Winston Smith | 27 Mar 2019 1:45 p.m. PST |
Back in the early 80s, I was a WRG Ancients tournament player. Not a very good one. Back then, I was also the only Ancients player around, but I liked to paint so had quite a few armies. I also collected rules. If I saw anything at a convention with a Hoplite or a cataphract on the cover (Autocorrect just wanted to change "cataphract" to "cat so racy"…) I would buy it, without checking it out first. So. I bought Newbury Fast Play Ancients. Oh dear. I forget how many pages, but A LOT. Tiny print. Single spaced. It added classifications to WRG that I never would have dreamed of. I did try to set up and play one game. That was it. It made me wonder that if this was "Fast Play", what was Slow Play like, I believe I also read that there were masochists who played tournaments with it. May God have mercy on them. Did you ever try it? |
aegiscg47 | 27 Mar 2019 1:49 p.m. PST |
Yes, a long, long time ago. If I recall right we were tired of the endless arguments over WRG 5th and 6th, so we looked for alternatives and came up with these. In reality they weren't much of an improvement plus the army lists were highly questionable. |
lloydthegamer | 27 Mar 2019 1:50 p.m. PST |
Like you I bought them, but never could get around to playing them. |
Sharpe52 | 27 Mar 2019 1:54 p.m. PST |
My group used to play the extended version of Newbury Ancients, Medieval and Renaissance rules and I must say they were rather complicated but the outcome of games worthed the effort. What I remember very well was the melee mechanism linked to morale which was really nice. We never tried the Fast play version which wasn't actually so fast….. Marco |
dragon6 | 27 Mar 2019 1:56 p.m. PST |
Yes I had them. I've never seen a game of it played |
Wherethestreetshavnoname | 27 Mar 2019 2:02 p.m. PST |
I bought the rules and lists by mail order. I opened them, looked over the first few pages, put them on the shelf, carried on playing WRG 6th… |
coopman | 27 Mar 2019 3:27 p.m. PST |
I think that I looked at them and said, "Fast play! In who's opinion?" and that was then end of them. |
robert piepenbrink | 27 Mar 2019 4:19 p.m. PST |
Bought. Never played. I wonder what size army I could build with all the rules I bought and never played, or played, say, fewer than six times? |
Joes Shop | 27 Mar 2019 5:02 p.m. PST |
Years ago: bought, read and sols. |
Father Grigori | 27 Mar 2019 5:17 p.m. PST |
Yes, back in the day. I think for anyone to wonder why DBA took off, you have to play a couple of games, or a competition using something like the Newbury rules to understand what DBA's appeal was. Anyone who thinks DBA is complex really should try them. |
khanscom | 27 Mar 2019 6:14 p.m. PST |
I did buy the Newbury "Fast Play Medieval and Renaissance" rules; never played these as they didn't seem any faster or simpler than WRG 4th or 5th ed. Ancients or 1st and 2nd ed. Renaissance. They were (IIRC) the default rules for a Renaissance campaign that I was involved in, but that collapsed before we had to engage in a major battle. (Thank God). |
Jefthro3 | 27 Mar 2019 6:35 p.m. PST |
Well l remember returning from just under a year working in Papua Newguinea in the early 80s and attending a wargamer show and obtaining a copy of Newbury fast play rules.I enjoyed playing them still do. I soon moved onto WRG 7th ed as I thought they were more realistic but more difficult to understand then I followed on to DBA, DBM , DBMM, TACTICA, Amarti etc etc etc and all of those rules and many others I will use when the fancy takes me but I digress . People often complain about Newbury fast play rules not being very fast but to me they are because they Use easy to understand concepts like morale tests , reaction tests , shielded / unshielded , disorganisation etc In essence they try to recreate the nit and gritty of an Ancient battle. For instance a unit of Romans on its own will be far more susceptible to defeat than one which has another unit of Romans on either side as well as another supporting them from behind and a general nearby. The problem is that the possible factors are almost endless and subject to debate I used to play with the full Newbury rules back in the day but found them too long winded . In essence I can pick up a copy of Newbury rules snd use them because the mechanisms follow concepts that I understand . In Newbury fast play ancients one can field ( using their fast play lists ) three legions of legionaries 10 Cohorts each believe me that looks good on a table, and yes any contemporary ancient army fighting against them on a level playing field might struggle to win , lve got no problem with that . Are they realistic? I remember seeing competitions using these rules and speaking with the authors – happy days . Roy Boss does a lot of Amarti these days and Trevor Halsall has developed Warlord Rules of which I have bought but find difficult to understand believe me I have tried but need some one to teach me how to play as I know that they contain all the stuff that I appreciated in the Newbury stable. Any how l still have fond memories of Newbury fast play as they feel,like an Ancient Game and takes me back to the 1980s when training , armour , weapon ability gave character to a unit and numbers of men counted as well as morale , the days before the element and same sized unit, the days before we gave up on trying to recreate ancient battles and decided to play abstract ancient games because it was too difficult is too difficult to account for every factor in a battle. nostalgia is a marvellous thing |
Marcus Brutus | 27 Mar 2019 6:42 p.m. PST |
