"Best Ancients rules for 15mm?" Topic

I've been having fun with Sword & Spear from Great Escape Games.

Have a look at Mortem et Gloriam
mortem-et-gloriam.co.uk/meg

There's a very active online community and massive support from the author and his group of playertesters and army list writers.

Look no further than To the Strongest. Great rules. Simple yet subtle. Free army lists from Sumerians to Late Medieval. Flexible basing. Very playable. Available as a PDF download from the Big Red Bat store online.

We prefer Tactica II. Historically accurate play. Available from On Military Matters.

We play heavily modified Hail Ceasar with 4 DBM Bases equaling one unit.

To the Strongest for me.
But I'm going to be playing in a DBA campaign.

Impetus is my favourite. A very fluid game with many command decisions to make. Even with the same armies each game is different.

Might of Arms!

Uses DBA basing.

P.

I have been playing DBA since 1980– three general versions in that time, The best one available now. The rules are quite simple although people want to make them confusing, there's lots of online help available . There's lots of online help available. Great for solo play until you can teach some newbies. Armies are very small — 12 elements per side (40-50 figures) but you can expand them to be as large as you want. My local group often plays with 96 elementson the side On a 12 x 6' table. Uses Dba basing :-) your DBM armies will fit right in. By the way, in the 2020 society arrangements tournament, DBA What is the most frequently used army.

To the Strongest! is a great rule set with an active player base. If you are starting up a group it would be a great rule set because it is fast playing and easy to learn while still offering a very engaging game.

(Please ignore my message above it got garbled and I could not edit it)
I have been playing DBA since 1990 – three general versions in that time, The best one is available now. The rules are quite simple although people want to make them confusing, there's lots of online help available . Great for solo play until you can teach some newbies. Armies are very small — 12 elements per side (40-50 figures) but you can expand them to be as large as you want. My local group often plays with 96 elementson the side On a 12 x 6' table. Uses Dba basing :-) your DBM armies will fit right in. By the way, in the 2020 society of ancients tournament, DBA was the most frequently used army.

for recruiting purposes. start with Neil Thomas's "Ancient & Medieval Warfare Rules"

I used to play a lot of Lost Battles but these days we mainly play Command and Colours Ancients on Hexon terrain. I just use my quad sized DBA armies. It is quick, fun, involves a modicum of skill and let's you field hordes of figures.

It doesn't really work for remote lockdown play due to the command cards, so for Zoom games we've used some of the various Neil Thomas rules.

Sets that I would gladly play:

Mortem Et Gloriam
L'Art De La Querre
Might Of Arms

maybe Field of Glory

but there are a lot of other choices out there !
Hail Caesar
Militus Mundi
Armati
DBMM
To The Strongest
Piquet: Archon
Pulse of Battle
Impetus
Sword & Spear
DBA

to name but a few :-)
Most of not all (?) playable with DBM basing

Have played DBA for years and loved every game. One of the big pluses is minimal time needed to plan a game, to set up and to take down afterwards. So if your idea of fun is a quick exciting punch-up with no fuss and bother DBA is well worth considering. Even a game with 2 Greek Hoplite armies where we had no terrain available turned out to be fun!

As long as you avoid Newbury "Fast Play" rules you should be safe…..

If you consider DBA then Triumph! is worth a look wgcwar.com (and yes, lots of free army lists)

A couple of others
Lost Battles by Phil Sabin (also available from the Society of Ancients in the earlier Strategos version of the rules)
and Scutarii from Hoplite Research.

Hi

To the Strongest! for the group I play with, they seem to brought the fun back into ancient wargaming. More concentration on what to do with the troops rather than measuring the odd millimeter or leafing through the rulebook. That said we use D10's and numbered chits rather than cluttering up the table with playing cards.

Cheers Paul

DBA all the way for me. Low cost to get into nand enjoy the battles.

To the Strongest I really wanted to like but the grid was a blocker for us lot.

Really Rampant. An interesting comment on To the Strongest. Was it the look that put you off, or it's influence on the game?

Mollinary – finding a gridded mat to play on, then then the way it looked when laid out and how movement worked. I have nothing against it if thats what you like but we didn't enjoy ourselves. The grid seemed to us to get in the way rather than helping.

Rest of thje rules looked good though and I think we'd play again if we could modify to play without a grid.

The most widely played "competition" Ancients set in the UK, pre-Covid was L'Art De la Guerre, by quite some margin. It's a DBM derivative and the latest version (v4) has just been published, the English language version being distributed by North Star – who said it was the most popular new Ancients set they've handled since the days of WaB.

