Terrain Box for Big Base DBA 3.0

For my small DBA I have a box with everything I need for a game, including all the terrain (but excluding figures). Now I want the equivalent for Big Base DBA. I figured I should sort out the box for DBA 3.0 rather than 2.2 so I’ve had a look at what I need.


The box

I bought a 35 litre Really Useful Box for my Field of Glory terrain. But I stopped playing FOG pretty quick and the box is up for grabs. Big Base DBA seems a better use for the box given what I play on a regular basis.

Big Base DBA Terrain Box
Big Base DBA Terrain Box

(For my Small DBA I used a 9 litre Really Useful Box.)


Number and Type of Terrain Features

Most of my DBA armies are from “Arable” terrain, a handful are from “Littoral” and one from “Hilly”. That influences what terrain I have in my box.

Terrain Type 1-2 Compulsory Features 2-3 Optional Features My Armies
Arable 1 BUA or 2 Plough River, Difficult Hills, Gentle Hills, Woods, extra Plough, Enclosures, Road, Waterway, Scrub, Boggy I/24 Hittite Empire
II/19 Seleucid
II/33 Polybian Roman
II/35 Later Macedonian
II/39a Ancient Spanish – Iberian
II/65 Early Visigothic
II/66 Early Vandal
II/72c Suevi
II/78 Late Imperial Roman
III/34 Andalusian
III/35 Feudal Spanish
III/74 Fanatic Berber
Hilly 1-2 Difficult Hills River, Woods, BUA, Road, extra Difficult Hills II/39a Ancient Spanish – Celtiberian
Littoral 1 Waterway Either Difficult Hills or Marsh, either Woods or Dunes, BUA, Road, River I/22 New Kingdom Egyptian
I/28 Sea Peoples
II/32 Later Carthaginian

Size of Area Terrain

Obviously the terrain templates will be bigger than for small DBA. DBA 3.0 has moved to using base widths (BW) for all measurements. A change I heartily approve of. In my case, with Big Bases, a BW = 8 cm. Amongst other things this is used for the size of area terrain templates.

There are a few rules covering the size for area terrain template (with cm based on my BW):

  • Length plus width <= 9 BW (72 cm)
  • Length >= 1 BW (8 cm)
  • Width >= 1 BW (8 cm)
  • For a Gully: length >= 3 x width
  • For non-Gullies: length <= 2 x width
  • Only 1 feature with length < 3 BW (24 cm)

I knocked up a graphic to get a sense of what sort of shapes these constraints could result in.

Big Base DBA 3.0 Terrain
Big Base DBA 3.0 Terrain

What goes in the box

Armed with that graphic I looked at my terrain and found I had enough terrain to go in my Big Base DBA box. Most of the features were 3-4 BW (24-30 cm) across so not much variety in size. This is what I dropped in my box:

  • 3 x Difficult Hills
  • 3 x Gentle Hills
  • 1 x Small hill
  • 3 x Rectangular Area Terrain Templates for Plough and BUA
  • 3 x Curvy Area Terrain Templates for Woods, Enclosures, Scrub, Boggy, Marsh
  • 1 x Small Area Terrain Template
  • 1 x Road Network

I could, according to the letter of the rules, take 3 Dune features. However, I know of no battles involving the DBA armies I’m interested in that featured Dunes.

Sadly, I don’t get to use my Gullies. In DBA these only appear in Steppe Terrain. Sigh.


What doesn’t go in the box

Unfortunately, quite a bit doesn’t fit into the box. For Small DBA everything except the figures went in a 9 litre box. 35 litres isn’t enough for Big Base DBA.

This is the terrain that comes separately:

  • Waterway
  • River
  • Things to put on the Area Terrain Templates so it is obvious what they are, e.g trees for woods, ponds for marsh, walls for enclosures, buildings for BUA, etc.

I could probably squeeze them in but I use them for all my gaming so keep them in a separate bag that I automatically take to every game. If I only played DBA I’d do something different.

3 thoughts on “Terrain Box for Big Base DBA 3.0”

Leave a Reply