All I can say is that I'd would have hated to play their regular play rules. I guess "fast" is a relative term but I found these rules to be very slow. Certainly an old style of rules writing that culminated in the 1980s with the mistaken belief that more complicated meant more realistic. Couldn't imagine going back to this older style of rules. |
Mirosav | 27 Mar 2019 8:12 p.m. PST |
Newbury Fast Play? My first game with them started in 1988 and is still going. |
WKeyser | 27 Mar 2019 11:39 p.m. PST |
We used to play the full monty of Newbury rules. We even had Trevor come and visit us in Rochester NY and then he came down to Historicon with us. I loved them they had all the nuance you would want but what I always found is that the game was really determined by your initial placement of troops and the timing of committing them. As Jethro3 I have the new Warlord rules and indeed all the good stuff is in there but what a grind to read and get to grips with. I wish he would rewrite those. But reading this thread has brought back some great memories. I remember one Historicon where I convinced Terry Gore to play a game, and since my gaming group had been playing them on a weekly basis and even using them for tournaments I was pretty fluent in the game, Terry was a WRG 6th/7th gamer at the time, and working on his own great Medival rules. He thought that they were just too complicated and too long to play. Well we sat down with a pitcher of beer and played a game. It was an average size game for the period so probably 12-15 units aside. We finished in 1 hour and 45 minutes, this was to a conclusion with one side routing away. Now I will have to dig out my 15mm Italian wars figures and get going with Warlord again. Does anyone know what Trevor is up these days? |
Jefthro3 | 30 Mar 2019 6:10 p.m. PST |
Thanks Wkeyser , maybe I should give Warlord another look but it's difficult when your your the only person in the group who has a real interest in Ancient / Medieval games maybe if they ever publish the Army lists that was promised that might give me some incentive maybe when I retire and have more free time to study. |
BigRedBat | 31 Mar 2019 3:36 a.m. PST |
Trevor is still collecting and gaming- I see him at shows. |
WKeyser | 31 Mar 2019 5:59 a.m. PST |
Hi Big Red ask him to finish his army lists and say hi from William for Rochester! |
WKeyser | 31 Mar 2019 6:00 a.m. PST |
Hi Jethro I have the same problem but I believe in the if you do it they will come theory of gaming! If I do the work and set up a game I can usually get my club members to play. |
blank frank | 31 Mar 2019 12:17 p.m. PST |
Yesterday I was at the Society of Ancients battle day. This year Telamon was being re-fought and as always Trevor Halsall was there using his rules. His group seemed to have on show a new set called Warlord Avanced guard a simpler set? I meant to chat to them but everyone was very involved. |
A Lot of Gaul | 01 Apr 2019 6:22 a.m. PST |
Can anyone describe some basic info about the Warlord and/or Warlord Advance Guard rules? Things such as: For what size figures are the rules designed? What is the ground scale? What size bases are used? How many men does a single base represent? How many bases in an average-sized army? What is the typical table size used? Many thanks, Scott |
blank frank | 02 Apr 2019 8:11 a.m. PST |
Well they seem to have a very basic website here. warlordrules.com Basic when you think of the efforts many rule writers will go to promote their game with battle reports etc. There is some information. If you click on the forum link you will see there are play sheets which can be down loaded. Looking at the play sheet for the supposedly simpler Warlord Advance Guard rules I did think they looked complicated and it did bring my thoughts back to the Newbury fast play set of rules which were not fast |
custosarmorum | 02 Apr 2019 7:43 p.m. PST |
While I have not played them in a long time, I quite liked the Newbury Fast Play rules and found them to be fun and easy to play in a reasonable amount of time (unlike the full set which we affectionately referred to as "warfare that takes ages" rather than Warfare through the Ages!). I even did a review/play test based on the Battle of Strasburg in A,D. 357 that was published in The Courier back in 1986 (I believe it was in volume VII.3). I think I have a PDF of the article if anyone is interested. |
Olivero | 05 Apr 2019 11:13 a.m. PST |
custosarmourum, I sure would like to read that How can I contact you? The website warlordrules.com has been cleaned up quite a bit. There used to be much more information, like a (complete?) publication list of the Newbury (fast/complete) rules. And some battle reports IIRC. Warlord Advance Guard (Warlord lite) Size: Large (20-28mm) or small (6-15mm) Basing: Standard Element Basing (or pretty close) ground scale 1:1000 table size: 4' by 4' for 15mm miniatures example battle pits 37 late roman elements against 28 Sassanid elements Warlord (full) should be the same. Scenarios like Magnesia: 6' by 4' around 100 elements each side (considered large battle by the authors I recon) |
A Lot of Gaul | 06 Apr 2019 7:24 a.m. PST |
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BigRedBat | 06 Apr 2019 12:19 p.m. PST |
Met Trevor today at Salute- we share a painter! |
custosarmorum | 06 Apr 2019 4:22 p.m. PST |
Hi, Olivero. If you send me a message at custosarmorumATyahooDOTcom, I with dig out the review and send you a pdf of the article. |
Jefthro3 | 13 May 2019 1:40 p.m. PST |
Hi Custosarmourum Took me a while to get back to this thread but that review sounds very interesting. |