"popular ancients and dark ages armies?" Topic

I have a WAB 1.0 club at my university, and am trying to stockpile as many 1/72 armies as I can, to draw in new players.

I started with the historical match up of Persians and Greeks (from the
Aoa book) and had players branch out, informing them that the line ups can be a-historical.

We have a samurai player now… that's about it.

Rattle off some popular armies that would catch the passer-by's eye when they saw our game going on.
We want to WOW people without evangelizing our game… too many people associate us with the LARP group or Dungeons and Dragons when we try to describe our hobby, which is off-putting to some.
We'd rather that they see what we are playing and say "that looks cool, perhaps I'll have a go. Do you happen to have….X ancient army?" I want to be able to say yes!

Let me know what you think will be crowd pleasers, and draw in more players

Thanks
Austin

Alexander the Great vs Persia
Hannibal vs Rome
Caesar vs The Celts or Pompey
Imperial Rome vs whoever
100 Years War- England vs France
The Crusades
The Mongols
Those are pretty standard wargaming armies/wars…hope that helps.
Good Luck

Normans vs. Saxons seem pretty popular, as are Vikings vs. Saxons.

I think a good one for you would be Byzantines and Sassanid Persians. Probably not something that your average person is going to be familiar with but neat looking cavalry armies with lots of flash and cool tactics.

Alexander vs Persians
Screen a video of the movie… helps put the civies in the mood. Worst case you can run the sex scene:-)

New Kingdom Egyptians vs. Hittites.

Myceneans vs. Trojans

Spartans vs. Persians

Vikings vs Saxons or perhaps Irish

Grelber

Romans always a good bet and easily identifiable even to muggles. If you're trying to draw people in with eye candy I'd suggest doing one matchup but doing it really well with great terrain and so on rather than having a bunch of armies to hand in the hope someone else might want to use one. That is put your hope into quality rather than quantity

We'd rather that they see what we are playing and say "that looks cool, perhaps I'll have a go. Do you happen to have….X ancient army?" I want to be able to say yes!

Too be honest, I think that scenario is pretty unlikely. Apart from Greeks and Romans, most punters won't have a clue about ancient armies.
Why not play it like this:
Him : "that looks cool, perhaps I'll have a go."
You : "sure, here, take my place with this army, they're really cool …"

Another way o approach this is to look at the art of the achievable – you say 1/72nd so I'm guessing plastic, so look at the available ranges and exclude the ones that offer only limited options.

It'll still be a long list.

What would I do ?

Egyptians v's Assyrians
Greek City States v's Persians
Rome v's Celts
Rome v's carthage
Early Rome v's Etruscans
Normans v's anglosaxons
Anglosaxon's v's vikings
Mongol Khanattes v's Russians

That should be enough for a while!

Good luck !

Greeks v Greeks is a good one.

It's easy to explain. It offers few troop types, it's low complexity, and its easy to find lots of battles in history to game.

Successors vs successors is also good… and I would say you could use some of your Persians for eastern successors, and you can have a few elephants for oomph.

Why not do medieval battles and pretend they are game of thrones as in wars of the roses… not grrm imitation.

I agree with Major B. How many people do you expect to say "Well I'd be interested if you had Bithynians, but other wise it looks like a terrible hobby."

I think if you have Greeks and Romans, something with knights, and maybe something non-European and colorful like Samurai you should be fine.

I agree with 20th Maine. First check to see what's available and then decide.

A safe bet would be Republican Rome vs Carthage. Colourful troops, elephants etc are eye candy.

'Imperial' Romans are the most recognisable troops ever. (Thank you Hollywood)and figures are certainly widely available. Good match for these would be Celts and Germanic.

Since you've already have Greeks and Persians perhaps you could some of those to make a Phyrric army and match them with 'Republican' ie. early Romans. That a- historical enough for me..

Don't know if they are readily available in plastic but somehow Myceaneans vs Trojans always seem to get a lot of attention from the public.

I would think Arthurian Romano-British vs Saxons would intrigue people at a university. The Romano Brits are a little tough to find, but add some Normans, and Vikings and you can do quite a lot of different battles. I would also second the vote for the 2nd Punic War. Lots of good figures available and recognizable troops. Legions, hairy barbarians and elephants! What could be better?

