Advice for Beginners

The following is mainly based on my experience with DBM Ancient rules, but much of it will also apply to other periods/rules. I originally wrote this article in the days of 7th Edition for our club newsletter, this is a revised version for DBM.

Read the Rules

Sounds obvious, but a lot of players take a long time to digest the mechanics of the rules. This is partly because they aren't written as clearly as they could be and partly because there is so much to remember.

I think the best way is once you have had a skim-read you should go through the sequence of play. The sequence of play lists what happens and when it happens and includes a reference to where the details are. So go through step by step and look up the references and then you should start to see how the game flows, and what happens when and why. This will help you to see how things fit together which is something beginners often have trouble with.

When you play a game you will often find that questions come up that you are not sure on, what I used to do was jot those things down and read up on them afterwards, after a while those things begin to fall into place.

Lose Games

You are never going to learn anything unless you play games, and probably lose them. The standard of play among experienced players is very high, particularly in Ancients. You can fully expect to lose more often than not for some time, but that is the best way to learn. If you avoid playing people because you know they will beat you then don't expect to ever be as good as them, but also remember that even the best players are fallible so never start a game believing that you can't win.

Also competitions and Conventions are a very good way to learn, you learn heaps playing wargames all weekend against different opponents.

Winning isn't everything, after all we do this for fun don't we? but it's nice to feel that you weren't totally outclassed.

Take advice

If you are a teenager you will find this particularly difficult, why should you take advice when you know it all? But bear in mind that some of our experienced players have been wargaming longer than you have been alive! Our club is lucky to have experienced players who are willing to go out of their way to help beginners, so take advantage of that resource because not all clubs have it. Ugh... I'm starting to sound like a parent.

If you are not sure about something in a game always ask why, don't be aggro about it, just try to be clear in your own mind, your opponent could be making a genuine mistake.

If you lost try to work out why, ask your opponent after the game what he thinks you should have done and why.

Try using some Tactics

There are books in most libraries with details on battle tactics, whether through theory or historical account. Glean what you can from these but bear in mind that most wargames are on a much smaller scale using only a few thousand men rather than vast armies.

Two important principals to remember are;

• Maximise your advantages while minimising your opponent's advantages. In other words if your enemy has a better ability to operate in rough terrain then don't try to attack him in an area dominated by that sort of terrain... try to manoeuvre him out. If your army is faster or more manoeuvrable than the enemy then use that to outsmart him, if you fight a slogging match then all of the points you paid for that extra manoeuvrability will be wasted. If he's got more firepower than you then get stuck in ASAP, don't stand back and shoot it out.
• Get there fastest with the mostest; Hit a weak point in the enemy army with more and better troops while pinning the rest of his army... before he can do that to you. Don't let your opponent dominate play, try and make him fight you on your terms rather than you on his, force him to react to your initiatives rather than you to his. Generally this is only possible if you attack.

The hardest thing to get to grips with is the lower level tactics, that is knowing what units are influencing others at any one time and what are the possible results if you do this rather than that. This can only come through experience, and experience can only come through playing games.

Concentrate

I've noticed that often games between two beginners take much longer than usual. If you don't concentrate you will lose track of the game, and get bored and not learn anything. Though this isn't always easy in a noisy club like ours.

Make up an Army that works

Even though there are so many armies within the Ancient period most are reasonably viable, though many I would not recommend to a beginner. Ultimately you should choose an army that you will enjoy using, that suits your style and interests, because there is no super army.

When working out your army list you need to know how the army works, is it a shock army with lots of punch (i.e. Teutonic Knight), is a rough terrain army (i.e. Viking), is it a reliable infantry army (i.e. Early Roman), or is it a Skirmishing army (i.e. Seljuk Turk).

Some army lists will allow armies that fight in more than one way (i.e. Late Roman). The main point is know what the function of each unit you use will be, how it will fit into your battle plan most of the time, it is no good buying units that will be a hindrance rather than a help, unless they are compulsory! Also if you try to use an army for something it wasn't designed for you are bound to meet with failure.

I tend to set up an army list that copes reasonably well against most opponents and rarely vary it, others who have a greater variety of figures for a particular army will tailor it to each opponent he faces.

Some principals I try to keep to are:

• Use 3 or 4 commands. If three it should be configured with equal sized commands, or one very large and two very small. If four it should have three equal sized commands and one very small.
• Always have enough skirmishers to be able to pin your opponent and prevent him from pinning you.
• Ideally each command should have Element Equivalents totalling a multiple of 3 plus ½.
• Avoid gimmicky troops as they are rarely worth it, things like Artillery, Ps (X), Field Fortifications, Expendables, and mounted infantry.
• Most Cavalry types are vulnerable to shooting, consider how you will screen them until you unleash them.
• Irregulars have to have more thought put into the structure so that troops with different speeds are not in the same command if possible.
• If you have a lot of expensive troops then it's necessary to balance them with some cheap and nasty ones, otherwise your army will be too small.

Don't Bitch about the rules

This is really pretty pointless, these rules are a standard accepted rules for Ancients world-wide. A set of rules must be a balance of accuracy of detail and playability, and will never please everyone all of the time.

Instead try to understand the logic behind them, and how all of the mechanisms fit together to make a balanced whole. If you still don't like them I suggest you try another historical period.

Painting

Wargamers either love or hate this part of the hobby, I personally get as much satisfaction from this as from playing the games. Below are some tips based on how I go about it, others may have quite different ideas. The system I use now is probably 10 times faster than the silly system I used when I first started Wargaming;

1. First undercoat the figures in Matt Black, I use PlastiKote Automotive Primer Matt Black for this.
2. Then mount the figures on strips of cardboard using double sided tape (3-12 figures per strip) so that you can get your brush to all parts of the figures.
3. I use Tamiya Enamels for most of my colours, and Humbrol for those that Tamiya don't do very well (i.e. Red and Yellow). There are better paints available, and more expensive, but these do me OK. All you need is the basic colours, a flesh colour, metallics for armour, and a few different browns. Any variations you can easily obtain by mixing some of the above.
4. Paint the figures in batches of one troop type (12 to 96 figures together) using one colour on all of the figures before going onto other colours. I generally do horses, armour and lighter colours early on.
5. Once finished touch up any figures that need touching up, again doing each colour in turn.
6. PVA glue is best for mounting figures on bases, thick cardboard is best for bases.
7. Once the PVA has dried I paint the bases using acrylics (tester pots are good for this) using browns or dull greens then immediately dip them in a mixture of different flocks.
8. Once they have dried with the flock sticking to the base I cover the base with watered down PVA (about Trim-milk consistency).
9. Once this has dried I varnish the figures using Spray-Kote Clear Plastic, I prefer semi-gloss as it brings out the colours.

I hope this has been helpful.