"Before the Gates of Troy" Topic

I've been soloing using Bill Johnson & David Ratcliffe's "Before the Gates of Troy" Skirmish game rules for the Trojan War.

The rule book lists itself as a game with Chariots and Foot Soldiers of Ancient Mycenaea and Troy. As the pickings for Ancient Greeks and Trojans 28mm figures are kind of slim (and I don't particularly like the look), I've been playing it using my Greek Hoplites (attackers out on a looting raid) vs my Amazons & allies (defending their village).

To modify it from a 2 person game to solo, I take total control of the defenders and do a random dice movement for the attackers. As my attackers are both more numerous and better armed this seems to break up any power blocks that a player would normally form and move in order to dominate the batterfield.

When my attacking hero's engage, his followers then close on his position to support him.

All in all this system seems to work nicely for me with 4 chariots & 22 figures (defenders) vs 35 figures (attackers).

My last game resulted in 3 of the 4 attacking hero's and 2 foot soldiers down vs the loss of 1 defending chaiort and driver. 1 group of attacking foot soldiers were carrying their wounded hero off the battlefield, another group the dead body of thier hero and the third group broke and ran for their ships. A clear win for the defenders!

Hmmm sounds interesting, what kind of mechanisms do the rules use? I have a model of Troy, but not gamed over it yet.

Model here:

link

Figures on the way from us at Rapier, so in the market for rules.

When you set up your hero you roll 1D6 for each: Strength, Dex, Weapon skill etc… Then when you engage in combat you compare your number vs your opponent (plus any + / – for terrian, skill etc…). You then roll 1D6 on the combat column the compared scores worked out to, to see if you got a hit or miss.

A hit moves you over to the 'where hit' table (i.e. left arm isn't going to do anything if you have a shield) and to the light (-1 to your skill score) or serious (-2) to your skill score. It's then the other guys attack turn if he can.

At best with a '6' you can take 6 hits prior to going down. Worse you take a head shot and get knocked out on the very first roll.

Fairly quick and dirty man on man fighting.

Movement is in cm for crawling, walking, run or charge. A chariot at a trot will eat up 100cm.

I think the most I saw for the rules was $13.00 USD and the least $6.00 USD.

Not 28mm, but damn fine figures nonetheless, have a look at Museum Miniatures 15mm figures, i'm sure you'll be impressed