rankings etc.
Most of these handy things have been found somewhere on the web. Apologies
to anyone not credited or incorrectly credited
(mail me and I will make any
corrections).
-
DBM v3 Quick Reference Sheet (zipped MS
Word doc): This double-sided A4 sheet contains the PIP costs, movement rates,
combat factors, combat results table etc. You may have to play with your
page setup margins to get it to print correctly. Very Useful. Created by
Humberside Wargames Society.
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DBM v3 Weather Table (zipped MS Word doc):
Simplifies all the dense prose in the rules to determine weather for a battle.
This single-sided sheet is formatted so that when printed you can cut out
the table and glue/tape it to the inside cover of your rules. Created by
Mr Greenwood (Nunawading
Wargames Association?).
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Metric DBM March Templates (PDF file): If
you print this page out you can use it to create up to 3 march exclusion
zone templates for DBM on one A4 sheet. It is best you mount the printout
on either light wood or plasticard for durability. Note this is a metric
version, it is too small for games played with imperial measurements.
Created by Rob Brennan. Inspired by the march template created by Jeff Zorn.
Look at
his
site to find an imperial version of the template.
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DBM Expansion Chart (PDF file): This sheet shows
all the allowed element moves when expanding from column in DBM. It also
includes the measurement moved in mm. Note there one or two cases where the
small amount of extra movement allowed under the imperial (inches etc) system
will allow extra expansions. Created by Rob Brennan. This is based on the
expansion chart produced by the
Nunawading Wargames
Association. Although less pretty, my one fits on an A4 page and is approx
1/3rd the file size to download (I did have to leave out LH(F) expansion
though).
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Metric DBM Measure Stick (PDF file): When
printed this file produces 6 DBM metric measuring sticks on one A4 page.
Each stick is 40mm wide (good for checking gaps or pin distance/zone of control)
and also includes the move distances of all troop types (good for learners
or the forgetful). I mounted mine on 2mm MDF with white wood glue and they
seem to be holding up well. Created by Rob Brennan.
DBM is relatively new at DGG but fortunately we have a core of experienced
players and a number of DBM events are happening/planned.
-
Introductory Games: Currently we are recruiting new DBM players at
DGG, this means that at every meeting we bring down a bunch of 200pt armies
and terrain. All you have to do is turn up! We have a number of experienced
(and not so experienced) players available to either play a game against
or to umpire games. Come on down and give it a try.
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Competitions: See the DGG DBM Competitions
page for details of DBM competitions run by DGG and reports on competitions
we have attended. This year we have run Strongbow's Shield, a 200AP open
competition, and The DGG DBM Pairs, a 200AP team competition.
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League: We run a DBM league in DGG using David Young's DBM Glicko
Ratings software to check who is currently top dog. See the
DGG DBM Ratings to check out the current
positions. All DBM games held in DGG normally count towards the ratings
calculations.
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Historical Scenarios: DGG members also occasionally set up historical
refight scenarios. Sometimes these are based on in-depth research, sometimes
they are loosely based on historical events to give a good game :-). We normally
play these as large multi-player scenarios rather than points-limited games.
At some later point the DBM scenarios for these battles will be added to
this site.
How do you use swiss chess to run a tournament? What is it anyway? These
questions and more answered. Coming soon....
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For the moment click here to look at the
1992 FIDE swiss chess rules.
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If you want to just get on with running the tournament, why not let
WEST (a Wargamer's Easy Swiss-chess
Tool) generate all the pairings for you?
WEST now has its own homepage. See it at
http://www.iworg.com/west
This section contains the results of our DGG DBM league. Rather than running
a traditional league we are just playing pickup games down at the club with
whatever opponents are available. The results from these games are fed into
David Young's DBM rating software to evaluate our relative positions. This
allows flexability as no specific games need to be scheduled.
The rating system used is David Young's Glicko DBM Rating system. This is
a derivation of the statistical system used internationally to rate chess
players. It is already in use in Australia to rank DBM players. See the
Australian
DBM Ratings Page for more info.
Each player has a numerical rating value which starts at 2000 for unrated
players. In addition an alphabetic rating reliability category (from A =
most reliable to E = least reliable) is recorded. As more games are played
the reliability value increases. We may eventually exclude the ratings of
players whose reliability is too low (just until they've played enough games
to be included). Finally some stats on the player are also included for fun!
Standing data follows for players that have a DGG DBM Glicko rating (in rating
order). All standings are as at : 17 Jan 2002
| Name |
Rating |
Reliability Category |
Number of Games |
Wins |
Losses |
Ties |
Win Percentage |
Points For |
Points Against |
Average Points |
| Terry Trench |
2309 |
E |
7 |
5 |
2 |
0 |
71 |
49 |
21 |
7.0 |
| Rob Brennan |
2201 |
C |
20 |
11 |
5 |
4 |
55 |
125 |
75 |
6.2 |
| Alex Moran |
2178 |
E |
7 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
29 |
34 |
36 |
4.9 |
| Tony Walsh |
2175 |
D |
13 |
6 |
2 |
5 |
46 |
87 |
43 |
6.7 |
| Alec McTurk |
2170 |
E |
5 |
3 |
2 |
0 |
60 |
29 |
21 |
5.8 |
| Donal Coghlan |
2131 |
D |
9 |
5 |
2 |
2 |
56 |
57 |
33 |
6.3 |
| Paul Dalton |
2121 |
C |
22 |
12 |
7 |
3 |
55 |
129 |
91 |
5.9 |
| Phil Sherlock |
2052 |
C |
17 |
7 |
5 |
5 |
41 |
95 |
75 |
5.6 |
| Padraig Bracken |
2019 |
C |
17 |
3 |
9 |
5 |
18 |
62 |
108 |
3.6 |
| Eric Nolan |
1996 |
C |
23 |
8 |
11 |
4 |
35 |
103 |
127 |
4.5 |
| Eamon Honan |
1962 |
E |
2 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
7 |
13 |
3.5 |
| Cian Merne |
1951 |
E |
7 |
2 |
5 |
0 |
29 |
23 |
47 |
3.3 |
| Maithieu Bentot |
1899 |
E |
7 |
2 |
4 |
1 |
29 |
23 |
47 |
3.3 |
| Peter Rush |
1888 |
E |
3 |
0 |
1 |
2 |
0 |
11 |
19 |
3.7 |
| JP Chapleau |
1871 |
E |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
10 |
0.0 |
| Didier Nicolle |
1864 |
E |
2 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
5 |
15 |
2.5 |
| Mark Roache |
1811 |
E |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
10 |
0.0 |
| Vinnie Carpenter |
1786 |
E |
3 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
29 |
0.3 |
| Dara Cullen |
1705 |
E |
2 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
20 |
0.0 |
David Young's Glicko Rating system is now being used to rate all Irish DBM
players, see the Irish DBM Ratings
Page for more information.
Go Back to the Dublin Games Guild
Homepage.