Wealdmaster | 06 Oct 2019 7:48 p.m. PST |
I am fairly well versed with Neil Thomas, Saga, Lion Rampant, and DBMM (planning to try DBMM) but would like to know peoples opinions on this period. Want to show effect of morale, difficulty of maneuver, some tactics like pavisieri and crossbow combined. Also trying to show German mercenary as well as occassional Saracen influences. Someone said Sword point but not sure. |
sillypoint | 06 Oct 2019 8:10 p.m. PST |
Always hard to tweek generic rules (3,000 BCE to 1400 ACE) to cater for a specific period. I am fortunate to have a small group to play with and so we concoct our own home brew. It doesn't always work … |
Frostie | 06 Oct 2019 10:39 p.m. PST |
You could try Hail Caesar, they are very well adaptable |
advocate | 07 Oct 2019 2:49 a.m. PST |
To the Strongest is worth a look too. Since it is grid-based you can get away with quite small units if you use a 4" grid. With a relatively small number of variations, it manages to allow a good degree of subtlety within each period. |
Sundance | 07 Oct 2019 7:23 a.m. PST |
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Wealdmaster | 07 Oct 2019 8:21 a.m. PST |
It might be fun to try a grid game sometime, as far as Hail Caesar and WRG I've tried them once but not my cup of tea. |
Dervel | 07 Oct 2019 11:53 a.m. PST |
I used to play a lot of DBA, DBM, Warhammer Ancients…. over the last few years I have switched to Triumph which has pretty much everything I liked about those systems with some pretty significant improvements. I found DBM (and MM) had more chrome than needed to get to a similar result to DBA. Warhammer Ancients even more so with really long battles. DBA lacked a point system and had too few troop types to cover the range of units I wanted on the battlefield, so too little chrome. Triumph has a unit to called Pavise which function differently from just massed Archers which are different again from Bow Levy. If you take a look at Meshwesh: meshwesh.wgcwar.com/home You can find a description for the different troop types and if you type Italian into the search bar it will pull up the different army lists for the specific period. I have been using Triumph to do a lot of large historical battles and been very happy with the results. Typically playing a 6 player large battle (144 pts per side) to a conclusion in 3 hours. Smaller battles using 48 point armies last about an hour. |
Wealdmaster | 07 Oct 2019 1:05 p.m. PST |
Is Triumph only using a 2 by 3 table? I was hoping to get a little larger sized battle going with more troops. I will check it out, but heard that. |
Dervel | 07 Oct 2019 1:48 p.m. PST |
Triumph movement scale is based on the width of your bases. 1 MU (movement unit) = 1/2 a base width. The recommended minimum playing area for a 48 point game is 48MU Wide by 32MU deep. so if your are using 15mm figures on 40mm wide bases, then the recommended minimum playing area is 96cmX64cm (a little bigger than 3'X2'
however it is completely scalable. In fact I think it really shines at 144 points (typically three commands like many ancient battles) For my 144Point games I use a larger battlefield depending on the terrain for that battle. In my historical ones I am using 28mm figures on 80mm wide bases. So for example Hastings was about 4' Deep and about 10' wide.
My Hattin battlefield is about 5' X 10'.
Nicea on a large battlefield:
For Qadesh in 15mm we actually had 8 players and used about a 4' X 10' table in 15mm. Which was excessive, but we wanted to recreate the overall battlefield including a model of Qadesh!
For a standard 144pt 15mm battles we typically use a double sixed battlefield like this fantasy game of Triumph:
The 144Point battles are great fun for 2-6 people. Conan Mammoth clash at Nashcon (just because):
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Thresher01 | 07 Oct 2019 8:36 p.m. PST |
Impetus or Maximilian might work too, though I can't recall if they have provisions for crossbowmen protected by pavises/shields/others. I suspect it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with house rules to address that, if needed. |
Wealdmaster | 08 Oct 2019 8:40 a.m. PST |
Very interesting to see that Triumph can be run at this scale. Larger table, etc. |
Dervel | 08 Oct 2019 12:29 p.m. PST |
Here is a link to the Grand Triumph rules: wgcwar.com/GrandTriumph.html These additional rules are for a random terrain setup system scaled to larger battles and more importantly the command demoralization rules for larger battles. So they can be used for tournament style play or for larger historical scenarios. In a 48 point game you win typically when you kill 16 points, breaking the opponent's army. In the larger scale game when an individual command breaks losing 1/3 of that command's initial point value the command is demoralized and you start to have issues holding troops on the battlefield. It also impacts their fighting effectiveness, but the overall army does not break until losing 50% or more. These are of course guidelines but it works really well and I use the GT demoralization system for my larger historical battles. |