DBF is a fantasy variant fo DBM, its available for download from the DBF Yahoo forum. Essentially to play DBF you either need to be familiar with DBM, or have a copy of the ruless to hand as it makes extensive refernce to DBM, this is its biggest weakness as the rules are not stand alone, but unfortunately this is unavoidable due to legal issues with the authors of DBM!The game, follows the same basic principles of DBM (and indeed a all the same elements) but adds that fantasy touch to it, i.e. you can deploy Dragons, Giants, Orcs, Undead, Unicorns, Mage, Clerics & Durid etc.. DBM style army lists are provided – but I am sure that in time many a web site will pop up with world specifc (Hmm… LOTR ?) and generic fantasy armies.

Check out the Yahoo Group for further info, and also a review of my first Behemoth for this game from Maidenhead Miniatures – War Rhino with some wenchs in the driving seat!

Below is our first trial game of DBF and a quick battle report .

Well it’s only taken almost 1 year but finally Derek and I got around to a game of DBF. For this game we wanted to keep it fairly simple so that we could get our heads around the mechanics of the game. Luckily both of us have played a game or two or DBM so were familiar with the core rules, we just needed to become familiar with the differences for DBF.

First decision was not to include any magic, characters, Unicorns (pretty hard with orcs this one!) , Magical terrain, sneakers etc, i.e, we went for the basic troop types and a fair sprinkle of the DBF types found on the Orc army list – as we were not to bothered with the composition we ended up with fairly balanced sides as figure types go.

As you can see we had a few DBF specific troop types, to see how they faired in combat and moving.

After a quick deployment and hasty command structure, we soon realized that we should have put more thought into our deployment (or read the rules before playing!) as we quickly realized a few neat aspects of the DBF rules – like Giants have ranged attacks over other infantry, and LHm are good fighters, and the +1 for R (Racial) knights on a higher die roll than your opponent is very well implemented – we thought it fitted in very well with the game play.

In about 2 hours we went from deployment to end of game – and yes we did quite a bit of rule reading during this time but also we had a very enjoyable game – even though I lost comprehensively to Derek his Kn (R) swept all before them supported by his Behemoth and Trolls (LHm).

A few Lessons learned:

1. Giants (except Gi (I)) have a ranged attack that can be performed over most infantry, so don’t place them behind Chariots or Knights! (Derek)
2. Wb (R) and Wb (S) move at different rates – (Andy/Derek) boths sides quickly lost control of these impetuous beasties
3. LHm and Giants are impetuous – they like to charge everything in sight.
4. Giants are rock – they just seem to hang around for ever in combat
5. Double base width and depth Behemoths – can win the day if used right but cost the earth in points! – don’t get them caught behind inferior troops where the death zone will kill them (Andy)
6. Wb (R) vs Kn (R) are not a good match up (Andy) – The Wb died to an Orc– very quickly!
7. +1 on the Die roll for Kn (R) who roll higher than their opponent for most troop match ups is very well thought out and works very well in our view – and saved many a Chariot Kn in our game.
8. Giants even (I) grade are excellent at holding bridges, as they cannot be flanked and are hard to Kill.

Will we play again – Oh yes!, next game will be in a few weeks, we aim to play around the same points (about 400ap) – probably using Orcs again but with a different army breakdown – may draw in some undead allies – again we aim to keep it simple and get used to the basic troop types first and then we will introduce some of the special characters and magic as well as flyers.

Picture sof our game: