Donald Featherstone's Lost Tales (2009) - Articles
Zama Battle Day Rules for Ancient wargames 300BC TO 400AD Donald Featherstone by Martyn Simpson
Member of the Society Ancients. The article was first published in Slingshot 271 July 2010
Another year another battle day. I always like the challenge of trying something new for this event. I thought it would be a good idea to celebrate the re-publication by John Curry of Tony Baths Peltast and Pila and Donald Featherstone’s Lost Tales with a morning and afternoon game of each. A sort of Bath verses Featherstone thing. As it came to pass I only used Donald’s rules on the day so I can’t make the comparison. Also I believe both these authors had Carthaginian armies and loved their Elephants and I wanted proper Elephant rules which would see them go berserk and trample their own men. Well I would because I will be playing Roman.
I quite like the idea of Old school wargaming, that there was this golden past of simple rules, where wargames were conducted in a gentlemanly fashion and the games were hugely enjoyable. I first had the term ‘Old School’ explained to me by my son, as those bands from the past which are relevant and cool today, like Black Sabbath! Hmm I remember that band being really awful back then, I was into progressive rock. An interesting analogy. I had thought that like Charles Grant, Donald Featherstone had acquiesced Ancient war game rules to WRG as part of the misguided drive in the 60’s and 70’s to a national set of rules which everybody would play, but much to my surprise in Lost Tales, which is a collection of Don’s Favourite rules there are two sets of Ancient rules.
These rules are very simple with five and a half pages. Making them work required a little thought as obviously there are player conventions which are unwritten, but as a sensible adult who started wargaming in the 60’s I’m okay about this and our post modernist sensibility can draw on the many other sets of rules we have used. For example I assumed simultaneous move, as charging a unit into a melee gives a great advantage, unless you add a counter charge rule. Anyhow simultaneous moving using an order pad is so 60’s. John Tunstil’s Miniature Warfare magazine always had an advert for order sheet pads on the back page to help organise your troops and win battles. Using a grid sheet you assume the top of the page is you opponents table edge and you indicate by arrow the direction you unit is going to move. During the battle day, our use of orders pads did draw comment from people of a certain age.
Simultaneous movement and the use of order pads worked well because unlike alternative movement where you can normally react to an opponents move, you have to make a decision, partly on not knowing what your opponent is going to do. So you can end up being wrong footed by guessing wrong or as what was often the case waiting and not doing anything and suddenly finding your opponent had the initiative. You can find an example of an order pad in Donald Featherstone’s Advance Wargames again published by John Curry.
We were using DBMM bases and ‘rings of death for individual ‘ casualty identification. And so grouped our units into 4 bases. In preparation for the game we fought a series of enjoyable test games Trebia and Ipila Which we needed to do to ‘tune’ the rules and get them be very playable. They gave a game similar in feel to the popular Neil Thomas rules but with a morale test. In our games we found we had to look at the situation on the table (often not covered by the rules) and having to agree as to what would happen. Obviously this is not a set of rules you’re going to risk your ancient wargame world ranking in some league. This further reinforces a point made by John Curry, that Don’s rules are social rules for use between friends. We enjoyed our trial games, the battles went to course. We quite like the casualty attrition effect, which triggers a morale test.
On the battle day it self we set up historically, but the battle did not go to plan. Hannibal decided to reinforce his right flank with a veteran unit from his last line. This and an elephant unit on his right got involved in fighting the Roman cavalry on the flank. The Romans were supposed to win here. They didn’t. This now pressed down on the Roman flank and even though I had weakened the effect of the Elephants much to the concern of Hannibal they were used to effect even the Trumpet attack on a 456 to trigger a stampede didn’t stop them. Needless to say Masinissa was able to chase his opposing Numidians off the field, but by the time he was looking to return to the main action the Romans cause was lost.
So did the rules work? I must admit I was a little disappointed (I was Roman). I felt there were too many situations which required a little more detail for them to be properly resolved. For example the Morale test. There are only three modifiers. These being attacked by elephants, unit class and adjacent unit routing. 25% and 50% casualties and losing a melee trigger a test. But we had units being attacked in the flank and rear surviving and this happened quite a few times to be testing our belief in what was happening. Also not having an overall army break point meant that the Romans were looking to fight to the last man! A lack of command and control rules did further not help here.
Coming back to this concept of Old School and simple rules, in my opinion DBA especially in it’s Big Battle DBA version is as simple a good set of rules you can use with sufficient detail. And people are quick to forget that Phil Barker was there in the 60’s. He is Old School.
