 Editor in Chief Bill   | 12 Mar 2025 9:30 p.m. PST |
Why do you play miniature wargames in the Ancients period? |
 ochoin  | 12 Mar 2025 10:53 p.m. PST |
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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| Martin Rapier | 13 Mar 2025 12:39 a.m. PST |
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? |
 Herkybird | 13 Mar 2025 12:44 a.m. PST |
Who doesn't want to be Alexander the Great? |
| The Last Conformist | 13 Mar 2025 1:27 a.m. PST |
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. |
| ZULUPAUL | 13 Mar 2025 1:43 a.m. PST |
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 |
 John the OFM | 13 Mar 2025 4:13 a.m. PST |
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. |
| GurKhan | 13 Mar 2025 4:15 a.m. PST |
Because it's the period of history I am most interested in. And firearms leave powder-stains all over the place. |
| korsun0 | 13 Mar 2025 6:11 a.m. PST |
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. |
| Marcus Brutus | 13 Mar 2025 6:57 a.m. PST |
The variety of the armies and the dress and tactics that made them up. |
 miniMo | 13 Mar 2025 7:12 a.m. PST |
So many different army compositions, dress, and tactics.
Still steadily adding more armies to my collection each year thanks to the DBA checklist! |
| Micman | 13 Mar 2025 7:25 a.m. PST |
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. |
| Red Dragon 44 | 13 Mar 2025 7:31 a.m. PST |
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. |
| Shagnasty | 13 Mar 2025 8:31 a.m. PST |
I second Herkybird's comment. Sadly I haven't played in years after WRG 7th ended the glory days. |
| Deucey | 13 Mar 2025 10:57 a.m. PST |
Because it's borderline fantasy. |
| Tgerritsen | 13 Mar 2025 11:07 a.m. PST |
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. |
 Dal Gavan | 13 Mar 2025 12:14 p.m. PST |
Because massed hoplites, legionaries and katraphractoi look so good on the table. |
| rustymusket | 13 Mar 2025 12:58 p.m. PST |
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. |
| miniMo | 13 Mar 2025 1:26 p.m. PST |
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). |
| evilgong | 13 Mar 2025 2:31 p.m. PST |
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. |
| Perris0707 | 13 Mar 2025 3:13 p.m. PST |
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. |
| BrockLanders | 13 Mar 2025 6:58 p.m. PST |
Partly because I love ancient history but mostly because of all the attention I get from the ladies |
| John the Red | 14 Mar 2025 3:59 a.m. PST |
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 |
| Marcus Brutus | 14 Mar 2025 5:50 a.m. PST |
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. |
| IanWillcocks | 14 Mar 2025 6:59 a.m. PST |
Reading Thucydides at school, DBA rules the only set my simple mind could master and Victrix figures. |
| robert piepenbrink | 14 Mar 2025 12:46 p.m. PST |
"…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. |
 piper909 | 19 Mar 2025 10:22 p.m. PST |
HA! Brocklanders speaks for me as well! Fascinating period of history, plus chicks dig men in chitons! |
| DB Draft | 31 Mar 2025 2:00 p.m. PST |
It is a very good and Broad period as you can justify any army fighting any other army because in reality they probably did! You cannot do this with Napoleonics or WW1 or WW2. Games need to feel authentic to be best enjoyed. |
| Dolphinless | 02 Apr 2025 2:01 a.m. PST |
Played Zama last week with slightly tweeked DBA rules. Came out a treat & gave an historical result. Alexander & his Companions were indeed hard-pressed & nearly succumbed to some Persian skirmishers |
| Dagwood | 06 Aug 2025 8:02 a.m. PST |
Alexander and Persians at Zama ? Which was on Hannibal's side ? |
| John the OFM | 02 Sep 2025 8:26 p.m. PST |
Chicks dig Heavy Throwing Weapons.
Can you blame them? |
| piper909 | 21 Sep 2025 8:55 p.m. PST |
Hoplites. Legionaries. Elephants. Nuff said. |
| Dolphinless | 25 Sep 2025 1:09 a.m. PST |
Dagwood- "Alexander and Persians at Zama ? Which was on Hannibal's side ?"
Yes- I was being an f-wit. Of course it was Gaugamela |
| John the OFM | 27 Sep 2025 6:58 a.m. PST |
Chicks dig long thrusting spears too! |
| wballard | 02 Nov 2025 8:21 p.m. PST |
One thing to consider is that with ancients and any historical period you are very unlikely to have the issues that arise with proprietary army figures and rule sets dropping/depreciating/crippling your expensive figures in the next update. Plus there are enough rule sets to play with lots of options as to how many figures or space you need to use and emphasizing different aspects of organization, command and control (elephants and flaming pigs anyone?). |
| Uesugi Kenshin | 08 Nov 2025 3:04 p.m. PST |
Loads of great armies to choose from. |
| The H Man | 09 Nov 2025 4:24 p.m. PST |
"Chicks dig long thrusting spears too!" Apparently not. At least, not most real ones. Ancients don't get changed and disconnected or retconed like other genres can. Actually that's wrong. |
| Dave Crowell | 14 Dec 2025 6:18 a.m. PST |
Because my first rules were "Shock of Impact"! Mostly though it's because I love teh history. I did a deep dive into the Late Bronze Age for an as historical as I could make it game of the siege of tall towered Ilium. Trying to figure out how those Sumerian battle cars worked. Suma Gallia en tres partes divisat. Cartago delenda est. Alea iacta est. 'He glutted black ravens on the rampart of the stronghold, though he was no Arthur.' "I was there. I'm Max and I'm two thousand years old." |