For visual appeal to newbies, I'd go for biblical. Fairly colorful armies, plus chariots! Is dark age Saxon common knowledge in the US? Know it would work well in UK (1066 and all that) but I don't know over the pond so much. The other good bit about biblical is they may well recognize more names from OT references than regular history, given the nature of your country. Caeser had a great range, not sure if they are all in production still.

I guess you could target your efforts to the countries your Uni's intake covers.
Perhaps rope in the history faculty in some way?
Failing those any army with elephants and or chariots looks impressive:-
Classical Indian, Sassanian, Burmese etc.

For an almost-historical matchup, there's Chinese (Han, IIRC) versus Romans (there was a time when the border of China was 100 miles from the border of the Roman Empire, looks to be ~200AD or close to there…).

I'd suggest the Battle of Thermopylae, or whatever battle they're showing in 300: Rise of an Empire. Extra points if you can find lightly-armored muscular troops wearing cloaks to use as the Spartans. Yes, you and I both know that the Spartans didn't really dress that lightly when going to war, but Joe Public doesn't.

Another potential eye-catcher would be one of the Battles of Armageddon, Egyptians versus Sea Peoples(?), or Hannibal's elephants going over the Alps.

The various battles of Arthur could be fun, too, especially if you get the Romano-Brits of the 5th or 6th centuries, a [edit] Saxon-fighter from around 500AD, and maybe even a late Medieval version kicking around in plate armor.

For something off the beaten path a bit, battles in India could be stunning, with all the elephants in warpaint. That does require a person willing to paint all the Indians and their nellies.

Depending on which era your Samurai is playing, you could also do the Mongol Invasions (1274 and 1281). You'd have to do some interesting gaming for that one, as the two sides would need to use completely different rules! Mongols doing massed volleys, while the Japanese are doing a more heavily armored version of the classic light cavalry circle, getting close to snipe a single enemy.

Otherwise, it's just the Japanese beating on each other for 400 years (Kamakura shogunate in 1200 to Tokugawa shogunate in 1600). Nothing wrong with that, and if you get creative with your banners (magnets?) you can easily change the ashigaru's allegiance for different games.

We did a game of samurai vs camillan Romans which was really fun.

I bought some early Latins and some Carthaginians… with my Celts and Spanish, I can do Punic wars, samnite wars, conquest of Spain, Gallic invasions of Rome, Roman invasions of Gaul, Punic wars, (once I get my Macedonians) Macedonian wars, and ahistorical match ups of Rome vs hoplite era Greece and achaemenid Persians.

I think I have enough ranges to make a slew of people happy at this point.
Thanks
Austin

Warhammer Ancients even in 20mm plastic is going to prove quite an investment in money and time painting the various armies you appear to be wanting to create. If I were to go that route I would do a classic set and yes Romans are as good a starting point as any. However I would do just two armies otherwise it will be a mammoth task.

If you do want a range of armies to appeal to all comers as it were, why not look at something like Impetus or DBA, small armies, short quick games encompassing all the key flavours and features for a novice and a lot less painting. One campaign set of 5 armies and you are good to go

Whatever you decide good on you for encouraging newcomers to our hobby and the best of luck :-)

My favorite forces are Old Kingdom Egyptians versus Minoans.

The one has women in see-through dresses the other, they go around topless.

Actually I have four armies in my Ancient world (this is Ancient, Ancient, that is before the Greeks and Romans. The two above, and a third which is Schlockem and Glockamorrah, a sort of Caaananite state modeled on Sodom and Gomorrah and imaging the Irish there in the land of milk and honey rather than on their muddy, moldy, boggy homelend. The fourth is a society of Amazons.

I'm impressed if you can paint those see-through dresses effectively. I know my limits, sadly.

Well, I still think that you can't go wrong ewith late Republican Roman armies. You have them fighting hordes of semi-naked barbarian types, or have them fighting each other ala the Roman Civil Wars.

Lord knows that are tons of nice Republican Romans out there. Easy to paint, too, if you like the Army Painter's system. I've been using it to mass produce these and it works fine for me. You can knock out quite a few nice-looking units in a rather short amount of time.

I'd suggest going for well known match ups from popular movies. So Gladiator gives Middle Imperial Roman v Allemani. 300 gives Greeks v Persians (well kinda). There must be plenty of similar match ups you can come up with if you give it a bit of thought.

There was that wimpish movie about Alexander; everyone's heard of him; the army's easy to use and should allow a beginner a chance to win; and Hellenistic always looks stunning.