Errhile wrote:I guess DBA is De Bellis Antiquitatis.
It is. I find it quite useful and entertaining, though it's not the newest, shiniest toy on the shelves. I enjoy "larger", multi-based historical wargames, no matter the rules. As most of them utilise multiples of the common "de bellis ..." basing conventions, DBA is a good way to keep me interested and gaming happily while I paint up a larger force. If I painted up a whole army just for "Field of Glory", "Hail Caesar" or "Impetus" (to name some examples), I would probably lose momentum and focus halfway through the core units. However, with just a dozen or so bases/elements painted (which is roughly a third of the smallest playable contingents in the larger games), I already have a DBA army that I can use for games and campaigns. My Romans started asa DBA force, then I painted up several DBA sets of Romans for a "year of the four emperors" campaign, and the result was a playable core for a larger rules set.
The main problem with my Napoleonics is that there is no such kickstart rules set that keeps me running, so my painting progress got severely bogged down.
