"Dogs of war" Topic

No, this has nothing to do with Warhammer mercs. GW did not invent EVERYTHING!

Marcus Antonius:
And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Julius Caesar Act 3, scene 1, 270–275

Back in the early 80s, a bunch of us WRG Ancients were haveing some adult beverages after some game or other.
We were bemoaning the general tendency of players to pick all A or B class troops, and ignore the rank and file C class.

One of us, and it may have been me, suggested a "Dogs of War" tournament format, in which no troops in your army could be better than C class, and no armor heavier than Medium. Naturally, Irregular would be favored over Regular. Lances and pila would be frowned upon. Basically, you would have "ordinary" troops, nothing special.
We laughed, and then a little bit later, I dropped out of The Hobby™ for a while.

When I got back, I got in touch with my old gaming buddies, and found that there had been a few actual "Dogs of War" tournaments. I thought that was neat. The only skill involved would be actual deployment, and not list building.

I wonder how this would work in Flames of War tournaments, in which the Company Commander would not have air strikes on call, or 155mm artillery, or the Battleship Simply Marvelous at his beck and call.

Have a tournament where everyone can only play reluctant trained or reluctant conscript troops?

Limit or downgrade vahicles. Say your list could field PzIV's downgrade them to PzIII's. You could also follow infinate arrays suggestion and play low skill rated troops, but I'd go for a middle area not too many conscripts or everyone will get slaughtered by one MG team.

Have a tournament where everyone can only play reluctant trained or reluctant conscript troops?

That has possibilities.
Have a "skill/motivation" pool.
Reluctant, conscript = 1 each.
Confident, trained = 2 each.
Fearless, veteran = 3 each.
You cannot have a combination of skill and motivation that add up to more than 3.

No Front armor greater than 5.
No AT rating more than 10.
Maybe set up a "tank pool" with no front armor + AT rating greater than … 15? Fear the Grant tank! (Or at least frown upon the uber-gamer shameless enough to field one.)

John,

I was part of that group, although I don't recall that particular conversation :) I remember how I was new to ancient gaming and couldn't afford a nice army of metal figures. So I took a bunch of Airfix Ancient Britons and created a Celtic army of some sort that was pretty much nothing but huge blocks of Irrecular C light-medium infantry. They actually performed quite well, being almost unbreakable due to their size.

I very much like the idea of not using elite troops. That's why I mostly play US in FOW :)

The only skill involved would be actual deployment, and not list building.

Let me ammend that…
Add "tactics" to that, of course. I inadvertantly left that part out.
And, I do not mean "Charge the leve speamen with your Irregular A Knights (or KnS to you DB types).

Same idea as those who field all-Goblin armies in WFB. It can be very useful for seeing how a rule set works without all the rule stretching elites.

I don't see how someone who commands armies that are all elite, all the time can fail to get bored after a short while. Maybe worse, he who has such forces and can't win a battle to save his life.

Some games are balanced better than others. If my elites are the best my chosen nation has to offer but are treated shabbily by the rules (not always in obvious ways), then someone with less shabby elites will stomp me.

You could have some sort of tournament/campaign where everyone starts with 'basic' troops. Each game you win you get to upgrade one unit by one 'grade'. Maybe pick a unit that did well in the battle…..

For Flames, I'd simply say "NO Divisional Support, NO Air support. Period."

There is an annual "average joe" tournament in hattiesburg mississippi for fog. No superior or elite troops allowed. It's loads of fun.

Am I missing something, is FOW now considered a DBx game? It does seem to fit that mold.

To the extent that one way to play it is as a points based tournament game, perhaps.

The original idea, which I like to claim as mine, but… probably was not, was to have tournaments with absolutely no superior troops, and none with special abilities. Chess without queens, rooks and bishops.

I have played a grand total of 2 DBM games, and that was decidedly non-superior Carthaginians. So, I have no clue how to "dogs of war down" DBX.

How about a tournament where you build the worst army you can think of – and when you play your games you use your opponent's army and he uses yours.

Proper test of generalship!

:-)

That's the spirit!

All A and B troops?

As Princess Trixie sasys-- Eeuw!

I really only have a general idea of what "A and B" troops mean as I wouldn't be caught dead in a tournament. However the hankering for the Old Guard everywhere is not a sentiment I am unaware of.

From my experience it's only when you get into the more "human" troops (and here I'm not talking about fantasy but real humans as opposed to the over-stated, over collected, and overpainted kewpie dolls of the elite troops that the game starts to get interesting.

I make all my armies now with rather poorish troops. and the aim here is to have fun with the units. This is the reason I do Imagi-Nations almost exclusively and in them I want only mediocre and poorish units. There's a lot mor eaction and a lot more excitement. Grind away with your irresitible force /immoveable objects A &B units,- as boring as watching paint dry-- beige paint at that.

Yes yes, your 443rd SS Leibstandarte Alois Hinkel Mess-kit Repair Battalion of the Old, Middle, Young, Upper, Lower, over, under around and through guard may be able to walk on water and not get their shoes wet. It may stroke your ego to command them and think it "wuz all you who did it" but the real fun is with the bumbling, stumbling, humans with their fears and foibles, frenzies and faints tha make up the "Dogs."

