"What do people think of the new hail Caesar rules?" Topic

I generally like them the layout and graphics are better and i think easier to follow. What I miss is the battle reports. There is no real full examples of battle like there was in the old rules. I am also not sure about some of the terrain rules because I am yet to play a game with the new rules.

Browsed the PDF, but waiting for the hard copy to read the whole thing.

What were some of the major changes?

Being a fan of Bolt Action, I'm automatically drawn to Hail Caesar but does anyone else get the feeling Hail Caesar isn't made for large battles like DBMM or ADLG? That's not to say large battles can't be played but I see a lot of battle reports are like under 500 points with something like 10-15 units usually.

Come to think of it, I don't see very many battle reports – how popular is Hail Caesar anyway?

Our club tried it a few times. We found it got very bogged down and ended up moving on to To the strongest.

I have played many games of Hail Caesar. We often play with six to eight people each with 15 to 20 units and find it is the best large scale ancient rules we have tried. As for major changes I do not believe they mad any. They added some stuff for the war of the roses and for buildings and fortifications but I
just got the PDF yesterday so am still looking at it.

I watched the recent seminar given by Rick Priestley and he talked about devoting a few pages in the new rulebook about optimizing HC as a one vs one game. I was surprised as I thought it was usually played that way! Well that kinda explains why the games I've seen are relatively small. Didn't know it was more of a team game!

That must be a massive game rhacelt.

We usually play on a 16ftx5ft group of tables. We end up with several hundred miniatures on the table. we are lucky we have a great game shop here that lets us book tables in advance so we can plan ahead. Not all our games are this big but we make it a point to have at least one big game a month.

We play Clash of Empires, with scheduled quarterly historical battle scenarios, on 15x6 table, and the armies are several hundred painted 25/28mm (500-800 range typically). If levy units involved or barbarians, can reach a thousand miniatures on one side. The fall quarter game last year was Battle of the Rhone 218 BCE. Last Summer scenario was Sassinids vs. Late Rome. Our upcoming winter season game looks to be a Classical Greek vs. Greek city state scenario, pending final group discussion

We looked at HC but group preferred the game closer to the former WAB system, but without the WAB super leaders, army structure issues and their effects or HC's unrealistic movement (triple move?).

When HC Ver2.0 is out, we will look at the rules again but since we play larger historical multiple player format games, the concept of one vs. one will work against use I feel.

Is Hail Caesar more or less popular in 15mm?

The new Edition is a very nice publication in it's own right.

I've only had a quick run through but it has much higher production values and is definitely easier to read.

It would make a great purchase for anyone starting out in the Ancients as its swapped out the "Battle Reports", which I thought were more use if you were thinking about a specific era, for a good overview of the entire period of history the rules covered. So a Plus for educational value.

Which doesn't mean experienced players needn't bother buying.

As pointed out, its evolution rather than revolution with tiding up and clarification in mind, along with some additions. The overall presentation of the rules sections is better and the 20+ pages of Rules Summary is excellent.

I particularly like explanation of how the rules came to be, which puts context on the style of play and the inclusion of a Section of options for one v one pick up games for those with out space or players to run bigger games with a football team on either side of the table.

There's new stuff on terrain, sieges and the Wars of the Roses as well.

So far I think its been a sound purchase.

Nice review Trajanus. I agree with all that you said but I think at least one or two battle reports still would have been nice to include.