Persians Vs Late Romans - a game with new homegrown ancient rules

Introduction

I scratch an itch around Ancient rules and test out some new homegrown rules, based on all the other rules I have written.  The big difference is it uses a d3 for everything.

I used my first two 15mm armies to play the game – Late Romans and Sasanian Persians.

Background

I am a butterfly.  Happily working on testing my own ancient rules.  Happily planning a campaign with my 6mm WW2 stuff.  Happily playing with my recently acquired Two Hour Wargames PDFs.  And then I got the itch.  This itch has been building for a year. It is an Ancient rule itch and it is itchy in three ways:

• Most of the historical games could be played on a smaller table than 2’x2’.  I found that in my historical replays, each battleline was about 6-8 units wide, too wide for a 2’x2’ (with 40mm wide bases).  I had thought in the past of 12x12 grids, smaller tables etc. and have been thinking of going to 16”x16” for awhile now.
• Dissatisfaction with the 1d6 roll.  My rules started with the basic mechanism that all melee is a 1d6 roll and low results apply to the attacker, high to the defender.  It worked well at the start but over the years have tweaked unit combat values, modifiers, melee results to make it work how I wanted it, and I now feel I have been working around the 1d6 to keep it, when its foundation (a quick way to resolve Bill Banks Ancientswith a die roll rather than a CRT) is a little flawed – even the alternative 1d6 is not as great as the CRT which relies on combat value ratios (the d6 is adding and subtracting combat values).  I went back recently to the CRT and ratios in my 6x6 ancient rules and really liked it.
• Wanting to play something with more unit differentiators.  I have the game down to four modifiers for melee and about 3-4  similar modifiers for all other rolls (command, missile fire, reactions).  I was drawn to Justified Ancients as it had only three main unit types (foot, cavalry, chariots) and then lots of modifiers for melee such as loose order Vs close order, light armour Vs heavy armour etc.  I wanted to play a game with more of this differentiation.

Over the last two weeks I have been thinking and thinking, mulling different options in my head.  Where did I end up?

I will be using a 16”x16” table.

Went back at looked at Justified Ancients (JA) (1stEdition) after 7 years since I last played it. (Note: JA is a great set of rules that are no longer available :-(  Check out John Davis for reviews, battle reports etc.) Amazing how much of the rules influenced my first foray in rules writing (Ancient Warrior Battles) and its current successor Ancient Battlelines Clash.  JA uses opposed 1d3 for melee.  Not wanting to use different die types, I quickly figured out how easy to translate roll for movement action to a d3 and firing to an opposed d3.  I worked though the melee modifiers and realised that using my existing unit types (heavy infantry, medium infantry etc, about 12 of them) then most of the modifiers can get absorbed into the unit combat values and most of them disappear.  One thing I spent a few days working through was how to deal with Elite troops (JA doesn’t really) until I hit n they count all 2’s rolled as a 3 that nudges it just a little in their favour.   I was really digging the bell curve of a 2d3 opposed roll.    I did like JA having troops harder to order and finally settled on a 1d3, modifiers really count on a 1d3 and so a natural 3 is always a success.

Yes, I did think of using opposed 1d6 but then I would end up with a lot of modifiers and also large modifiers (e.g. a +2 for shock in opposed 1d3 becomes +4).  

Two days ago I committed the rules to paper (well a QRS anyway). Today I played a test game.  I have a feeling these may be the basis of the rules I will move forwards with my historical playtesting.  I also have the introduction with troop definition and abilities.  I may be able to get all the rules into 8 pages, including some examples. I will need to play a few more games before releasing them.   

So the rules look similar to Ancient Battlelines Clash but use 1d3 and opposed d3s (compared to 1d6).  Still have to roll to order a unit, unit reacts to being charged or fired on, most units abilities are the same (impetuous, missile fire, elite/poor).  Changes are that doing an action is harder; units are now also either trained or untrained (affects actions); retreats etc. are handles a little differently; evades happen a little differently; reactions are slightly different; combat results are a little different; movement distances are about 2/3rds.  It seems smoother to play.  Historical battles are also likely to play out smoother.

I think the important part is these rulesets were always about allowing me to play out the Peter Sides' historical battles.  I am enjoying researching about the battles as much as the playing, so looking for rules that allow me to play out the battles fairly fast and have a plausible result.  It could also be that after 200 games with my own rules I reached my limit of tinkering and so starting something new (well, major revision anyway!) J

Troops

The Basic Impetus armies are about the right size for the game I was looking for so I worked on a spreadsheet to convert the armies over the new rules.  The armies were still slightly too large so removed a unit from each side.

Sasanian Persian

Sasanian Persians

1 Pushtigbhan: Cataphracts, Elite              

2 Savaran: Heavy Cavalry, bow

1 Nomads: Light Cavalry, bow

1 Militia: Heavy Infantry, poor    

1 Archers: Light Archers

1 Slingers: Skirmishers

1 Elephants: Elephant     

1 General with the Pushtigbhan

All untrained.

