De Bellis Multitudinis

De Bellis Multitudinis (DBM) is probably the most played set of rules for the hobby of ancient and medieval wargaming today, for the period 3000 BC to 1485 AD. These rules allow armies to be chosen from published Army Lists (4 books with about 250 different army lists, but many more once all the in-list variants are taken into account) using a points system to select roughly equal armies if required.

DBM was written by the UK based Wargames Research Group (WRG) team of Phil Barker, Richard Bodley Scott and Sue Laflin Barker. It evolved from the simpler DBA ruleset in the early 1990's. The DBx series now also includes Hordes of the Things or HOTT (a fantasy version), and DBR (a Renaissance version).

DBM evolved from the earlier WRG 7th Edition Ancients ruleset, using its mechanism of fixed size elements as the basic fighting unit rather than individual figures, each element representing the smallest coherent fighting group possible. Any element in DBM covers the same frontage but at different formation densities.

DBM also broke with ancients ruleset tradition by defining troop types by function - defining troops as bladesmen rather than Roman legionaries for example - allowing a higher level of abstraction to be used across 5,000 years of warfare. Coupled with a fairly simple game system this produces a fast playing but subtle game that mirrors ancient warfare a lot more closely than most rulesets that have gone before.

The armies are usually played in 15mm or 25mm scale, though 6mm and 54mm are used. Ground scale is in paces, and the number of inches to a pace varies according to the figure scale - 1" to 50 paces in 15mm, 40mm to 50 paces in 25mm. The frontage width of the element base is standardised for all troop types, the depth and number of troop models on it varies by formation type (light infantry - or psiloi in DBM terminology - have 2 men per base, cavalry 3, heavy infantry 4 etc)

Troop scale is not stated specifically, but as a the range of troops in an element ranges from 128 to 256, and the number of figures from 2 to 4, an assumed scale of c 1 : 60 is not way off the mark. Elephants, Chariots, Artillery and Shipping are 1 model per element, representing varying numbers of that type - for example 16 elephants or 25 chariots.

As well as friendly games, DBM competitions are played worldwide - including a truly global World championship. Games are typically played from 200 to 500 points in competitions.

External Links

The DBM community is global, a good starting point is author Richard Bodley Scott's webpage http://www.byzant.demon.co.uk/dbm.htm