"Dark Ages wargame rules" Topic

Greetings,

I have been gaming for many years in Napoleonics, WW2 and ACW. I want to explore other periods. I'm thinking of doing Vikings, Normans, and Franks, etc., but I'm not sure which rules-set would best suit my needs. I like large battles, which means I will probably have 200-300 figures on a side. Does that sound like too many for the period? What set of rules can you recommend? I would be interested in the Pros and Cons of any and all suggestions.

Thanks

Front note: I am a soloist (consequence of living in the mountains)
I play War & Conquest. It is a derivative of Warhammer Ancients – as both are written by Rob Broom. I like it best of the Warhammer family. I like how leaders are not overpowered. Here are some links to games I have played:
Carthage v Rome: link
and a couple of Viking games
link
link

Here is a mini-campaign featuring Macedonia
v Thrace: link
Greek League: link
Persian Satraps: link

In general I like To the Strongest for decent sized battles. It's grid-based, which may put you off, and I haven't played much if any Dark Age battles with it, but I'd be surprised if it didn't work well.
On the plus side, it's surprisingly subtle, while being a straight forward set. The grid means no faffing about with millimetre manoeuvring, and battle-lines will look like battle-lines. I would advise using chits rather than cards though.

PDF link

I'll I'll inclined to hit a download link without more information.

"Pig Wars", great set of small to mid level of games. An unit is 20 figures, so you can scale up to however many you want.

PDF on Wargamevault.com

I like Pig Wars as well. It is a fun game, we recently started playing it again after a very long hiatus.

My Sword and Dagger free rules are available on our club website! link

its a dark ages scenario of the battle of Clontarf Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland, takes on Rebels and Vikings outside Dublin in 1014 .if the scale is what youre looking for the rules are Comitatus link

Hail Caesar gives a pretty good game. It's a typical Priestley product, but I like that kind of game -- plenty of dice rolling and it's fast paced and quick to learn. There's a dark age supplement ("Shield Wall), which has army lists, but little else to recommend it, so if you really want Dark Age flavor, you might need to add some appropriate house rules. For smaller battles, Priestley's Warlords of Erehwon is easily adapted to historical games (again with a few house rules), and is also a quick and imo fun game.

I played a bunch of Pig Wars 15-20 years ago and liked it. I'm considering using Lion Rampant for my next batch of Dark Ages games, (one just has to re-skin the Unit Type names--say foot Men-at-Arms become Thegns or something).

good luck with your search. I've yet to find my go-to rules for dark ages mass battles.

games I have liked were Hail Caesar and Sword and Spear, but each leaves a little to be desired (as in good, but not great). I'm eagerly looking forward to try out Triumph!

I've also been eyeballing Impetus 2.

Other rule sets for mass battles:
Swordpoint
Mortim et Glorium
The one with the French title that I am blanking on. someone will chime in I'm sure
Comitatus

While considering my options, I saw a lot of discussions about Armati and DBMM. Any thoughts on these two? I would prefer that any rules I go with would include army lists, since I will be starting virtually from scratch. I appreciate the input and Links that have been sent.

I will be using 15mm figures. Most of my gaming has been with General De Brigade and it's variants. I like the overall feel of those rules. Anything like that for Dark Ages?

Howdy,

I like and use Might of Arms for big battles. Great rules, very playable.

I wrote, like, and use So Convenient for Hewing for skirmish games.

My $0.02 USD,

JAS

To the Strongest works well. Another good option with more Dark Age flavor is Dan Mersey's Dux Bellorum published by Osprey. It includes army lists.

I 2nd Mr. Cyr. My group has played "Pig Wars" since we got the 1st xeroxed version of the rules from the author at Historicon in the early '90's & we've had many very enjoyable games. Each miniature represents an individual warrior. The rules are very versatile. We've played with Irish, Scots, Picts, Celts, Vikings, & Normans. I've also used them for convention games with Vikings vs "Skraelings" (N. American Indians). My convention games have 6-8 players each with 1 to 3 units (basic infantry have 20 figures/unit,
elites, bodyguards & cavalry have 10/unit. Leaders are superior warriors & may have useful attributes.

Stew Art do you mean Art de la Guerrero? That would be my choice for big battles with 200+ figures a side.

Chris

Aye; that's the one. 😀

A bit late to the discussion, but in reference to DBMM, I use these rules a lot for Dark Age (Early Medieval) battles and I believe they are very good at representing them. The rules come with both Middle Anglo-Saxon and Norse Viking lists, and the seperate book 3 army lists have extensive lists for the period. A 400 AP game will certainly have 200 to 300 figures a side.

Beware that DBMM is a complicated set, but there is a friendly group on Facebook, or you can get on to the IO DBMM list for any help.

If you haven't played the DBx series of games before, then you should buy DBA. While standard games are ~50 figures a side (12 elements of 4 figures), you can play the Big Battle version that scales up to about 150 figures. It also works well for Early Medieval. It also comes with all the army lists for the period. Any armies you paint for DBA will also be able to be used for DBMM (albeit you will need to paint more figures). Also given the fact that DBx basing is used for other rule sets, your armies will also be able to be used if you decide to go with those.

Cheers,
JohnG

although not specifically for this period I really rate Age of Hannibal by Little Wars TV