Breakpoint: 6

Late Roman

Late Roman

1 Clibanarii: Cataphracts

1 Equites: Heavy Cavalry

1 Equites Saggitari: Light Cavalry, bow

2 Legionari: Heavy Infantry          

1 Auxilia Palatina: Medium Infantry          

1 Comitatensi: Mixed Missile

1 Lanciarii: Skirmisher

1 Funditores: Skirmisher

1 General with the Clibanarii

All trained

Breakpoint: 6

Deployment

Ready for battle

Using my deployment guide from my Ancient Battlelines Clash, the Persians are the attacker  and are deployed to attack on both flanks while the Romans are going for a push in the centre.

Game

The Persian right flank (all of two units!) advances, and does the centre to protect the two flanks.  The left flank needs a 3+ to do anything (don’t forget this is on a d3) as untrained and far from the General. Success!  And advance as fast as the elephant allows (3”).

The Roman left and right flank hold – no need to advance closer to superior units.  The Clibanarii advance up the middle to attack the opposing infantry.

Clibinarii advance up the centre

End of turn 1

The Persian right cavalry wants to charge the Roman light archers but it is not quite the time (fails activation roll).

The Cataphracts advance to out of range of the light archers but in range of the Roman cavalry.

The Roman Clibanarii continues to advance, as does the legionaries.  On the left flank, the Light archers advance to fire at the Persian cavalry next turn.

Light archers advance

End of Turn 2

The Persian cavalry charge the light archers.  In the ensuing missile context the Cavalry are pushed back (effectively the weight of arrows stopped their charge.

Cavalry charge the archers but pushed back.

The Cataphracts charge the Roman Heavy Cavalry that retreats (and is depleted).  The Cataphract is  spent due to successful charge but still pursues with not enough movement to recontact. (Spent means you cannot charge next turn.  This does not really make sense so a post-game rules revision was to remove becoming spent from successful charges.  I was uncertain about it going into this game and so not much dram to get rid of it. Evading units are still spent though – stops them evading twice in a row.  This also requires playtesting!)

Persian Cataphracts charge the heavy cavalry

The Persian light archers fire at a Roman Skirmisher that is pushed back.

The elephant moves towards the legions.  The accompanying Heavy Cavalry also passes an order check and charges the Roman right flank (Auxilia Palatina and Comitatensi)

Elephants advance and Persian heavy cavalry charge the Roman right flank.

The Cavalry is depleted and pushed back (1 in 9 chance).

Cavalry does not make contact due to the weight of missiles.

The Roman Comitatensi fire on the Heavy Cavalry and it is depleted again and routs (a 1 in 9 chance for the depletion. So a 1 in 9 chance followed by a 1 in 9 chance – so a 1 in 81 chance the cavalry would have routed!)

The Roman skirmishers fire at the Militia and the latter are shaken. The Clibanarii then charges in. 

The accompanying Light Archer fires for no effect. The Militia retreats and depleted. The Light Archers are pushed back (worst result can get for 2-1 melee). The Clibanarii pursues and still in contact! Another melee.

The Roman Clibanarii contact the Persian centre.

The Militia is destroyed and the Light Archers pushed back again.  The Clibanarii pursue, the Light Archers retreats (now depleted) onto the hill will get an uphill bonus.  The Clibanarii continue to pursue and the Light Archers are now destroyed.  (This took so long as the archers insisted on rolling 3s and the Clibanarii 1s giving the best result to the Light Archers that was still a retreat.)

One legionary unit wheels and attacks a skirmishers that routs.  The Legions pursue into the elephant (I really only did this to see how Elephant combat worked)

The legionaries charge the Elephant.

Maybe not a good thing – The legionary unit retreats depleted and shaken.  The Elephant pursues and the legionary unit is destroyed!

The Roman Heavy cavalry is not in melee and rolls a 3 to remove the depleted. (a reason to get rid of the spent status  - the Cataphracts should really have charged the heavy cavalry again)

End of Turn 3

The Persian Heavy Cavalry fails again to charge the Light archers. All the other Persians take a breather (fails all action rolls).

The Clibanarii about faces.

The Roman Light Archers fire on Heavy Cavalry that react by charging the archers for a melee. (this is a change from my old rules – the archers fired so now do not get to fire again before melee).

Light archers retreats depleted; Cavalry pursues and archers destroyed.

Turn 4 sees the Persian Heavy cavalry charge and rout the Roman light archers (finally).

The Persian Cataphract charges the Roman Cavalry that is depleted and retreats off board.  The Persian pursues.  Both are counted as lost.  The Persians have reached their breakpoint.  Game over and a win to the Romans!

The Persian Cataphracts pursue the Roman Heavy Cavalry off the table and the Romans win.

Rule Changes

• Spent status does not apply to charges
• Elephant are too powerful – reduced combat modifier from 3 to 2.

Not many changes at all - the rules held up OK after one playtest, the positive is that it all seemed to hang together.

Verdict

I really enjoyed playing these rules.  As I said earlier, it could be tiredness with my own rules but these are an evolution of my Ancient Battlelines Clash but different enough that they are worthy of a new name.  I am going to try out some historical battles with them to see if I will continue with them.  I hope so J