"Two things I hate about ancient wargaming" Topic

1. Un historical match ups. e.g.Romans vs Vikings. Ors vs Dwarves has more relevance to me.

2. Movement trays. No matter how its done I think it just looks awful. Troops in a parade ground formation on a raised base, often when on thick individual bases. And it looks even worse when you start to remove casualties.
They dont sit well on hills, on bridges etc. It looks especially bad when the figures are tribesmen like celts or germans.

Whats wrong with multiple bases? I have the Age of Arthur book and there is not a movement tray to be seen in the photos. This is how it should be done.

I know people will say it prevents them having to ever rebase but to my mind it is the look of a game that is important and once you start noticing the basing rather than the models it spoils it for me.

Is anyone else of my opinion?

I agree with the first one.

The worst part about it is that there is really no meaning in it in most cases. Take a Viking army and a Chinese army fighting each other. A Chinese army might be half a million or more men strong while the Vikings might be able to field 1% of that. Say what you will about elite troops, which not all Viking soldiers were, even if they were the best the vikings ever fielded they would disappear in moments under a hail of crossbow fire from that many opponents.

This is never accounted for in Ancient rules in my experience.

Also while I don't mind movement trays I am starting to base all of my ancients on 40mm squares. Still moving 10 of them around at a time is not completely time efficient either.

I firmly agree with the first one – I now only buy my armies in pairs. If my potential foe cannot field an army I can fight against, I offer him one of mine.

I don't mind Movement Trays at all – i don't notice them. That said, there is only 1 game I play that uses them.

May I add to the rant with 3) scenery that you can't get units on. I am sick of my figures slithering off poorly thought out scenery.

Pat

I agree on both counts. The history is the most important thing, but I am aware that not everyone is so bothered.One persons Early Saxons are another person's Orcs.

I hate movement trays. Did all dark age/warband armies rank up nicely one behind the other as they seem to do on most movement trays? I doubt it. I've moved to multiple basing. Of course it means you are then stuck if you want to play skirmishes…

I agree.
As to the first point I see it more like fantasy when it happens. I wouldn't mind playing romans against orcs, if the rules supported it, but it's hardly historical gaming any longer.

The second one I don't encounter as I don't see people playing mass battles using 25mms, or use systems that move troops in ridiculous formations while singly based.
Go for 6mm instead, or multiple based 15mms. It looks better.

I take it this is a complaint about a specific set of rules.

Certainly, the competitions I go to studiously avoid unhistoric matchups (and have done for many years), and we never use movement trays either.

its not ancient gaming you are objecting to, its one(some) sets of rules (and I suspect scales) specifically.

1. Un historical match ups. e.g.Romans vs Vikings. Ors vs Dwarves has more relevance to me.

So what if you don't like it? The world does not revolve around you. The beauty of a hobby like gaming is that we can do whatever we darn well please! There is no Gaming Pope.

BTW I can't wait to see the movie their working on where a Marine Expeditionary Unit gets sent back in time and winds up trying to defeat the entire Roman army. Love to game some of that.

It's all about FUN!

What Mr Belt said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So what if you don't like it? The world does not revolve around you.

No the world does not revolve around him. Neither does it revolve around you or me.

However, everyone has a right to his or her own opinion.

How is 24 individaully based figures ranked up together on a movement tray worse than 6 stands of 4 troops on 40x40 bases?
The reason you didn't see a movement tray in Age of Arthur is because no one was playing a game, the shots were staged for the camera.

Regarding #1, how many ranges of figures would you have to choose from if the only battles "allowed" were between "proper" historical opponents?

We would have ranges of Romans and Carthaginians and …errr..Romans and Gauls and … err Romans and … ummmm…
Oh yes! Greeks and Persians! And Greeks and umm….
Wait! We would have vikings and Saxons and Normans and …. ummmm….
Would there be ranges of sassanids if they would only be allowed to fight Late romans? Would there be Byzantines if they could fight only Bulgars? Would we even HAVE Bulgars?

Samurai? Burmese? Ming chinese? Vijayanagar? Khitan Liao? Mali? Myycenaean? Ancient Hebrew? Ghuzz?
Be honest.

I won't go so far as to say that Ancients gaming would not exist if not for tha ability to fight a-historical matchups, but a heck of a lot of manufacturers of obscure armies would not be producing obscure armies.
For that we who have played Ancients games owe a debt of gratitude to Phil barker and his "silly" matchups.

As for your disdain for movement trays, play Warrior or DBMM.

MY complaint about Ancients gaming is the vast array of choices available to a select few "armies". Seleucids, Late Romans, Medieval Germans, Byzantines, etc. typically have 2 or 3 while pages of options in their lists, with their proud owners whining for 2 or 3 or 4 list tournaments.

