"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.