I can't stop thinking about ancient Rome - De Bellis Antiquitatis edition
A legion of Romans
De Bellis Antiquitatis is the second historical based game I ever got into with the first being Flames of War. At the time our game group was looking for another but limited miniature game that we could do some ancients era. I don’t remember who found DBA but I latched onto it. We knew we wanted to stay at 15mm scale at the time so I went searching for some Romans. I had looked at sites like Peter Pig and Old Glory but went for Xyston Miniatures as I liked the look of them.
Looking at their site now they have a much more expanded range. Since I have moved away from that group I’ll be picking up some Gauls for an opposing force. What I like about DBA is with 12 elements or bases the game is contained and focused. Bases range from 1 to 4 miniatures typically. You can play at two scales 10-15mm or 28-32mm. The game uses the base frontage to determine where things are. For 15mm my typical base is 40x20mm Easy to build up a force and play. Reading the rules are a bit dry but not the end of the world.
I started these back in 2008 got some flesh color on them and then got busy. They are still on the painting sticks and the bases from Litko. For a spring cleaning project I’m going to get these finished up while I wait for the Gauls to arrive. I also have some more Roman options coming in to fill out the options for the Romans if I want to incorporate some artillery or more cavalry. I have my eye on some other Roman projects I’ve started around the Ides of March but these are going to be my first priority. Will these projects cross the Rubicon? Follow to find out!
2024-03-19 Your project has been visited by the unofficial Hobby Hangout. Huzza!
Thanks for the warm welcome! I tuned in and saw the image and was like “hey those Romans look familiar!” Keep up the great work.
Have you tried DBM or DBMM? I find these better than DBA. They add more flavour. The good thing is that they use the same DBX basing.
Having said that, DBA was also my first foray into historical wargaming and it holds a special place.
I’ve just learned about DBM and DBMM and I have them on my Amazon wish list to pick up at some point. I want to see the differences. Another from the DBx family I want to check out is Hordes of Things as what I’ve seen so far you can run fantasy armies with it. I like trying new game systems hence why I have so many projects at once. DBA was my second and I like the restricted nature of it so it feels like I can complete a set of armies for it. That said this is just… Read more »
Of all the DBX games,’Horde of the Things’ is the weakest in my opion. It is still a good game, but way too generic for what it is suppose to represent.
If you want a fantasy wargame that is customisable, flexible and has a historical flair to the way it is played, I recomment ‘Fantastic Battles’. ‘To the Strongest Fantasy’ and ‘Impetus Fantasy’ are also good historically based fantasy wargames.
Hmm if it is a bit too generic it doesn’t fit what I want DBA kinda already fills that. I wanted something similar but a bit more flavor and I had seen Fantastic Battles come up when I was searching for the others. Never heard of To the Strongest Fantasy before so will have to look it up.