De Bellis Multitudinis
wargame ruleset
De Bellis Multitudinis (DBM) (English: Of the Wars of the Multitude) is a ruleset for table-top miniatures wargames for the period 3000 BC to 1485 AD. It is the big battle development of De Bellis Antiquitatis. As its name implies, it is aimed primarily at simulating large battles. The rules allow armies to be chosen from published Army Lists (in 4 books, with about 250 different army lists in total - but many more once all the in-list variants are taken into account) using a points system to select roughly equal armies if required.
History
DBM was written by the UK based Wargames Research Group (WRG) team of Phil Barker, Richard Bodley Scott and Sue Laflin Barker. (DBMM is Phil Barker's intended successor to DBM). First published in 1993, it went through a number of formal revisions with the last published version, DBM 3.0, coming out in 2000. Two unpublished, minor revisions have since been made, with the latest, DBM 3.2, coming into use in 2011 and available through WRG's website.
DBM evolved from the earlier De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) rule set, adapted to play larger games with more figures, comparable in size to games played using the then popular 7th Edition WRG Ancient rules.
DBM expanded on DBA's definition troop types by function and level of training - defining troops as regular bladesmen rather than Roman legionaries for example - by adding grades for each and rating them as Regular or Irregular. Grades such as Superior, Ordinary and Inferior troops are designed to reflect relative efficiency compared to contemporary opponents, and reflect morale, equipment, mounts, and training.
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This entry incorporates text from “De Bellis Multitudinis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.