I am a 28mm guy. I made the move to a larger scale years ago. I started out with 15mm Napoleonics and ancients. I admired 28’s but 15’s were smaller took up less space and most importantly were cheaper and that was my preferred scale well into the 90’s. I did play DBA and had lots of armies that I ultimately gave away to a friend. Though I did paint a bunch of 12mm WWI figures five or six years ago, the rules were a loser and they are sitting unloved (but painted) on a shelf in my garage. But in the spring after a podcast with Chris Leach I decided to challenge myself by taking on a massed battle project.

I’ve decided a set of rules to shoot for are Chris’ Control to Catastrophe rules. There is some prep for just leaping in to these. i need a gridded game board which should not be a big deal. Of course I need figures too. I’m doing 15mm figures rather than 28’s. I just didn’t want to deal with the larger figures and the larger space that would be required.

In order to get started, I decided I would start with a somewhat smaller project and those would be DBA armies. I played a lot of DBA 2.3 in the early 2000’s and enjoyed it. We’re really fortunate that there is a very active DBA community in the Seattle area led by Paul Hannah and Andy Hooper. I’ll just speak for myself here. DBA is not a super exciting game. Although the 3.0 version is more interesting than earlier versions. But Paul and Andy always keep it fun and positive. They help anyone new or experienced become a better player and I really like that. They also compile statistics on every DBA game played in the area, and keep track of the performance, not of the players, but the various armies. As a baseball person, I think that’s really fun.

I had many (like 30) DBA armies some time ago. They were all mounted for version 2.3. At some point I just stopped playing. I think I was moving on to other 28mm projects. DBA stopped being a thing in Tacoma, and they just took up space. I passed them along to Mark Wensnahan and he’s used them for a variety of different things, including DBA. At our monthly gatherings at Wizard’s Keep, DBA is a regular thing. DBA goes on all day,and often players will finish the bigger games they’ve opted for and march right over to the DBA table for a game or two. Without wanting to step back and do the DBA thing again, I just kept on keeping on.

Then Steve and I interviewed Chris Leach on the Pod and I vowed to do a massed battle game using his Control to Catastrophe rules. I decided to focus on armies from the Peloponnesian War, so hoplite armies. At Enfilade, I asked my friends working the Bring and Buy to keep their eye out for any of the Xyston Hoplite armies and lo and behold I ended up with Spartans and Thebans. I ordered the Xyston spears to go with the little men and the Little Big Man shield transfers and around the middle of July made the time to paint some DBA armies.

I wish there was lots to report on. The figures are smaller than I’m used to but relatively easy to paint. I like the detail on the minis but there is the extra hassle of the separate spears and shields. The first batch of hoplites I tried to paint with the shields glued on. Mistake. I struggle a bit with the shield transfers. They’re easy to use but difficult for me to center. I bought the Spartan Lamda and Theban club transfers but decided it was just a lot easier to paint those on. The Xyston figures will always offer their own challenges. I think the spears will be fine–and damn they’re pointy. The shields are another matter. My three games of play meant re-attaching two shields. Even painting them is a bit of a struggle. I would like to get an Athenian army too, and I might actually try epoxy.

I completed the Spartans first and was able to get them into a few games in August. I played a couple of games with Andy and one with Paul. It was fun. The 3.0 rules are just a lot different. The Spartans don’t offer a lot of options and they aren’t very maneuverable. But if they can get hold of you they are unpleasant. But they’re mostly just guys with spears.

Last week I finished the Thebans. So the first two DBA armies are done. I have the Alans, a dark ages steppe army that has the virtue of playing across lists 2, 3, and 4. I’m not in a hurry to paint them up, and expect I’ll work on them in November.

These is my Theban army, again Xyston figures with some Little Big Man shield transfers, though I hand painted the Club of Herakles on the Theban figures. Some other shield pattern signifies hoplites from an allied city-state.

I’m expecting to play some more and build on toward Control to Catastrophe, maybe by the end of the year. I did order lots of extra hoplites that I’m not in a hurry to paint, but we’ll see.

DBA is not the only 15mm project I’m working on. I actually don’t have many 15’s. I have some pretty 15mm Hallmark Jacobites and British for the First Jacobite War in 1688. They are finished, though I confess I have a lot of leftovers I probably won’t do anything with. I also have a significant number of 15mm fantasy figures I’ll continue working on to complete a Lord of the Rings project. This is a home-grown massed battle project and I’d like to try to play a game of my rules called “The Third Age” before the end of the year.