"Field of Glory v 3.1" Topic
12 Posts
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Its Me | 21 Sep 2022 9:05 a.m. PST |
Field of Glory is now available as a free download. Latest version released yesterday is at 3.1. Army Books will follow in due course: Army Book 1 is now avaialable. Available at the following link: link |
Wayniac | 21 Sep 2022 4:01 p.m. PST |
Very interesting. I've been intrigued about FoG although its popularity seems to have dropped like a stone. -Wayne |
mckrok | 22 Sep 2022 4:49 p.m. PST |
Interesting. Thanks for this. A friend and I still play FoG 3 and have a game scheduled for this Saturday, Seleucids vs. Mid-Republican Romans. pjm |
pfmodel | 23 Sep 2022 1:51 p.m. PST |
Field of Glory is an interesting example of how a set of rules was released very well, but something about the actual play of the rules did not click with players. I remember buying the rules many years ago, along with many of the supplemental books and thinking what a beautiful produced set of rules. It must be noted when these rules first came out WRG 7th edition and DBA were the main ancient rules around. The production of the rules and its visual format was ground shattering and I feel it blew many ancients gamers away, including me. But when I actual played a game it lacked something, especially when compared with the latter DBM set of rules. One of my gaming friends once said the rules were old school. With the release of DBA v2 and latter DBM, this became more pronounced. While people complained about WRG almost every day, they preferred them for game play. The WRG army lists could have been a factor as well. I suspect if FoG was created in a manner where it could easily use the WRG army lists, it may have been more popular. On the other hand I feel the state of the hobby had moved on and people liked some of the basic principals in DBA/DBM, even if they did not like the rules format and structure. |
platypus01au | 24 Sep 2022 4:54 a.m. PST |
Pfmodel, "It must be noted when these rules first came out WRG 7th edition and DBA were the main ancient rules around" Er, no. When FoG came out 7th had been obsolete by at least a decade. They were released in the mid-2000's when Bodley-Scott and Barker parted ways when Phil wanted to move to a more complicated combat mechanic than was in DBM, that ended up in DBMM. By that time 7th had been sold to some Americans who re-published it as Warrior. Because of the DBM/DBMM schism, the Slitherine team thought they could replace the dominance of DBM with FoG. Which it sort of did for a bit, but in reality it split Ancients. Now Ancient tournaments, at least in the UK and to some degree in Australia and NZ, are a mixture of DBM, DBMM, ADLG, MeG, FoG, TTS, etc, and also DBA which has been tootling along for 30 years! |
pfmodel | 25 Sep 2022 1:33 p.m. PST |
You are correct, my memory has failed me in this case. My copy says 2008 and I should of checked it first. As DBMM v1 came out in 2007 I must have had those WRG rules in mind. In that case FoG was probably a reaction to the changes in DBMM, as you have suggested. This does make a lot of sense and is another good strategy on the parts of the publishers of FoG. Regardless the printing format was a significant change to the WRG structure, which they also did well. |
dragon6 | 25 Sep 2022 6:11 p.m. PST |
I forget when FoG debuted in the USA but it was at Historicon. There was a mass of gamers trying to get close enough to watch or understand. I didn't think much of it. And later when I had a chance to play it I thought even less of it. DBM was the big ancient tournament back then. Later we had the HUGE schism DBM vs DBMM. |
madaxeman | 28 Sep 2022 3:38 p.m. PST |
The driver for Slitherine developing FoG was that many people in the Uk/international DBM competition scene were becoming "played out" with DBM after something like 15 years of back to back events around the world. People had played every list, worked out every wrinkle and angle, collected every figure, and JD McNeil sensed / believed / (personally told me at the time that he though) there was a real possibility the Ancients scene he was a central part of might go pop as a wave of players all suddenly realised that they no longer had the mojo to carry on going round and round the same dog track any longer … He put time and money into a "different" system, offering different mechanics to the DBX paradigm, in many ways going back to some of the WRG "units and factors" elements. Getting in Osprey to produce it properly was also a deliberate poke in the eye to Phil Barker and WRG, and all of the (at the time) cheapskate wargamers who always said it would be impossible to produce an appropriately priced well produced full colour and successful set of ancients rules as "wargamers won't pay more than a few quid and don't want to pay for colour pictures" What did happen was that his instincts were proved right on almost every case – a large body of played-out DBM competition players all grabbed the new, shiny and "different mechanics" thing and jumped en-mass into something fresh and new. The fact that the first edition of DBMM (which came out around the same time) was acknowledged as a disastrous mess (even by the people who played it as who still advocate for it) also helped FoG get established. It held sway for many years on the competition circuit, but as others have said we've since moved into a multi-ruleset era and the days of one ruleset to rule them all are now long gone, leaving FoG as one of the "legacy" sets in a market that still likes to look at shiny stuff. DBM is now essentially free too, and has sustained some level of players I imagine in part as a result – so FoG now joins that category of ruleset too, with a free version that will no doubt be welcomed by those who still enjoy playing it and which may encourage a few more people to have a look as there is no longer a prohibitive initial buy-in for a set which nowadays has a far more limited pool of possible opponents than in its (never to be repeated by any ruleset) heyday (Posted on iPhone so apologies for fat finger typos!) |
Marcus Brutus | 29 Sep 2022 4:46 a.m. PST |
I remember being really excited by FoG but upon playing it found the game was tedious and the rules poorly thought out. |
Legend of Doom | 29 Sep 2022 7:32 a.m. PST |
I struggled with it but found it turgid and painfully slow. locals tell me that the renaissance variant isbetter |
pikeman666 | 10 Oct 2022 7:04 a.m. PST |
I will check it out. My first thought was that being free was a gesture to recover lost customers. Version 2 wound up being tossed in the recycle bin, although I saved the numerous army books. I don't expect any resurgence of interest though. |
Jefthro3 | 29 Sep 2023 4:53 p.m. PST |
Well said PJ Model , very gracious l knew that you were referencing WRG DBM, It's amazing how dismissive some war gamers are of previous sets of rules, l still play DBM, WRG 7th what ever l fancy. However it's a shame in my opinion that there isn't one set of rules dominant in Ancient / Medieval wargaming as what we have at the moment are War-games systems which appear to be based on previous war gaming systems and the whole concept of the recreation of Ancient Warfare appears to have been lost in the hype. I always enjoyed the debates in Slingshot about how a particular warrior should be represented and played in a game etc based on " historical " evidence etc. There's no context now , it's like a free for all , when WRG were in the fore front, at least there was something to compete with and argue against if necessary. However in the present context l wonder are more people playing ancient wargaming , will there be another generation of Wargamer's who become historians like Adrian Goldsworthy and many others, and will the hobby as we know it die with us…ok it's a hobby not a faith but l have enjoyed so much from the wargaming hobby and it's link to history , but on a more somber note are gamers interested in history now? |
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