There's a wonderful Part of Lord of the Rings where Frito and Hamfist are trying to sneak into Mordor and they're listenign to a pair of Orcs arguing, and one of the Orcs is saying "AHHH!! I tell you they've slipped! Something's gone wrong up at the top!" where these creatures become very very hnuman and we see the whole of Sauron's ramshackle empire behidn the facade.

If I ever build a fantasy army those two Orcs are going to be the first figutes, and they will be INVULNERABLE.

By the way in one of my Imaginations, The Army of Princess Trixie of Saxe-Burlap und Schleswig Beerstein, I have the ultimate unit. Each infantry regiment has it's regimental gun. However! Far from giving the Army an overwhelming advantage in artilleyr they are completely useless. They have NO fire factor and NO range. The reason is they are all inky-dinky howitzers which fire a shell too small to do damage, and most of the time with a powder charge too small to even burst the shell. It just spins around on the ground. In the schema of the Realm, these guns are primarily used to shoot off fireworks on the princes' birthday (she loves fireworks!) and they have become a point of pride to each regiment as the regimental commanders delight in outdoing each other in creating fancy Gala costumes for the event, where there is a prize for the best display and best costume. This gives me the chance to use up those odd 1 packet of figures I buy now and then at a convention to play around with and see if I'm interested. So we have gun crew in Pirate Outfits, Zulu regalia, Manchu Bannermen, Roman Centurions, Amazons, Ancient Egyptians such that the whole of them lined up together looks like the triumphal march from Aida!

Absolutely useless son the table top, but absolutely charming to look at in the lulls in the game.

Aren't Russians in WW2 all conscripts? Field Db… Book 1 armies for none elites other than nobility.

I like the 'write the worst army list you can, then command your opponent's army' idea.

If you're going to follow my suggestion about no divisional support and no air, I suspect that you'd see a lot of multicompany Infantry forces. The Infantry battalion (two infantry companies and all the battalion weapons platoons) seems to do really well in Flames. Kinda funny, that.

Soviet Guards army should differ from other Armies only by name :)

(and higher percentage of American tanks)

This type of event is done sometimes with DBA at conventions. Tournament with armies that must have a certain number of lower level troops such as at least 2-3 hordes or 6 light infantry or light horse.

The "average joe" fog tournament only allows average troops, and it works well.

Try using the FOW Infantry ACE rules and limit the points to 500-900. Require that the start point is 1 company of at least 2 platoons plus Battalion support. Check out the thread on "Smaller FOW Armies are More Fun from 10SEP2013.

Anyone remember the Garbaginians? (Carthagininan application of that principle); Or who was it brought a DBM Libyan Army (All Psiloi?) to the Tournaments for a while.

Glad this topic got bumped: I missed it first (and second) time round. Oldroman's idea is great, and I love the sound of Princess Trixie's army.

I must confess that when I started playing WRG 6th I was young enough to be seduced (like many others, I think) by the Nikephorian Byzantines (Look! Tagmatic Kataphraktoi are Reg A SHC, L, Sh! Varangians are Reg A HI 2HCW, Sh! And you can make them EHI! That *must* be the best army!), and have a pitifully painted Essex & Minifigs 15mm army lurking somewhere. Strangely enough, I had much more actual fun in an 'Arthurian' sub-Roman campaign, with more Irr C and Reg D LMI than you could shake a stick at… That was an educational experience, and it was nice to be reminded of it.

If Elite troops dominate every tournament its because they are too effective for their point cost or you are allowed to field them without substantial numbers of regulars. Overtime the tournament market place will indicate where point systems and army lists are failing. Its way Blades dominate HOTT tournaments – they have no natural enemies and there are no effective army list constraints.

Flames has a huge problem with its support rules. But you should bear in mind that its really a battalion level game (far more sensible for WWII style battles) and only nominally 1-1 to placate its fan base.

Better designs would alleviate the need for special rules. Oddly in DBM3.0 bad troops became dominate.

TomT

I favour deploying your army on the table, then making a series of rolls to indicate which units are veteran, elite, trained or raw. Inevitably all the elite will be in the wrong place, and all the raw will be right up front with no cover!

I often thought it would be fun to have the other guy pick your OB from your army list – minimizing the good stuff and maximizing the bad stuff!

To avoid knowing the other guy's list in advance you could make a 4 player game and swap. Not for everyone and not all the time but it could be an antidote to the hyper elite lists.

But in the end FOW is a no go for me because any rules set that using army lists and is built for tournaments is just not my thing.

I would happily try the rules if someone had the stuff and designed a scenario – but I'm a little out of the loop these days.

[q]I would happily try the rules if someone had the stuff and designed a scenario[/q]

There have been plenty of scenarios made available in assorted sources for FoW with the OOBs fixed for the battle rather than army lists. They work well for the few I have tried. I've never been to a tournament for any wargame in my life, not my interest. 2nd Ed supplements had quite a few scattered around.

Get a look at the Wittman's Wild Ride scenario – great fun. Also to be honest if you have a scenario from another system of a similar level of detail or an OOB for any real action then you should be able to port it over pretty easily.

I pretty sure this has been done for a FoW tournament. Not one that I attended, but I recall readings about something similar on the BF site in the not so recent past.

YouTube link