This is a ‘live’ blog post so will be updated as I experiment with the concepts. This version is dated 25 March 2025.

"Something's wrong with our d'mn muskets today!"

I was having a conversation with Mike Guth on the Fantasticus Board a while back. Mike was one of the original rules testers for De Bellis Renatonis (DBR) back in the day and he had these comments to make.

“Michael Guth (listed in the back of the DBR rule book).
”To this day the firepower in DBA and DBR is off. The problem is the ability to voluntarily combine fire at distant targets. Also there is no negative factor for firing at long range, and no decrement of fire for ammunition reloading, wind, or smoke obscuring target in the shot period. Pikes simply get slaughtered in DBR. Tournament after tournament revealed this flaw. DBR creates the shot and pikeless era. Try requiring elements to fire at the closest target within range, or a -1 for distant shooting beyond one base width distance..... Also, the +4 factor for Shot counting as a hand to hand factor against pike is probably off as well. One could argue that it includes the effects of a devastating close range volley by Shot. But Shot of this era were fighting quite dispersed. Otherwise your burning match cord could set your neighbours powder on fire!. Also, read the section on ballistics in Hall’s Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe.
On balance DBR is better for the earlier pike and shot era than the later IMO, because the arquebus or shot I range is shorter, and pike can actually defeat inferior shot; unlike their later ordinary and superior cousins.
The DBX model has a problem in pike and shot gaming because the individual base model has trouble accounting as a construct for combined pike and shot blocks. I’m no FOG fan, but the FOG system tried to model pike and shot formations in a more historical way while still using DBA elements. I have not played the latest version of FOG. Sadly, FOG requires very BIG armies.””

— From

From <https://fanaticus.boards.net/thread/2616/dbr-bellis-renationis-using-rules>

While I hear what Mike is saying and have experienced this myself, however, I also play Horse, Foot, Guns from WRG, using the same DBX mechanism and do not encounter the same sort of problems as I do with DBR. So what is the difference between these rule sets that is making the difference?

Rules mechanism

One of the difficulties in understanding the rules is that it uses a Comparative mechanism, comparing one players set of Shooting Factors plus Tactical Factors plus a 1D6 Die roll with the others players set of results. This gives you a set of possible 36 results with the Shooting and Tactical Factors skewing the results in one players favour. These results are then modified further by Grading Factors to increase the severity of the results for Inferior troops, for instance.

The best way to display these outcome is on a grid where the result of one player can be compared to the result of the other play and all the possible 36 outcomes can be displayed in a 6 by 6 box.

The loser of the combat with the lower score, sufferers an Outcome Result based on whether their score is “Less than Half” their opponents (in which case they recoil) or whether it is “Half or more than Half” their opponents score (in which case they are destroyed).

A common combat scenarios

Two Shot elements enage another in Distant Combat with a Shooting Factor of ‘4’ and no Tactical Factors. The die roll will give a range of outcomes between 5 and 10 as shown below:

The result purely depends on the dice roll of the players and the loser will be destroyed if they roll a ‘1’ against the other players ‘6’ (Factors 5 vs 10). Fairly straightforward.

So what is the result if Shot engages other types of elements? Shot would be Shooting Factor (SF) 4 against Pikes (SF 3), Light Horse (SF 2) or Skirmishers (SF 2). In all cases, the results would be shifted to the left as show below.

In cases where there is a principal Shot firer and several supporting Shot elements, the target gets a minus factor up to -2 and the result of this is again to shift the results to the left.

The consequences of this are to greatly increase the chances of the element being destroyed and to have less chance of a recoil result and a lowered chance of a positive result in the combat.

Combat Outcomes Shot versus troops with lower Shooting Factors or adding additional Shot elements

Another common combat match is Pistols (SF 3) against Shot (SF 2). The lower factors mean that the results box are shifted one row upwards and one row left compared to our Shot versus Shot combat. The significance of this is that the higher up the result table you go, the narrower the results outcomes become and so the more extreme the results. Lowering the Pistols to SF 3, actually makes them more destructive and by giving them a Shooting Factor advanatge of ‘1’ over the Shot shifts the results to the left. This gives 6 outcomes (3,4,5,6 vs 1 or 5,6 vs 2) when the Shot would be destroyed if they lose against the Pistols. By contrast, if the Pistols lose the combat, only a 6 vs 1 result will destroy them. The advantage of Pistols is quite large even though their Shooting Factors differ by only ‘1’ from that of the Shot and this is entirely due to both having low Shooting Factors and hence higher up the table.

Of course, there are lots of common combats, so the table below shows some typical ones with their outcomes already worked out. Our ‘standard’ Shot versus Shot example is at the top as a baseline and in most cases there are no Tactical or Grading Factors to consider. The first example is Shot versus Pike where the only difference is a Shooting Factor of ‘1’. This moves the chance of being destroyed from 3% of our baseline to 11%.

The second example is when 3 Shot fire on a single enemy Shot which in turn causes a Tactical Factor of ‘-2’. You would get the same effect if one Shot (SF 4) fired on Light Cavalry (SF 2). The result is a big leap to a 25% chance of being destroyed and more than doubles the chance of the Shot being destroyed compared to three individual elements firing on a single element, one after the other.

The third example is our earlier Pistols (SF 3) versus Shot (SF 2) with a 17% chance of the Shot being destroyed. Again a big step up from the Shot (SF 4) versus Pike (SF 4) outcome entirely due to the lower factors, narrowing the range of options and making them more extreme.

The final example shows a SF 4 : 2 match with a 25% chance and a SF 4 : 0 match when there is a 58% chance that the Light Horse will be destroyed by 3 Shot.

