Folks
I put this together for a friend who was playing his first game of DBMM. But I thought it might also be useful to others just starting out with DBMM.
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Baggage and command structure:
When putting together your list, there are two things to consider - whether to take brilliant generals and stratagems and whether to take baggage. I'd recommend against the first, at least until you're a little more familiar with the rules (but if you think you're up for it, well, feel free to include some of this stuff). As for baggage, you now have to pay for it, and it bulks up your commands if you do so. But the way it's assigned to commands can be very confusing to new players.
The general rule with baggage for regular armies is that it's best to use Army Baggage. This means you put the baggage in its own command (without a general), which gets a PIP dice. The significance of this is that regular baggage gets a regular PIP dice which can be included in the whole dice assignment arrangement. In other words, your baggage command can be a PIP dump. Which armies get regular baggage? Well, Barker initially said that in his opinion, only Romans and Byzantines should get it. But when Army List Book 3 came out, some Chinese and Korean lists also got it. This doesn't help us with armies from the unpublished list books, meaning that people have to make up their own rules. For Cancon, our rule was that if all the generals were regular, you could get regular baggage.
Irregular armies don't benefit from PIP dumps, so the question is more open.
You normally get up to 2 elements of baggage per command, and if you put it in a command of its own, you'd normally have a command of Army Baggage totalling 6 elements. According to the Morale Equivalent rules near the back of the rule book, each element of Army Baggage provides 0.5 Morale Equivalents to each command which contributes baggage to the Army Baggage. What this means is that (assuming you have a 3 command army), the size of each of the 3 commands is increased by 3 Morale Equivalents. The baggage command's size is also 3 ME, thus contributing to the size of the army (which affects the army's break point). Of course, if you think that's all too complicated to think about, just don't bother with baggage at all.
When constructing commands, remember that Morale Equivalents aren't the same as the old Element Equivalents - all generals are worth 4 ME, Kn, Ele, Cv (S) and some infantry are 2 ME, while a few others are 0.5 ME. The other thing is that commands break when their losses *exceed* one-third. As commands become disheartened when their losses exceed one-quarter, this suggests a good command size to aim at is 24 ME. At 400 points with no Brilliant Generals, you should be able to get three commands of around 24 ME.
You can certainly get Command Baggage if you want - for a three command army there isn't a great deal of difference in terms of ME, but it means you won't have a baggage command, costing you a PIP dice.
Baggage (O) and (F) is the most expensive. But the former can be protected by TF, while the latter moves well. Bge (I) is slow and vulnerable, but cheaper.
PIP assignment:
Unlike DBM, where you assign regular PIP dice how you like each turn, in DBMM you have to specify your PIP dice assignments at the start of the game, and you can only change it during the game with a bit of difficulty. Assuming you have three commands with generals, plus a baggage command, the first logical thing is to assign the lowest PIP dice to the baggage. How you assign the other three is up to you. But keep in mind you can average two or more PIP dice. A popular dice assignment arrangement is to give the centre command the highest PIP dice, give the flank commands the average of the 2nd and 3rd highest PIP dice, and give the 4th highest PIP dice to the baggage.
If you send a regular command flank marching, it rolls its own PIP dice until it arrives, at which point it slots into the PIP dice arrangement you specified at the start of the game. For example, using the PIP dice assignment above, if you sent one of the flank commands flank marching, you'd only assign 3 PIP dice - the centre command gets the highest, the baggage the lowest, and the on-table flank command gets the lone middle PIP dice. After the flank march arrives, it and the on-table flank command start averaging the middle two PIP dice.
Remember that regular sub-generals who are moving with entirely regular groups get a general's PIP. So even in the worst case, regular commands will normally get at least 2 PIPs. Also remember that when a command breaks, it starts to roll its own PIP dice, and when it shatters (> 50% casualties) it stops rolling a PIP dice altogether.
All this suggests you really need to think about your PIP dice assignment when you design the army's command structure. For example, what sort of command could manage with consistently low PIPs, and what sort of command could benefit from consistently high PIPs?
Other rules issues:
Download both the Index and the Commentary (both on this site). The rules are not cross-referenced, so it can often be hard to find out how things relate to each other. The Commentary is about 40 pages long, but most of the interpretations in it are only a couple of lines long.
The important thing with learning the rules is to not assume that anything in the rules is the same as it is in DBM. Barker's intent in writing the rules the way he did is to discourage geometric ploys, and to encourage aggressive attack up the guts. A lot of troops get quick kills in their own bounds, which rewards getting into combat quickly. On the other hand, in most cases only a single element is destroyed (not the one behind), so formations don't collapse too quickly either. The best deployment seems to be to stay narrow and deep.
Superior and inferior:
DBMM most closely mirrors older versions of DBM with the strength of (S) troops and weakness of (I) troops. In a lot of cases, troops who are fighting (S) enemy take a -1 if they draw or lose the combat. When combined with taking a -1 for being (I), (S) troops can be extremely powerful. The description of the various grading modifiers in the rules is virtually unreadable (to me anyway). I find the Quick Reference at the back of the rules much more useful. On this web-site there's a flow chart which explains it even more simply.
There's something of an opinion among some players that a combination of Bw (S), Kn (S) and Bd (S) is virtually unstoppable. Others think that Bw (S) shooting is too powerful. Also, a lot of people think Sp are too weak. I don't agree with any of these assessments. Yes, Sp is vulnerable against Bd, but it's a cheap Bw-killer.