Buff – because on the 40 x 40 bases you can make the figures look like a unit rather than a chessboard.

john, that is such a lot of nonesense.

where to start.

romans (with distinct 'looks for Early republic, mid republic, late republic, imperial, late imperial – and thats just in the west) v
etruscans, samnites, magna graecians, Pyrrhus, campanians, Celtiberians, illyrians, macedonians, carthaginians, sicilian city states, gauls, iberians, celtiberians, thracians, dacians, germans, seleucids, ptolemeics, arabs, numidians, lusitanians, british, hebrew, parthians, greek cities

and thats all before they get to the empire

biblical egyptians vs libyans, hittites, hyskos, syrian, hebrew, sea peoples, nubians.

Early achamaenid persians vs Medes, lydians, egyptians, indians, steppe tribes, scythians, greeks (technically, each city could be listed too), assyrians, arabs, babylonians – and thats all before alexander.

thats to pick just three basic examples of a common army to pick.

be honest, do you have any other period with so many viable historical matchups?

as I say, its only certain combinations of rules and scales that have the unhistoric matchup 'issue', most sensible ancients players I know always do historic matchips, and have dozens of armies and combinations to do it with.

even at competition level.

whilst on the other hand, yu have

7yw Austrians vs – well, prussians.

or napoleonic british vs – um, french (but you get sandy or grassey bases, and grey o white trousers.

Or ww2 brits vs – italians, germans, japanese (if you play the pacific), and pretend germans

I could go on.

a lot.

John – I can see your point of view. The WRG rules and later DBM encouraged un historical match ups on the basis that a sword is a sword, a spear is a spear, a bow is a bow etc. If people want to do that then thats Ok. No one says that certain things are not allowed. with the figure ranges today you can find historical opponents for practically everything.

My point is that I dont like it and maybe others dont too. Perhaps hate was too strong a word to use.

Horse and musket players dont do it. But a musket is a musket, a cannon is a cannon etc.

Hate is a strong word.

I prefer to refight historical battles, and that is as true for Ancients as it is for other periods, so i tend to by historically matched armies. Other peoples preferences may differ. I do however make the most appalling unit substitutions as frankly one hairy barbarian with a stick is much like another, unlike my civilised Romans, Greeks etc.

As for movement trays, well, whatever works in a particular situation. Basing is always a compromise between representation and practicality.

Call me a wishy washy liberal…

Keraunos, my POINT is that no sane manufactutrer who wished to actually make a profit would make Hyksos or Babylonian figures if the rules would only allow players to fight historical matchups.
Would they even BOTHER to make "early republic" or "late reupblic" Roman figures? This became a fad PRECISLEY because WRG and DBM lists allowed, nay ENCOURAGED a-historical matchups.
Can you seriously believe that Campanian figures would be produced if they could ONLY fight Romans? Seriously?
Campanian figures are produced because they look cool and once you have a Campanian army, you can fight Vikings and Mauryan Indians as well.
Who can fight Etruscans except Romans? Why, Hittites and Late Achmaenid Persians and Burmese!

If it were not for such permissiveness, you would have nothing but Hollywood Romans. NO subdivisions into the myriad of categories cherished by Ancients gamers.

well I know people who have a hiscos army and only fight historical matchups with it…

and I'm painting cmapanian hoplites for the same thing just now, and I wont be using it against un-historical opponents.

remind me again exactly who else the 7yw Austrians or Russians can fight apart from Prussians?

they can also spell hyksos, and say it…which is more than I can manage.

Horse and musket players dont do it

I've certainly seen ahistorical matchups in horse and musket games (and in WWII ones for that matter). I don't recall seeing any involving armies widely separated in time, however. I guess it's putting the line at armies that could have fought rather than ones that did fight?

Who else can AWI british fight……

French.

Good for you and your Hyksos buddy, Keraunos, but you owe a debt of gratitude for the figure availability to WRG and DBM for giving manufacturers the courage to put out these ranges.
YOU can afford the luxury of having Hyksos and Campanian historical camaigns. But they owe their existence to their ability to fight Vikings and Burmese.

Who else can AWI british fight……

French, Native Americans, Canadians, Americcan Patriots, Irish, Jamaicans, Cubans,( in fact all of the West Indies) Spanish, Indians etc…

fraid you have lost me here now.

with a couple of notable exceptions, most of this hobby is driven by hobbyist sculptors – only some of whom end up being good enough to go professional and making a buisness of it, most of who have an additional income or who never expect to get rich – and they chose to scuplt what interests them.

