Scenario Ideas II: DBA Before Columbus

I hate miniatures tournaments. First of all, I have no desire to spend the better part of a weekend playing only one rules set, leading to exasperation and long rules debates on all sides. Secondly, every tournament devolves into everyone trying to identify the best possible competitive army, making many interesting armies completely unplayable.

This is why the only miniatures tournaments I'll consider entering is DBA. The rules are short. However convoluted they might be, nobody gets terribly upset worrying about interpretations, since it's hardly worth taking too seriously. This doesn't entirely address the problem of killer armies, though. True, people are more likely to bring along what they have, rather than refining the best possible army, but I suspect that most people will leave their Early Lybian armies at home.

Marty Schmidt regularly runs DBA tournaments at Siege of Augusta which try to get around the killer army problem in innovative ways. (Unfortunately, I've never attended these, but know Marty from when he lived out here in California.)

One idea I've been considering is to put together a precolumbian American-themed tournament. I would provide a half-dozen or so pairs of armies for people to try. In addition, players could bring their own armies from the theme. Failing in that, I'd allow Western Hemisphere armies with the following restrictions:

• No elephants, chariots, or artillery. Elephants and artillery are to be replaced by psiloi, and chariots by psiloi, bow, or auxilia.
• No more than one mounted element in the entire army. Light horse dismount as psiloi, cavalry as bow or auxilia, knights as spear or blade, unless the elements are already specified as dismounting as something else.
• An American army fighting a Western Hemisphere army always fights as defenders.
  
• Each player must provide a suitable crackpot theory as to how the army arrived in the Americas.

Finally some hope for that Amazonian army I painted up ages ago and never used since. Still not much hope, though.

Scenario Ideas : "You were a bloodthirsty foe, but your chicken is delectable!"

I have occasionally run Taiping-era games at conventions, using a modified version of the Brother Against Brother rules (which I've titled Elder Brother Against Younger Brother). It's an intriguing period, colorful, and allows me to play out Colonial-era games without the annoying colonists who grossly outclass everyone else.

Among the many intriguing people from this era is the Imperial Chinese general Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠), better known as Tso Tsung-'tang. He's the General Tso of General Tso's Chicken fame, the name being used only to mark the meal as a Hunan-style dish. In fact, the dish is entirely American in origin. One of my favorite variants of the recipe is here, which I originally found from this article. As a vegetarian, I use either cubed tofu or chicken-style textured vegetable protein. (It's not as vile as it sounds, particularly after you cover it in batter and deep-fry it.)

All that aside, the thing that caught my attention was reference to Zuo hauling Krupp siege guns all the way into central Asia to put down the Muslim Rebellion in the 1870's. While I have no clear historical scenario to work from, I immediately saw the opportunity for a skirmish scenario involving Chinese troops seizing a position from which they could bombard the Muslim Hui fortress. Of course, it meant buying some Old Glory Krupp siege guns, and painting up a bunch of Afghan troops to look vaguely like Bokhara mercenaries. And perhaps I really should be using some Foundry figures for the Hui rebels. And by the time I had all the lead I wanted, there wasn't time to paint it all for KublaCon.

Perhaps I'll run it at the next ConQuest.

One last, food-related note. Kudos are in order to the KublaCon staff for convincing the food vendors to stock a decent selection of healthy foods this year! As a vegetarian, I can say that there is nothing worse than finishing running a game at 3:00 in the afternoon to find that the only edible food available is an extra-greasy cheese pizza and a bag of chips. The fruit bowls and vegetable platters were lifesavers. Overpriced, as always, but for once I was able to forgive that.