"Why play Ancients?" Topic

Why do you play miniature wargames in the Ancients period?

Because I like wargaming.

This is actually a serious answer – up to the end of WW2, there's nothing I wouldn't game.

Oh & the Bronze Age is my favourite period of history:
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The usual reason, bringing history to life, as AHGC so aptly put it. As with all the other periods I game, I much prefer historical engagements, to made up encounters.

Besides, I've painted all these figures, what else am I going to do with them?

Who doesn't want to be Alexander the Great?

There's many reasons, but not the least is that it's a period for which I have opponents with a variety of armies for and for which we have rules we all enjoy.

No long range artillery to worry about, lots of variety in armies, since I use DBA I can make a good number of armies even as slow a painter as I am. Besides that uniforms are often just guesses in many ways so variety of dress is OK IMHO.
Paul

The heft and satisfaction of moving a squadron of 28mm metal elephants.

Chariots. Real Men ride into battle standing up.

Avenging the historical defeat by the Vikings with your New Kingdom Egyptian army.

Because it's the period of history I am most interested in.

And firearms leave powder-stains all over the place.

A lot of fighting in a small space due to limited missile range and a need to H2H. Therefore use of tactics to gain an advantage. It's very tactile.

The variety of the armies and the dress and tactics that made them up.

So many different army compositions, dress, and tactics.

Still steadily adding more armies to my collection each year thanks to the DBA checklist!

I started playing Ancients because that was what the cool kids were playing. Played a lot of DBA for a bit.

Now we have moved on to bigger armies and trying different rules.

Because as a young teenager I saw Phil Barker's Byzantines facing Bob O'Brien's Huns at the Aldershot Military Tattoo in the early 1970's.

I second Herkybird's comment. Sadly I haven't played in years after WRG 7th ended the glory days.

Because it's borderline fantasy.

Couldn't you ask this question of any genre? Or miniatures themselves?

I don't play a lot of ancients but it's not from lack of interest. I would love to paint up a Sumerian army and go waaaay back.

There's something primal and interesting about early peoples and their struggles as they literally invent the tactics and strategies that still influence us today.

Because massed hoplites, legionaries and katraphractoi look so good on the table.

I never thought I would. Then Warhammer Ancients had great looking Foundry Early Empire Romans (Perry sculpts) figs which I painted. Still did not play ancients. Then "Age of Hannibal" rules came along. Played them. Liked them. Simple enough rules, real-seeming enough rules. Fun! Now I play ancients.

Because DBA.

Played one game of WRG 6th edition, which was more than enough for this lifetime for my tastes. I stuck with PRESTAGS boardgaming for Ancients until DBA came out. Have never taken to any of the more complicated rules that have come out since then neither (including DBA 3.0 which crept over the line into the more complex Barker style for my tastes).

For the towering prize-money, lucrative media and product endorsement contracts, groupies and wild after-event parties.

Dusted off your old peltasts yet?

OK, it's the interesting cultural diversity of the combatants and that armies can have quite different weapons systems, troops and military ethos.

The fascinating historical generals, kings and potentates also help.

And that research into ancient nations and armies regularly throws up new data and interpretation.

These are all interesting and great reasons. I have loved the period since watching movies like Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, Ben Hur, El Cid, The 300 Spartans, Spartacus, etc when I was a kid.

Partly because I love ancient history but mostly because of all the attention I get from the ladies

My mate Chris bought a second hand mid Byzantine army when we we were leaving school and i was hooked. The WRG books on the Dark Ages and Crusades etc got us further in. Then got my own Irregular Miniatures army of Ghazavids and we were away.

DBA also allowed us to try out a large range of different periods and armies.

Napoleonics first love though and still the best

Who doesn't want to be Alexander the Great?

I have never wanted to be Alexander the Great on the table top.

If anything, I wanted to be the one who stopped Alexander the Great and put him in his place. Give me Scipio's genius and his legions at Zama and I'll show you what a real general can do.

Reading Thucydides at school, DBA rules the only set my simple mind could master and Victrix figures.

"…And firearms leave powder-stains all over the place."

Oh, drat! GurKhan, when I started, "Ancients" sometimes called "Shock Period" ran all the way to "Horse & Musket" unless some finicky type wedged "Pike and Shot" in between. When's the cut-off these days? Nobody tells me anything!

Back to the question. Classical history and DBA for inspiration, I suppose. You can fight out a whole famous battle in an afternoon, and you don't need to start building the army two years out.