Over the years I have played many many many tournament ancients games. Only a tiny fraction were historical matchups. IMO that is very sad but is a simple fact of the huge size of the period.

There are ways around this issue.

1) Only allow a very small number of armies from a very small time period in a tournament.

2) Build armies in matched pairs ala Principles of War

3) Multiple preset scenarios with scoring based on relative perfomance

The problem with the first option is that not everyone has the thousands of models that would be needed to field an army for every possible period so you are automatically limiting your entry.

The second is fine but it means players having to build armies in pairs and to be willing for their opponents to use their figures.

Option 3 is a good one but gets difficult with a large field and requires people to be willing to provide the armies and have them used by other people when they are not present at the table.

None of the options is perfect.

I like to think that ahistorical matchups are just a game rather than a wargame but that is just me.

"Buff – because on the 40 x 40 bases you can make the figures look like a unit rather than a chessboard"

And on a movement tray you cannot juxtaposed them that way ???? Who said you have to line your figures up once you us a tray ???

If you're using a tray dsigned for 24 28mm figures on 20mm sqaure bases then they will always look like a chessboard.

most of who have an additional income or who never expect to get rich –

But they do not do it expecting to lose money.
Is there a market for Burmese figures, if they can ONLY fight their historical opponents? Which would probably be limited to other Burmese, or maybe the one time the Mongols came in.
The ONLY reason Irregular came out with them in the first place is because they knew the market was ripe for such an exotic army and they could fight… Normans. Or Carthaginians. Or Burgundians.
If one were limited to fighting the 32nd Burmese civil war (or the one time the Mongols invaded them, and I bet they then looked NOTHING like our familiar Mongol figures), they would not have been produced.

You seem to have a rather romantic notion of sculptors, starving in a garret for their Art. They should at least break even, and should not be expected to continually produce figures for the collector of exotics, and lose money in the process. The least they should expect is that there be a market for their work, and the ethos of WRG and DBM gaming ensures that a well produced Ancient army sould have a vastly expanded army. Even Sumerians!

jameshammyhamilton – thats just a failing of imagination by your organisers.

there are plenty of other models they could use for a competition which would allow only historical matched pairings.

in the 70's, when guys only had one army, ok, bring nay army and play your games but not any more – its just lazy orgnaising to allow unhistorical matchups. Bare minimum of acceptbility now is to limit the armies to a 'span' (typically based on a book or portion of a book of lists) so that the armies are all at least co-temporal.

there are many more interesting models to structure a torunament around after that too.

John, I refer you to the early releases by the Perry brothers – hardly struggling in their garets – but how many folk would have expected the carlist war figures to be worth the effort to produce and release? and yet…

There should be a Gaming Pope. I'm available…

id just add that an awful lot of ancients manufactures specialise in a limited number of sub periods – like gripping beast or xyston, and they clearly see a market within that sub period too.

OK then Keraunos, how would you organise events so as not to exclude too many players, not to need a huge investment in figures from the organisers and not to require people to have to use others figures? I really am interested in ideas that I have not come across.

I came to this hobby from my interest in history, and military history in particular. There is a certain, although obvioulsy unobtainable, need for me to try and experience how armies fought and how history happened at the nitty gritty level. Now some would say I should be a reenactor instead. But I'm not. I went into historical wargaming. Is it any of my business that others choose to play unhistorically? Probably not. But I can have an opinion about it. And that opinion is that doing so makes it fantasy , not historical gaming. And clearly, those who do so have a different connection to the hobby than I.

Having seen Chez Perry I can confirm they aren't struggling financially. But! Most of that revenue came from sculpting non-historical figures for GW. Also – do we know that the Carlist range was commercially successful? I'd suggest if sales were the only criteria there would have been a number of better choices. Sales aren't their only criteria and haven't been for some time.

Hate to say this, but since we really don't know what the ancient armies looked like or fought, only general ideas and bits and pieces handed down through history its probably ALL fantasy gaming.

BTW I agree with the OFM

Did I just write that?

…………….Doug

John has, in the past, made the very valid point about tournament gaming making obscure ancients ranges financially viable. It's a good point. I can no doubt credit the existence of my Picts and Scythians and funny-looking Libyans to those people who wanted to take them up against someone elses Byzantines or Huns.

That said, I don't want to play that game myself.

Twenty five years ago, that seemed to be the only form of ancients wargaming available. People laughed when I told them I was painting Anglo-Saxons, then stared incomprehensibly when I told them I needed them to face my vikings. What sort of idiot did that? And I had no idea what sort of points value anything had, and didn't understand why it was important.

