Saturday 17 April 2010

Refight with several ancient rules

With little time to play ancients games and coupled with a fascination with how different rules work, my goal is to refight at least one battle with a number of different rulesets.  As my gaming is concentrated at the moment on those that last under one hour and using a small surface this will limit some potential rules to use. Obviously my preference in what type of rules I want to play has a bearing on this as well.  For the battle, I was considering various options - one with lots of different troop types etc.  I came close to choosing the Battle of Heraclea with Pyrrhus Vs Romans but thought I would go with something a bit easier and so chose Callinicum using the information in the Society of Ancients Battle Day Pack 2009.  When choosing rulesets, I've gone with what I like playing and what I think I would like playing.  I may even do quick reviews of games that do not have reviews and highlight what I think of the rules as they apply to fast and small.

The rules I will definitely plan to use are:

Armati II Intro scale
My favourite rules.  Intro is just about the full rules using smaller bases so games tend to last the same amount of time - about 1.5 hours for my friends and I.  By reducing the board and points, maybe it will become only a 1 hour game.
Warrior Kings
Fast and furious and unpredictable.  Converting from inches to centimetres allows the game to be played on a 2'x2' surface.  Played this a few times and games are always less than a hour.
Justified Ancients
Have a soft spot for these rules - used them a few times and I like them (though none of my friends do!)
Fantasy Rules!
Not the FR!2 Ancients set but FR: TCE.  Haven't played them but they seem as though they would be fast playing and, without the fantasy elements, would seem to give a reasonable historical based game.

Rules I would like to fit in in a fairly loose priority order of preference (I may comment on these in later posts):

  • Irregular Miniatures Ancient Rules
  • Mighty Armies
  • Age of Might and Steel
  • Fast Play Ancient Warfare
  • Basic Impetus
  • DBM100
  • Might of Arms
Rules I won't be considering (not keen on die roll for command or lots of dice - note I know this also applies to Mighty Armies and Basic Impetus):

  • DBA
  • ABC
  • Ancients D6

If I ever do get to playing with even half this number of rules, I will be content.

2 comments:

  1. Good luck on your rule comparison, although I think you are doing the readers a disservice by NOT using DBA. DBA is pretty much the de facto standard for a < 1 hour game of Ancients so it would be good to see how the game plays out in DBA for a "baseline" comparison to the other sets.

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  2. You make a good point and I may actually play game. I have played DBA about 10 times (not solo) and it just wasn't me. It is the command roll and lack of differentiation in troop types that does it for me. I preferred DBM100 if I w to play a DBx fast game. But your point is still valid so will likely do it.

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