Army Commands and Dice

[Tisifoni]

I came back to wargaming when DBMM was in development and my games tend to be solo experiments or musings on warfare in the period from Alexander to Augustus rather than competitive or club gaming.

Though my armies are relatively small  I started off typically with three commands and three generals.  Then after some exploration of Lost Battles I experimented with having only two generals, occasionally only one.  This meant of course typically having one large command and one small one.  The decision of how to make that split being tactical:

-  a large defence command of centre and flank, and one flank as a strike force; the first with limited initiative, but high resilience, the latter with high initiative, but potentially fragile, or
-  offensive flank and centre, with potentially limited initiative but considerable power and a small, fragile, quite possibly 'refused' flank

So, when I find or make time to experiment I'm going to try using three commands and two generals, the army split three ways for morale, but two ways for initiative.   I have developed a table for allocating the die score for initiative (untested as yet)  This neither allocates one die score to each general or averages the scores, rather it comprises four columns and splits the score of two dice between the two generals unevenly depending on which is controlling two commands and which only one, also which is the commanding general and which the 'support' or 'additional' general.

Has anyone else come up with a similar approach or similar 'house rules' ?

[LawrenceG1]

I've not come across such a thing. However, it is recognised that the "standard" ratio of troops to generals leads to better command and control than appears to have been the case historically.

Also the way that morale works by whole command is a fundamental flaw in the DBX family of games that can lead to some rather strange effects, especially in armies designed for tournaments.

I think if I was doing it, I would consider keeping the commands as normal for command and control, and using normal dice allocation between the two generals but split the large one down purely for morale purposes. That might be sufficient for a reasonable simulation. I think you are doing this but introducing a table for PIP allocation, which allows more tailoring of individual PIPs at the cost of slightly increased complexity. I guess you are trying to overcome the problem of the small command having too many PIPs with the high dice, or too few with the low dice and the problem of too much staying power in the huge command at the same time.

An alternative I would also consider is using 3 normal commands but modifying the PIP dice, e.g. using 4-sided dice.

[Tisifoni]

The chart I came up with has five columns, the first the score of 2D6, the second and third paired showing the split between commander and additional general with the former commanding two and the latter commanding one command, the fourth and fifth paired in the same way, but with the opposite division of commands.

The scores don't vary that much between the pairs of columns between the commanding general and the additional commander; four of 11 lines.
This also doesn't consider the 'free' initiative point that comes with each general or command.

I hate D4.  Maybe there's a simpler approach though, I shall consider 2D6 or a D12 and splitting the score between the three commands.  I like D12 . . .

Update on 31/03/2020:

I think having considered rolling 3 x D4, or 2 x D6, or one D12 and looking at the sort of average score of 3 x D4 would produce I tend to think the best solution (assuming an army of three commands) is either a D12, re-rolling any scores of 1 or 2, or roll a D10 (which I am also not keen on, perhaps a D20 numbered 1 - 10 twice) and add two.  Each would give a range of 3 - 12; minimum score per command of 1, max. of 4).  Also of course the free initiative point for the generals represented.

Scores of 3, 6, 9 or 12 giving the same allocation of initiative to each command.  Additional initiative points being allocated by a pre-decided priority, e.g. right flank, then centre, or right flank then left.

[LawrenceG1]

Scores of 3, 6, 9 or 12 giving the same allocation of initiative to each command.  Additional initiative points being allocated by a pre-decided priority, e.g. right flank, then centre, or right flank then left.

An effect of this method is it gives a 1 in 10 chance of everyone getting 1 PIP whereas in a "normal" game, this is only a 1 in 216 probability, or if using d4 then 1 in 64. It also misses out on the possibility of a very uneven spread (e.g. rolling 1,1,4 in an extreme case with d4s).

You could make a 6x6 chart with 36 different PIP combinations (i.e. 3 values each between 1 and 4) and then roll 2 d6 (across and down) to determine which combination will be used. You could probably get most of the possible combinations (not sure how many unique ones there are). The extremes 1,1,1 and 4,4,4 would at least be only 1/36 now, instead of 1/10.

[Tisifoni]

The rules do provide for the averaging of D6 across commands in regular armies.   This would split the PIP score as evenly as possible, but rather than 'rounding up' the additional points would be allocated to commands according to a priority system, e.g. right flank, then centre, or right flank then left flank.  There is of course a probability curve of scores with this system which one wouldn't get with a D10 or D12.

2D6 would produce a range of 2 to 12 with 7 as the most frequent result 6/36; which would be interpreted as a PIP 'spread' of 3,2,2, with 3,3,2 or 2,2,2 next most frequent, between them accounting for 16/36 rolls.  The probability of 12 would of course be 1/36, of 11 (or 4,4,3) 2/36, of 10 (or 4,3,3) 3/36.  As you note on a 2D6 chart you can't include all the outcomes that you might get from rolling 3D4, but it is possible to get most on such a chart.  for example nine can be scored by 5 + 4 or 6 + 3, and nine could be allocated as PIP of 4 4 1 or 4 3 2 or 3 3 3.  So, does one eliminate the most average result 3 3 3 or the most extreme 4 4 1, or allocate 4 3 2 to all ?

Given that the highest number of PIP that can be allocated to a command is 4 and each must be allocated a minimum of one, provided commands are given priority, as above, they detail of the allocation could be left to the player.  For example a throw of 7, obviously the most probable score, would give the player a choice between 4 2 and 1, 3 3 and 1, or 3 2 and 2.  The higher number in each case allocated to the top priority command and the lower to the lowest priority command.

One question is what to do if the 2D6 score is 2.  One option is to allow the points to be used in any command, but only for defensive actions, e.g. for an element to turn to face a threat or withdraw from a threat, unless perhaps an attack led personally by a general.  The other option is simply to re-roll.

I should probably try each.  I have tried one re-fight of Paraitakene, using 2D6 and 'averaging', which went well.  Markedly better for Antigonos than Eumenes . . .

[Tisifoni]

Two further experimental re-fights of Trebia later.  The 2D6 with PIP allocation by priority seems to work well.  The armies used in both re-fights, Trebia and Paraitakene, were in points value in the range from around 180 to 230 (DBMM 200 range).

It having been some time since I used the DBMM rules I must admit I stumbled a bit over the combat modifiers for grading and ranks, so probably should have a further experiment or two.

I did a quick analysis of the 36 battles listed in the Strategos II booklet (fore-runner to Lost Battles) and found 58% of the armies have one general represented, 32% have two*.  Suggesting that one general should suffice for 2/3 of armies ?

* The other 10% have no general; these are federations of Gallic tribes or leagues of city states with no outstanding commander.

[LawrenceG1]

* The other 10% have no general; these are federations of Gallic tribes or leagues of city states with no outstanding commander.

That might mean they had several generals, but none was in overall command. OR maybe history does not record anything about the command structure.

In DBMM the PIPs abstract the whole command and control system, including initiatives by lower level commanders, so to some extent it does not matter how many generals you have, as long as the PIPs available are enough to provide a realistic level of manoeuvre for the army.


Yes, ranks and grades are a bit complicated and you can get "skill fade" if you don't play regularly.

[Tisifoni]

The two dice, three commands split seems to work well.  Also the marginal flexibility over allocation of some dice roll scores can accommodate the requirement for more than 1 PIP for some actions.

Further experimentation is on hold however as the demands of 'working from home' mean that I now have PC and peripherals on each of the two tables in the dining room (home PC and work PC).