""Clash of Spears" rules unit sizes." Topic

Without necessarily giving anything away too early, can anybody point me in the right direction regarding possible unit sizes for this set as I'd like to start organising and collecting some forces ready for the release. Are they using the 4/8/12 ratio to represent Elite/ Warrior/ Skirmisher formations?

Many thanks

Jon

You can ask the authors either on their blog or facebook page. link

Many thanks Jimmy, will follow u[p the link.

So you are building a force for a game sight unseen? Brave man!

bravery is usually rewarded, or at least sometimes :)

we have no restrictions imposed on unit sizes..

we decided to leave it open and playtest and have rules that naturally take you to a sweet spot…. we've done a ton of playtesting, we have groups in US, UK, Australia, Germany, Spain, Poland.. no playtesting solves contact with the extended customer base but nobody can say we didn't try..

the sweet spot we have observed is units between 6-8 models, but sometimes you have 5, sometimes 12…

because of this and the system being truly base agnostic the armies you build for CLASH should work for any other system…

The most important thing to consider in a CLASH army is having a good amount of medium and light troops.. for example in a mid republican list make sure to have a good amount of velites and hastati, princeps are tough and it is good to have a unit as anchor.
For example a full force of exclusively cesarean roman legionnaires without good lights in support is very tough to play because they will get very tired very quickly …

regarding balance of standard vs elites… we have two types of armies you can build. we rank troops as civis, milites, rare based on how often you could assume to find them in riding roles.. ( again roman examples velites and hastati are civis, princeps are milites, triarii are rare )

you can build a muster force where the number of rare does not exceed milites, and rare plus milit s does not exceed civis..

or you can build an ad-hoc force, where you do whatever you want.. even all rare if you want

BUT, a muster force always ignores the first force break test they have to take in the game.. which is a very good thing :)

I check TMP often and I am very glad to answer all questions… no mystery here… if the printing process was done today we would be selling today… trust us, we are as eager as you are…

In fact if people are curious about certain aspects then ask, I'll answer and maybe write some simple online piece outlining relevant concepts ..

regards,
Francisco

Been hovering over the Victrix plastics for a while just needing a motivating factor to pick some up, having seen the YouTube promotion the rules do indeed look tempting, very well done at this stage Francisco.

I'm going to show my age here, but if you can recall far back enough, Brit TV use to do a series called "Time Commanders". If you could handle the OTT hyper excitement of Top Gear's "Hamster Hammond" and then the blokey charm of Greg from MasterChef, it was actually quite good.(The historical advisors knew their stuff). What I really liked was the introductory skirmish scale engagement at the start of the programme and I'm hoping these rules will go in some way to replicate that.

Link
YouTube link

EC, I'm getting in early as it were because it always takes me ages to paint figs, it's the only way I'll have anything nearly ready by November :-)

OMG, I had never seen that show… it is awesome !!

Looks like such fun to participate as well… like a team Rome Total War :) .. Now I might lose quite some time watching those !!!

And the military insights into weapons are great…

I think you will very much get that feeling with CLASH, lots of low level tactical decisions, like do I throw my pila and then I have to wait to get some extras or do I hold it because I will need it very soon…

If I throw my pila and do enough damage do I follow up and charge ? I would like to but my guys are getting tired, do I rest and maybe loose my opportunity..

Those kinds of decisions are streamlined into the mechanics …

Although the game can be played with as low model count as maybe 20, and if you have time you could scale it up to maybe 80 models, about 30 models per side provide a very enjoyable game that will last about two hours.

It is a bit of a struggle to frame the rules because these types of games are really skirmishes for ancient times but many players tend to associate skirmish games with squad level games ( no more than 20 figures ) that you can play in 40 minutes…

Our rules are to play raids in ancient times at what would be considered platoon level for WWII…

I'm also a slow painter…

cheers
Francisco

The intention and scale of tactical involvement seems just about right to me, so yes I'm very interested in picking these up when they are published.

I was personally devising forces with 6-8 for my elite units and skirmishers and 8-10 for the regular forces. I think 6 cavalry is about right. With 3 commanders I'm finding that it seems about right.

Francisco,
How many points do you normally play with in a general game? I was thinking around 1000 and am trying to design forces around that – though I will present the first couple of games around half of that.

our standard games are 600 or 800 points..

1000 points might take a bit longer but if you are ok painting the extra figures and spending a bit more in the game.. maybe 3 hours or so.. then great, the game manages that well and it does not bog down at all duento the alternate activation system..

My sons and I played the demo game at Historicon and were real excited. We picked up a couple of boxes of Victrix and have been happily building.

Quick question Jimmie, what works better with the plastic figures, Revell liquid poly or superglue?

Can't wait to see Clash of Spears rolled out and introduced at MillenniumCon Texas 7-10 November in Austin, I plan to pick up my copy and get Francisco to autograph it for me:

millenniumcon.info

If u do, can u ask him to make a trip across the pond to see us in the UK :-)

hahaha…

Mr J1970, there is no doubt we will make the trip across the pond later this year or earlier next year, for starters salute is probably a must..

But also since the first page of CLASH ever was written while I was staying in Kingston Upon the Thames for a vacation/work-remote time of three weeks, it is probably fair to go back once the rules come out.

I have my little easter egg about Kingston in the fatigue section of the rules to always remind me of what a great time I had there.. plus my first wargame was warhammer fantasy battle 3rd ed so UK is kind of like mecca :)

cheers
Francisco

Crazy, I'm 20 mins from Kingston Upon Thames. yes it's a really nice part of the world and great to hear you may be attending Salute, another tick on the "to do list"!

I use testors plastic glue for plastics.

Mr J1970, regular model glue works the best with plastic figures. I use Tamiya Extra Thin for most parts and Tamiya regular for only the odd assembly.

The Extra Thin flows into the join (I add another "dab" of it to allow it to flow into the join – you'll see if you try).

The Revell glue will be just fine as is Testors.

Many thanks Wmyers