I've been compiling stats on competition attendance for several years now, the latest update (of course.,) being back at the end of 2019 which is here. link

Many games don't really support or suit competitions so they aren't captured in these stats, but you can possibly extrapolate something at least from this one limited perspective!

Where about are you (in the Uk I'm assuming) , as I'm sure there are some clubs playing Ancients reasonably near to you that I could point you at if you wish?

(Provided of course you don't have any unforeseen stair-related NTNOCN incidents with Rowan Atkinson first…!]

Personally, I love DBMM. I know there was a bit of acrimony when it emerged, which is unfortunate but it actually delivers a great game.

It has a steep learning curve due to some pretty arcane and impenetrable language, but I think the payoff is worth it. Mechanisms to reflect feigned flight (notoriously difficult to get to work in rules), disguised troops etc mean there are always lots of interesting challenges. I've never had a game that felt 'flat'; there are always moments of surprise and unpredictability that make for a great story.

I know there are lots of great rule sets out there – we're spoilt for choice. In a perfect world they'd all use the same (or easily adaptable) basing conventions and we'd be able to slot into any game using any rules that happened to be going.

Cheers,
John

I have tried to identify what rules are being played the most and based on competitions it seems the list is ADLG, DBA, DBMM, Triumph, MeG, FoG, TTS and DBM. This is in very rough order. The video below provides more details on other rules, but I suspect if you want to get into ancients figure gaming you may need to consider one of those rules if you hope to find opponents.

youtu.be/hVwGwlWXE9U

My present personal favourite is To The Strongest which is good for large games, multi player games and quick games.
Having said that, I also enjoy Sword and Spear. Has limited command and control and a unique activation system involving both players at all times. A real beard puller as you have to consider each phase.

Triumph! is a very good game. wgcwar.com

Use DBX basing. Clearly written rules. Great online support. And army lists are on line at meshwesh.wgcwar.com/home. It uses a point system so you can have games of 12-15 stands with 40mm wide bases.

It also scales up very easily for larger battles. Some good videos on the rules can be found here: YouTube link

I also love Armati.

15mm – How tall does a wargamer have to be ?

Best Ancient rules for 15mm?

Mine!

got to be gridded – takes out the measurement pain and uber competitive gamer effect
no saving throws – poor rule writing to have them in other than to give someone some extra dice to chuck
dont use d6 they skew results badly – use average dice instead
dont use multiple activations – not realistic and can be very demoralising
keep them simple – 20 gazzillion troop types is unrealistic in ancients and difficult to track. basic troop types can have variations added in 'special rules' if felt warranted
morale is everything in ancient battles – should be a mainstay in the rules along with combat
realistic outcomes should also be prevalent with very minor chances of upsets or unusual occurrences (distribution curve of results)
should be fun yet give realistic results
should encourage realistic formations and use of bodies of troops

unfortunately these rules do not exist yet but a few rulesets are better than others

Riothamus – Sounds like the very old Anabasis rules, especially the percentage dice and focus on morale.

not heard of those…

Best Ancients rules for 15mm? Optio!

@Michael Collins
15mm – How tall does a wargamer have to be ?

I think the tallest is 28mm. I stay away from them because I'm only 10mm.

I have updated my reviews of ancient figure gaming rules, broken down by size of battle.
Skirmish youtu.be/9D01l8qJOwk
Small Battle youtu.be/8Vp9NsS50FY
Medium Battle youtu.be/CY8HPOgTnTE
Big Battles youtu.be/h_P2J0m1VUk
Naval Battles youtu.be/ISvguKDfxkM

I noticed pfmodel that your rules overview missed many current sets that are quite popular.

Impetus, WAB, Hail Caesar, Might of Arms and Sword and Spear come to mind. Now, of course, I don't expect you to have great familiarity with all these but it is interesting that most of your game systems reviewed are WRG derived.

I noticed pfmodel that your rules overview missed many current sets that are quite popular.

You are correct, i add more rules each time i create a new version of my videos. I typically only add a set of rules if i have a copy of the rules, so the list will not be complete. However i try to include all the rules which are commonly played in competitions. I am also a rather old gamer, so WRG was the main set of rules in the old days. I rarely use them these days as they are too complex for new players.

I really like your rules reviews and found your WWII one's helpful in deciding on a game system. One of the problems of reviews is that it takes multiple plays to truly understand a game. First impressions are often wrong.

First impressions are often wrong.

Very true. My first impression of Field of Glory was so positive i purchased almost all their books. These day's no one plays them and even i have gone off the rules.

Interesting. I too got caught up in the FoG euphoria but soon learned that the games weren't that fun to play.