Lining Up Issues

One of the key issues raised from the section above is how the player is allowed to line up their elements to fire in order to gain those all important Support bonuses. The relevant section of the rules states:

“An element is a valid target if it is visible, in range, any part is within an element base width of straight ahead of any part of the shooting edge, it is not in frontal edge contact with enemy and (unless shot at from a hill or fortification by artillery other than (X)), no part of another friendly or visible enemy element is between imaginary lines connecting one front rank shooting edge corner to any corner of the target element and the other to an adjacent corner without crossing or passing through any element except the target.” page 19 para 3

Yet in reality how the players line up their firing elements and targets has a large difference on the outcome as show in this scenario below.

Using option 1 the Shot player might get a Destroyed and a Recoil as a result while the same die rolls for Option 2 would result in four Recoils. To keep things consistent, you might introduce a rule that elements had to line up against their opposite number and only when they overlapped their opponent were they allowed to start counting supporting elements or if they fielded a second rank in direct support.

Horse, Foot and Guns

The Outcomes table for Horse, Foot and Guns (HFG) is broadly the same as for DBR with the exception that the winner usually gets some sort of Press Forward option. The game mechanism is pretty much the same as for DBR with Shooting Factors, Tactical Factors and a 1D6 dice roll, then the result is modified by Grading Factors. Yet, you do not get the sorts of mismatches that you get with DBR and there are a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, HFG has a much smaller range of Shooting Factors for its Infantry units, Bayonets are SF 3, and most other Foot elements are SF 2 with the exception of Heavy Smoothbore Artillery (SF 4) or Light Horse (SF 1). Most Horse are SF 3 or 4 with the exception of Light Cavalry Dragoons which have SF 2. This narrower spread avoids the extreme outcomes.

Secondly, additional shooting elements ADD 1 to 3 to the Firer’s score rather than in DBR where there is a DEDUCTION of 1 to 2 from the Targets score. The effect of this is to push the results box to Downwards, which widens the results options as well as making them less extreme, so overall the effect is less damaging than in DBR.

These smaller difference in Shooting Factor have a large effect on the game, as is shown by typical combats in HFG in the table below. While broadly similar in outcome, HFG avoids the extremes shown in DBR outcomes. While I have concentrated on Shooting results, the mechanism and results are broadly the same for Close Combat as well.

Conclusions

What has become clear is that ‘funnel’ effect of the table means that lower Shooting Factors give more extreme results and that by shifting the results box to the right and downwards by having larger Shooting Factors and by adding Tactical Factors to the firer instead of deducting from the target, we can reduce some of the harshness of some of the outcomes. In the table below, I demonstrate this effect by showing the difference made in having higher Shooting Factors (SF 3, 4, 5, 6,) and for each one compared it to a series of steps down in Shooting Factor. So the first example is Shooting Factor 3, compared to SF 3 and then SF 2 and then SF 1. Just two steps takes us to a Destroyed chance of 46%.

By contrast, at the bottom, Shooting Factor 6 compared to SF 5 then SF 4 then SF 3, etc, shows that a two step drop only results in a Destroyed chance of 11% and that it takes four steps to get to 41%. The Outcome Table is not entirely symetrical and so we can see that SF 5 and 3 have a different profile to SF 4 and 6.

My recommendations

The options to alter the balance of combat outcome are as follows:

to simply add 2 to all the Shooting Factors which will have the effect of toning down the effectiveness of firearms, make them less destructive and making the difference between troop types less noticable, yet allowing a wide range of different troop types and keeping the variety they offer.
Change Second and Third Supporting Firer’s Tactical Factor from a minus on the Target to an addition on the Firer.
Adopt Mike’s proposal for dealing with musket fire out to 200p by
1. Giving a -1 penalty for firing between 100p and 200p
2. Only allowing single elements to fire on targets at long range (100p to 200p)
Have a rule requiring players to fire on the closest target and to line up their shooting elements against their opponent so that they only get the supporting bonus if they field a second line of shot or overlap their opponent.
Arquebusiers for the Spanish armies of 1630s and 1640s, such as at the Battle of Nordlingen 1634, only have a range of 100p (compared to the musket range of 200p) and are classed along with earlier arquebusiers as Shot (I) which gives them a penalty. My response is to reclassify these are Shot (O) and keep their 100p. I am tempted to give them a SF +1 over muskets to allow for their greater rate of fire, but we will see.
I will give these proposals a go over the next few games and see how they play out. If there are problems, then I have the option to try adding 1 to all the Shooting Factors. If that fails to address the balance problems, then the other option is to tweak the table, perhaps introducing a diagonal line of Recoil outcomes through the middle of the Destroyed area? This would require the table to be used in play, which I am reluctant to do, simply for the sake of convenience but it would be possible.

Move Sequences

I had an experience in a recent game which gave me pause for thought. The battler was Kolin 1757 using the Horse, Foot and Guns rules. In the Active Players bound, a pair of his cavalry regiments galloped up to a single regiment of foot. Under the rules they could not contact the foot as both cavalry regiments had moved more than 600p. The foot duly fired and destroyed one of the regiments. Then we moved onto the Passive Players bound, and he moved his foot regiment round to face the other cavalry regiment and then in the firing phase destroyed them too. Is this a weakness of the DBR system, as each move by your side may well face two rounds of Distant Combat or Close Combat.

Given my sceptism over the level of firepower in DBR, this may be part of the problem. The rules do give the hint of a solution in that Heavy Artillery only fires once and in the enemy bound. The solution to both the firepower problem and sequencing issues could be to change the Move Sequence to:

PIP throws
Active Player moves
Passive Player fires on thier choice of targets
Close Combat
Passive Player moves
Active Player fires on their choice of targets
Close Combat

I think it is worth an experiment to see how this idea would play out.