"DBA Scale up of Battlefield" Topic

Hello All,

I have a question of upscaling the playing area for DBA. With 60mm basing the playing area is normally a 48" square.

Due my collection I plan to use 100mm basing. Does this means I require a battlefield that is 7' x 7'?

My math is 100mm\60mm = 1.7 x 4' = 7'

Do others have experience playing DBA with larger basing?

What did you do to your battlefield area?

Thanks

For 40mm the standard table is 2'x2' Scaling this up for 100mm gives 5'x5'. An average sized person can reach about 3' in from a table edge without too much difficulty. Having a table with both dimensions larger than 6' would make it difficult to reach the center of the table. folding tables are usually 2.5' by 6' or 2.5' by 8'. using two folding tables would result in 5' by 6' or 5' by 8'. using three of the smaller would give 6' by 7.5'. The width of the playing area is a bit more important than the depth when allowing for flanking moves. How much space you would want on the flanks would be your choice.

The people who play big battle DBA where armies are two to three times the number of bases keep the same table depth but expand the width of the gaming area.

For 60mm basing the playing area is recommended to be 36" by 36"
This would give 5' by 5' for 100mm (or think 4" base width, an upscaled version of 40mm base width, which is the way I will be going with movement trays allowing individually based figures to be used)

I don't think the game would be improved by going to a larger size playing area, although it is allowed for in the rules. I agree with williamb that 6' is a practical limit to the depth.

John

This is for 28mm minis. I have a 5' x 8' table and was curious if that would be enough.

The standard (small) DBA table size is 1 foot per 20mm of element frontage.
So 5 foot square for 100mm elements.
You have a bit of wiggle room on you 5x8 table

Cheers
David

Warhammer Fantasy used essentially 100mm wide units/elements (5x 20mm square individually based figures), and would play with 8-10 units on a 6'x4' table. Sure, that is a different game, but it gives you a perspective on how "necessary" battle size is.

You don't say the depth of your elements if 100mm base width. Assuming something in the 60mm-80mm range, I think 8'x5' would be fine. The way I think about it is comparing the ratios of the area of an element to the area of the battlefield overall. A 40mm x 30mm cavalry element in standard 15mm basing is 1200 square mm using a 2'x2' field minimum, so 4'. If you used a 100mm x 60mm element, that is 6000 square mm, so you need something ideally 5 times the area of the 15mm battlefield, which would be 20 square feet, for which a 6'x4' battlefield would work.

The standard 25mm sized battlefield is actually 48" square, or 16 feet square, using 60mm x 40mm bases as the standard cavalry base which equal 2400 square mm. Using your 100mm x 60mm sized bases as our example which equal 6000 square mm, that is a little over double the area of a 25mm element. So, going from 4' x 4' to your 8' x 5' table (at 40 feet square) works out about perfect.

Keep in mind the games at 15mm scales and 25mm scales play differently: the 15mm scale battlefield is listed as 24" x 24" up to 32" x 32" while the 25mm scale battlefield is a flat 4' x 4'. Many still play 15mm scale with 2' x 2' boards, and there is nowhere near the maneuvering room in 15mm scale games using that sized field compared to 25mm scale being played on a 4' x 4' board.

I am making movement trays for my minis so all my units will be 100mm x 50mm

Thank you for the replies.

play on what you have physical room for…dimensions in the rules were chosen for pretty arbitrary reasons. It really doesnt matter for the game

We tried playing 24 element mini-BBDBA on a 6'x4' board and it seemed fine, although the rules purist in our group stayed fixated on the idea that DBA is only to be played in 12- or 36-count element armies.

DBA 3.0 allows 25mm+ to be played on 3'X3" up to 4'X4' tables (I strongly recommend 4X4).

For larger battles we use standard 6X4s. Don't let purists ruin your games.

But I also strongly (X2) recommend using 60mm frontages. It will make your armies compatible with other players and makes manuver much easier. Put "Solid" on 20mm deep bases, Fast on 30mm deep bases and Mounted on 45-50mm deep bases.

TomT

@Thomas

What do you find the benefit of the 4' table ? I find the small area challenging in terms of running out of space, particularly if there is lots of terrain. I think this adds to the game.

John

We play 4'x4' and it allows for reasonable but not ridiculous flanking maneuvers. Light horse can go around a flank if not checked, but can be pushed off far enough that it becomes a real decision whether to sink the pips into executing the maneuver (by the time the light horse swing out then swing back to the main fight). The depth of the field similarly makes the decision to attack a camp also a tough decision--perhaps worth the reward but you are also sending the elements way away from the likely main battle to do so.