I went to conventions where all the ancients games were in their own room for tournaments, and almost none of the 'normal' games were ancient at all. You could get in on an 8 player Waterloo or Gettysburg, but not Gaugamela (because, one assumes, everyone interested in Alexander's army was busy fighting Samurai or something). There might be a Viking raid or some other game that screamed "It's safe! No rules lawyers here!" That was always the other concern; competition gamers so often seemed so aggressively -- competitive!

But times are changed, in a good way, and if folk want to play tournament ancients, good luck to 'em.

I hate not having a complete army in every genre, period and scale painted to a perfect 10 at in my personal collection.

I hate not having as much time and opponents as I would like.

There are two possibilities for "unhistorical" matchups, anachronistic battles, or battles between two opponents who co-existed at the same time but never fought each other either due to geographical or political reasons.
I (mostly) avoid the former by restricting all my armies to a limited time frame, 225 to 190 BC. (Although there are slight anomalies, for example I field a Syracusan army which didn't exist after 211 BC, while my Selucid army has cataphracts which were not introduced until about 200 BC)
However the second possibility is to me one of the joys of wargaming, the "what if" scenario. What if Scipio Asiaticus had continued to the East after victory at Magnesia and the Han dynasty Chinese had sent an exploratory force Westward? (Han Chinese and Roman garrisons got within a days march of each other during Trajan's reign)
However I understand that for many people wargaming seems more of a competitive sport, chess with pretty pieces, and their enjoyment is different from mine.

I almost always play unhistorical matchups most of the time, and usually don't think twice about it.

Also, I concur with everything the OFM said.

jameshammyhamilton wrote:

OK then Keraunos, how would you organise events so as not to exclude too many players, not to need a huge investment in figures from the organisers and not to require people to have to use others figures? I really am interested in ideas that I have not come across.

Since Keraunos hasn't replied yet, I can say from experience that he is probably thinking about the Armati tournaments that have been organised in Glasgow. I'm sure he can advise on the army sizes, but from the limited exposure I have had I can say that our club is able to put on around a dozen match-ups of reasonably sized 15mm armies, maybe with some assistance from one or two of the folks who have travelled. It was the individual matches that mattered in the one I saw, and the event has not always been a themed set of matches within one time frame. Although that has been used too, I think. It usually does mean that most folks end up using other people's figures – don't know how you can get past that.

Two things come to mind about this. The first is that it can be done, especially in 15mm. The second, though, is that it probably requires a decent number of players who can co-operate to organise the thing.

Personally, I don't bother. I'll stick to 25mm because I like painting them, and I don't have the mental or physical energy to commit to any form of tournament. And we have enough of a group of players with this scale to be able to stick to historical opponents. Both this situation and that of the 15mm tourney imply that you have to have to be able to reach a certain critical mass to be able to cater for a large range of possibilities (THIS IS NOT A COMMENT ON WARGAMERS' GIRTH). So you need a club, either that or a huge collection…

Good discussion, by the way, and it hasn't yet degenerated into bricole slinging!

2. I do not like movement trays or single mounted figures. But they do add flexibility to how you can play a game and also the number of games you can play. Having said that, DBx basing has run its course and its time is over. Someone, some day, will brigde the gap between DBx basing and the 20mm frontages of other games single figures and be the next Ancient Gaming Hero Person.

1. There are advantages to fighting non-historic opponents in Ancient tournaments. (A) You get to play a wider variety of opponents (B) You get to see a wide variety of armies (C) You buy a wider variety of armies. Like most historic gamers I prefer historic opponents and collect matched pairs of armies. But I wouldn't trade the fun that tournaments can offer because of some silly history-only prejudice.

3. OFM is correct … Ancient tournaments drive ancient mini sales as do new rules etc.

Mike B

John the OFM Is on the money.

I playtested DBMM for Phil Barker a while ago, and he would sometimes reminisce about the early days of the Society of Ancients.

From what I understand, even back then there was a preference for historical games, but the very limited availability of armies, and the relative cost of putting one together meant that many games, and certainly the competitions, would be played using a-historical opponents. The way the rules were written reflected that. It wasn't that the rules were the cause of it.

Most (all?) of my friendly games (15 mm DBMM) are historical matchups. I've run a small number of competitions and I theme them to encourage historical games. But you usually only get a handful of people attending. Open competitions draw way more punters.

And if you play 15mm, you don't have a problem with movement bases.

