Hi
At the weekend 8 players in southern Germany refought Fornovo with DBMM.
The game lasted about 3,5 hours.
All participants had a good time.
None of the participants knew which battle was to be simulated and only one knew vaguely of it.
As a source I used the Osprey book and the Nunawading web page.
The Australians had simulated Fornovo with DBM and I used their army lists and victory conditions.
See
http://www.nwa.org.au/dbx/articles/fornovo/fornovo.htmlFor a map I used google maps and edited out all the obvious modern things, like the motorway.
The maps are shown in the attached PDF file.
The maps, table and DBMM movement were all to the correct scale.
The yellow rectangle on the first map shows the board, which is two conventional boards end to end, i.e. 3,6 by 1,2 meters.
We started with French and Italians in different rooms.
The French (orange on the map) were shown the second map and "persuaded" to cross the river to try and bypass the strong Italian position.
Whilst the French were putting figures on the road on the board (the first three commands on table, heading up the road from the South), the Italian CinC was shown the third map and asked if he wanted to meet up with his generals and make a plan (i.e. distribute the DBMM die as does a regular army) or simply sound the attack, whereby each command would have rolled individually as if it were irregular and decided individually which ford to take.
He chose to meet up, which gave the French two more moves.
The Italians then started moving on roads at DBMM speeds, but on the map, not yet on the board.
After a few moves the Italians appeared at the fords at the edge of the board.
They were then informed that the river was in full flow and would be rough for mounted and difficult for others, which meant that the artillery, which had been brought along by the general with the highest PIP, would be unable to cross.
The Italian light horse command attacking from the rear initially tried to bypass the rear French command, consisting mainly of bows. Then the Italians got cheeky and thought they could take out a few bowmen on the way but got themselves involved in a fight which they eventually lost. Historically this command bypassed the rearguard and plundered the baggage, including the French kings collection of pornography. After that they were too exhausted to take any further part in the battle.
Historically the remaining Italians crossed at three different fords and were beaten piecemeal.
My Italians decided not to use the southerly of the these three fords, which lead to a traffic jam at the middle ford.
They did manage to advance in columns by road and deploy into a battle line.
The French similarly deployed from their road into a line and hit the Italians first, as it became obvious that the Italian position was becoming stronger with time as their reserves came up.
What then followed was historical. The Swiss mercenaries fighting for the French ripped through everything they met, including one Italian general. The French Kn(S) beat twice their number of Italian Kn(O), who were deployed two deep. The French king personally killed two Italian Kn elements and then stormed into the infantry to get the final kill needed to win the battle, what a hero !
Admittedly the last round did start looking very dangerous for the French as a few of their Kn did die and the French Kn being only one deep with no reserves, but it was too late for the Italians to exploit this.
I can recommend Fornovo. The dimensions of time and space make it doable and interesting. The battle involves a fair bit of manouvre before the armies clash and I think both sides could win.
neil fox
