"Looking for small scale Ancients rules without base removal" Topic

There are very few rules that do not use figure or base removal. One of them is Broadsword Ancients: Scutarii from Hoplite Research link Which is on sale at this time. Under these rules each of your 40x40 or 50x50 bases would represent a unit of approximately 500 men.

While I usually game with 6mm figures and usually run large battles at conventions, you can do smaller games and use any scale figures. I also use 28mm fantasy figures on 50x50 bases link

The following link was a refight of the battle of Raphia and has a description of the turn sequence in it. Other battles on the blog, such as Pharsalus, Hydaspes, Calinicum, or Asculum can be viewed by clicking on the Scutarii label. Marathon link has only 20 units of outnumbered Greeks. The usual result of a game is the routing of one side with the winner suffering only a few hundred casualties. There is a Yahoo Group link where additional information can be found and any questions answered.

Regards,
Bill

If by small scale, you are referring to figure size rather than battle size, I would storngly recommend you have a look at To the Strongest, which does not require figure or base removal.

Mollinary

I bases my 15mm "Arthurian" Britons and Saxons on 60mm bases, 12 to a base, so I've run into the same problems (i.e. not being able to do figure removal). My only solution has been to experiment with rules I like for other reasons, and then use various sorts of markers to track casualties/hits. I haven't found any rules other than the DBx school that are binary in the sense that no hits need to be tracked.

If you don't have to track too many "hits" (1-4), you can use something unobtrusive like pebbles, or you can use an individually based command/casualty figure and position it in different places to indicate different numbers of hits: back right corner = 1, middle = 2, left = 3, etc.

Unfortunately, most systems like you to track more hits, so I use a slightly more obtrusive micro-dice frame base. I bought double dice frames and glued them on 20mm round bases, then painted them green (still debating whether to flock them). Using different colored dice, you can indicate a wide variety of hits and conditions. For instance, when playing Lion Rampant, I use an unobtrusive green die for the first 6 hits (which don't really matter), a red die for more, and a yellow die as a marker for the "Battered" state.

Cheers,

Christopher

Go back and look at the Impetus set-up again but not the full Impetus. There is a new version of Basic Impetus available now for download for less than $3 USD which, though it changes many things from the original BI, retains the elegant approach that characterises the original AND the single base per unit without figure/element removal. The new version includes army lists from Chariots to the Renaissance – worth the price alone, in my opinion.

I fully agree with 1ngram. Basic Impetus, the new version, might well suit your needs. And yes, the army lists are worth the money spent.

You can find a copy at Wargame Vault. It's currently listing at $4.99 USD for the pdf download, and includes 340 army lists.

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Basing is largely a paper tiger in wargaming. Use the basing system you like and adjust play as needed to accommodate. Even DBA at least as recently as 2.5 (I haven't read 3.0) had no "required" basing, only "suggested". That's right the famous 40mm frontage standard is a suggestion.

If you want a wider frontage for Impetus place 2 40 or 50mm frontage bases together as a single unit.

Another vote for To the Strongest!

Sword & Spear would work. You'd need to use two of you 40 or 50mm wide bases as a unit.
TMP link

Reviews:
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Forum:
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Sounds like it will look great. That system would also work well for Lion Rampant, which I've been using lately for small Dark Age raid scenarios with good success.

If you are building units 80mm/100mm wide, they would also work with To the Strongest; you'd want to use a 10omm grid, and could game on a 4' x 3' table.

You can use short lengths of pipe cleaners (or casualty caps/markers of whatever you choose to use) to denote hits on units instead of removing any bases.

I use those excellent tiny six sided dice from (originally) Irregular. Blue for disorder and red for permanent hits.

I have Hail Caesar, which I like, but I do not want to build up 4 divisions of 4 units each…

If you like the rules then adapt the army organisation to suit your needs. Just build an army and disregard the division rules. I can't recall which book it is in, but in some of the battle reports there are divisions containing less than the suggested number of units.