Cheers,
JohnG

Wargamers in our club who played very serious 15mm Napoleonics, invited me to one of their Ancients games. They had Assyrians and Egyptians, Greek Hoplites, Successors, Romans, and Byzantines in the same battle, not with an explanation, like "We didn't have enough Roman Hastati, so we used some Egyptians. They just played them as the were. Armies from thousands of miles and thousands of years apart.

here are four

the armies and enemies format
- the only eligible armies are those which are or fought against a specific main player
most easily, republican romans, but could be pretty much anything. I've seen one based on asiatic steppe armies of the turkic migrations recently

The paired armies (PoW) model – each player brings a matched pair of armies.
player A picks which pair of armies to use (yours or mine) player 2 picks which army of that pair he will take. dead simple to organise and gives matched pairs every time.

Historical matched scenarios
- this one requires a lot more work and a club with the resource, but its the one we use ouselves
- you have pre set matches on each table, and players just turn up and draw a table as well as an opponent
(excellent for traveling players who can fly in without taking an army, or for new players who are learning the rules and don't want to get stuck with a dud army all weekend).

Pooled armies
- a sort of hybrid of the first and third.
Armies are pooled into one or two historically appropriate pools ,
draw players, pick which pool and then draw two random armies from that pool (so for example, biblical fertile crescent armies in pool A, fall of the roman empire in the west armies in pool B)
best done with all the tables using pre-set terrain (to save time on set up)

With a bit more thought, its not hard to come up with some more

so unless you live in a world where guys still only have one army or won't share their toys, there really is no excuse for that tired old super army format from the 60's and 70s.

And as for the notion that these ranges only exist because of unhistoric matchups – its not true.
Follow the logic of it through.
players are only really interested in the big main powers. The only reasons these minor historical figures get cast is becasue of the tournament scene allowing them to play against unhistoric oppoennts.
Well if its tournaments driving the sculpting, then it must be tournament logic driving the purchasiing too – which means these tiny nations must actually be super armies in some rule set or other.

except they aint in most cases – they are at best middling, but they are interesting to prepare an army for, they are interesting to paint, or they capture some other thing that holds the purchaser and players attention, just as it did the sculptor.
(hence Perry carlist wars – they interested the perrys, whether they sell enought to be profitable is not the main motivator)

Small ranges exist because the scultor thinks it would be fun to make and they might make a little money off it.
If it were not the case, then guys would only ever make and sell the big super-armies – and they would do all the twiddly options for them to maximise fiddlibits from the rules.

even the big companies don't think like that – FoW turn out all the silly bits that only a few chaps are going to buy because they want the complete range, because some new thing caught their attention.
you get a basic stock of regular sellers to keep you going, and then you start doing interesting stuff – and maybe get lucky with one or two.

And as I say, these days, there is no reason to expect everyone only has one army, and there is no reason to expect them to play all these rediculous what-ifs (although some folk do like that).

of course, some guys really don't care – they just want to roll some dice of an evening.

I am the Wargaming Pope and it's all my fault. :-)

I'm all for historical armies (99% of the time) but I have had a blast in a couple of "Warlord" tournaments where you almost have to use anachronistic matchups.

After each round the losers become vassals of the winners and the next battle is twice the size.

Eventuially it is a huge fight with all of the ecompeting armies on the table. With the winning "king" declared warlord.

It also makes for interesting battle plans as the winner has to adjust battle plans to include all of his vassal armies.

Thanks Keraunos but from what I read in your post you were essentially telling me exactly what I posted in my initial reply :(

People like to play games with the army they have lovingly painted. If you are playing the campaign of Manzikert it rather excludes everyone who does not have the right army.

Many wargamers don't like the idea of other people using their lovingly painted figures either.

Personally I would far rather play a tightly themed tournament. My favourite tournament of all is Campaign where players are generally limited to a choice of 6 or so armies from a period of less than 10 years BUT a lot of player struggle to get armies that fit and there is a lot of fairly loose morphing and scraped together armies.

Just as a reminder I will quote from my initial post again

There are ways around this issue.

1) Only allow a very small number of armies from a very small time period in a tournament.

2) Build armies in matched pairs ala Principles of War

3) Multiple preset scenarios with scoring based on relative perfomance

The pooled armies idea is not on my list and is not one I had considered but it still falls foul of the having to let people use your figures or have people with lots of armies that they are willing to lend out.

Generally speaking I am happy to lend my figures out but I have now reached the point that some of my armies with more fragile figures need significant repair work and I am wondering if my generosity is actually worth the cost.

If I play a game at the club I will always make an effort to try for a historical matchup but that is not always possible and not always what my opponent wants.

I really can't get too upset with either movement trays or ahistorical match-ups. "Hate" is certainly way too strong an emotion for this topic.

I agree a bit with bowman.

Annoying is more of a word I'd use for ahistorical match ups. I mean some people want to game, not tell story.