"low complexity, small space, fairly compact armies but 28mm?" Topic

I do not have any ancient or medieval armies.

I would quite like a Wars of the Roses set-up or a New Kingdom Egyptian / Hittite set-up.

And would like some advice on rules (a new period for me).

My criteria is a small table (max 4' x 3' or less) and I would like to collect 28mm, but maybe have plenty of figures crammed onto deep bases for visual effect. I also prefer to play at the lower end of the complexity scale and would like the rules to be solitaire friendly.

In the first instance I am considering Impetus / DBA 3 / Armarti 2

For this who have used these rules, given my criteria, is there any particular reason why any one of them would be my best bet. thanks in advance.

You just described Impetus!

While you can play large battles, the Basic Impetus rules (free from the maker) allow for smaller battles which fit fine on a 4x3 table and you can collect lots of armies very easily.

They are 120mm wide frontage per base, with each unit having one base. Between 10-12 figures for heavy inf down to 3 figures (though I do 6) for skirmishers.

The game is really fun, easy to paint up the forces for, and quick.

Base depth does not really matter much, so if you want 120x60mm so you can do little diarama's, it works fine.

Impetus scales up to larger battles if you want those in the future too.

Additionally you can play Sword&Spear and Hail Caesar with the same bases later if you want. Hail Caesar with 120mm standard bases and 3 divisions of 3 units (9 total) would probably be playable on 4x3.

DBA and B.Impetus, choose the one that gets you the most games with others.

They all should work for what you want. I ended up going with 80mm frontage rather than 120 just to make the table space go further.

You just described One Hour Wargames!

Low complexity, 50ish figures paer army. No specific rules for WOR, but you can mix the medieval and Renaissance types.

The rules feature scenarios rather than pitched battles – so around 30 individual scenarios, suitable for all periods are set up, with specific simple tweaks for each. Periods go from Ancients to WW2, with seperate rules for each period – all in one book.

See here:
TMP link

To be perfectly honest, as someone looking for roughly similar (I don't have a preference for 28mm though and would prefer 1/72 scale for the cheap plastics) I have yet to find something that has the right "mix" to suit my taste. One Hour Wargames seems way too simple with barely any variety at all (although it doesn't look like it would be difficult to modify the rules to add), Hail Caesar and similar larger-scale games require too much space to have any meaningful non-skirmish battle, Basic Impetus looks interesting but is a bit confusing (at least for me, YMMV) and DBA (can't speak to the new version as I haven't seen that one yet) seems to fall somewhere in between the spectrum on flexibility and playability. In my case I want enough variation so that a unit of Roman soldiers aren't identical to a unit of Persian soldiers, and enough flexibility so that I'm not limited to specific numbers of units but I don't want to get bogged down in complex rules or require a large investment of figures (even the smaller scales can add up!)

Regarding the original poster, elements of figures as Das Sheep suggests seem to be the way to go. I worry that 120mm elements might be too wide for the compact table described – perhaps 80mm would be a good size, as miniatureperday suggests. Two ranks deep, perhaps 8-10 foot minis to a base. These could them be used for DBA, Impetus or other rules.

I have published a set of rules that would also suit a 4' x 3' table with the above basing, called "To the Strongest!" and which would address Wayniac's requirements, too. Int eh rules Romans are very different from Persians! They are here:

link – you can mail me with any questions at simonmiller60 (at) gmail (dot) com.

Best, Simon