"Coming back to medievals - which rule set? " Topic

I am currently painting up a feudal English army for the Scottish and Welsh wars of the late 13th and 14th century in 15mm. There seem to be a good many army level rule sets like LADG, Impetus, Hail Caesar, DBMM, and Sword & Spear.

I'm confused. Which rule set would you recommend for someone returning medievals? I used to play DBM years ago but perhaps looking for something a little different. Please help?

My boiler plate advice: if possible, find out what ancients/Medieval rules other people are playing locally, and go with that first. It's easier to recruit players of a popular system and/or period than to recruit players with no pre-existing interest in either.

All of the rules you listed are current popular favorites, and I'll add a couple more for your consideration:
Lion Rampant
To The Strongest

If you want useful advice, you'll have to specify more about what kind of gaming experience you're looking for. Your OP question will just generate a voting frenzy with at least one adherent of each rules saying "I like this one!", which is only about as beneficial as a levy of poorly armed peasants.

- Ix

Good advice from Yellow Admiral. If you base figures for DBx, it gives you flexibility- stick a couple of bases together for Impetus of Sword and Spear. The other rules can use bases as they are. My personal favourites are Sword and Spear and LADLG. As an ex DBM Player you may find familiar features in LADLG.

What do you like, single figures or rodent based?
How large an army donuounlike?

More advice: use Google to find reviews and previous discussions about each of these rules sets.
to the strongest review
sword & spear review
hail caesar rules review
dbmm review
lion rampant review
impetus rules review
art guerre review

Lion Rampant is more of a skirmish game with individually based figures. It uses dice to adjudicate weapons fire and close combat and is set for free-form moving. Lion Rampant also has a fantasy version called Dragon Rampant which adds all sorts of monsters and non-humans.

To the Strongest! has armies composed of units that can either be based all on one base or on multiple bases. It uses playing cards to control activations and to adjudicate weapons fire and close combat on a square gridded battlefield.

I've played both and like them for their different levels of combat.

Jim

Lion Rampant is good to to get you playing quickly and easily. At my club we aimed for larger games and used LR to play while we were getting our armies together. Now we vacillate between larger games and LR depending on time and what we want to play.

Deus Vult, although themed around the Crusades, is actually a generic medieval game. There are supplementary army lists for feudal English and French on the Fireforge website.

To the Strongest!

If you like the granularity of individually based figures, go with mine, The Art of War

DBA 3.0 Big Battle.

A cleaned up version of DBX mechanics.

Highly recommended.

TomT

DBA and BB DBA as DBM/MM in my opinion … I like the way shieldwalls work. I like the way bows and blades work.

I prefer Basic Impetus over Impetus

ADLG is good too …

Phil

Best advice is to see what others around you are playing. I'd go with that as it's an easy way to pick up games and learn a new rules set quick. If you like DBM it's still viable and has a version 3.2 now, you can even use DBMM lists, that's what our gaming group does. Why fix what ain't broke.

Tactica Medieval all the way!

I would recommend Hail Caesar Rules. Hope it helps.

Take care

Andy

If you do happen find a decent set of rules that would suit the Scottish wars and HYW do let us know.