"Day of Battle:Middle Ages review/overview" Topic

Day of Battle is a wargame designed for medieval battles made up of unit blocks of 28 or 15mm scale miniatures and uses a mix of D6 dice and regular playing cards for the core gameplay mechanics as well as the classic (although initiative based) IGOUGO framework which is divided into several sub phases for each players turn. It also features a heavy emphasis on the personalities leading armies and mimics the medieval difficulties of raising armies which adds a lot of flavor to the rules. It should also be noted that this game, just like By Fire & Sword which I have reviewed previously on this blog, has fleeting army lists that vary in size between players. It's not a "point by point" approach, instead players are playing as commanders during a period where mustering troops was hard and where you maybe didn't always know who would heed your call to arms.

And while I personally like this approach, it may not be to the liking of "tournament minded" players that want perfectly matched army lists.

Let me start by focusing on what I thought made the rules interesting, the personalities leading your army. And this part of the rules is also fairly big and detailed. There is a list of social ranks, ranging from Knight to King/Emperor, each players start out as a "Baron". Each personality has beside their social rank also an esteem and honor value. All three combined affect various aspects of your commander, from his ability to efficiently raise troops prior to battle, to how big his retinue of core troops and body guards is and how many sub commanders he will have in his army.

This whole aspects creates an organic growth of your army size during a campaign where victories and great deeds on the battlefield advance your status.

Check the full review/overview over at my blog:
link

Thank you for such a fair and in depth review. As other micro authors know it is hard to get anybody to even look at your games so when somebody comes along and actually reads them and understands them it is like a miracle regardless of the reviewers feelings. I feel you did the rules justice and really grasped the essence of the game and what it is trying to say.

Consider yourself a knight of the realm :)

Chris Parker

No problem Chris, I'm often very curious about various rule sets and this one turned out to involve a lot of interesting aspects that I had not really encountered in any other set of rules that I have come across (which is always something that I like in a new set of rules) :-)

Did you mean a standard 52 card deck with two Jokers (red and black) for a total of 54 cards? Because your review says "54+Jokers", which sounds like a total of 55 or 56 cards, depending upon the number of Jokers. Is this a deck included with the rules?

Standard playing deck with both jokers, they are magical :)

Review updated, it was a typo.

Thanks for the review, Anatoli.

Excellent review. I have been waiting for someone to do one for these rules.

Most of my armies are based for Impetvs. How much fudging do you think I may have to do if I try out DOB with the scheme of mounting?

None what so ever, DoB is now using Impetus Base schemes. And for thios that are new to this or older this means that a unit in either game has a footprint on the table equal to 4 WRG/DBx stands. For 25mm figures this makes a unit footprint or base 120.. wide by 60 to 80mm deep.

You can find a video on my website showing this.

YouTube link

Chris

here is an updated link to the review

link

Reading that full review reminded me of how fun this game system can be!

And there are now both Norman and Crusader expansion supplements!