"Why we all should know about War and Conquest: a review." Topic

A few weeks ago I played my first game of War and Conquest. A ruleset that was published during the last death throes of Warhammes Ancient Battles (WAB). I used to play a lot of WAB. I always thought WAB a magnificent, if in some places clunky game that gave me hundreds of hours of fun. I even played a WAB tournament once which says something because I hate tournaments. But I enjoyed this one.

WAB however was destined for a long and slow death bed. An overhaul for the main rules was postponed and delayed for years. Supplements were always promised and sometimes published, but always late. GW really put some effort into the slow strangulation of what must have been one of the most succesful Ancients wargaming rules ever and finally delivered the neck shot in 2010 with the monstrous WAB 2.0: expensive, fault-ridden, badly edited and even clunkier than WAB 1.5. Everybody who had until then be willing to have sympathy and hope for WAB effectively lost this after paying 45 Euros for this pile of glossy toilet paper. And after the closure of Warhammer Historical in 2012 WAB was finally and truly dead.

Several successors presented themselves. War and Conquest, Clash of Empires and Hail Caesar appeared in a relatively short amount of time around WAB's demise. In terms of marketing success HC was the absolute winner. My club adopted it in the wake of the Black Powder successes, I bought it and played it a number of times. But au contraire to BP this game felt a bit bland, the troop types too generic and the game pace too slow to really peak my interest. COE en WAC were anonymous wallflowers. My Ancient armies started to gather dust in favour of other periods and rulesets.

More on my blog: link

Nice review, particularly in reference to the solutions in WAC for various WAB issues.

Was it really only 2012 when WH shut down? In some ways it feels like an age.

I have this ruleset, never played it yet though.

Thanks for the good review,
I just ordered it!

Chris

Thanks for the review. I had been wondering about WAC.

You know……this was a great post. A teaser of the review was a stroke of genius. I actually clicked on the link to finish the review (also well done).

People who post a link with no picture or good reason to click need to take notice!

Two questions:
Can DBX based figures be used to play these rules?
How many figures needed to field a minimum sized Republican Roman army?

WAC uses generally individual figures to make units, but reading from the rules here it mentions

20mm x 20mm bases for infantry and 25mm x 50mm mounted.

minimum unit sizes are 6 infantry, 4 cavalry and 3 chariots.

Movement trays get a mention as does multi-basing saying " Allow 20mm for foot 25mm for horse" basically a head count I imagine.

These sizes are for 25mm figures.

I've never played these rules, just picked them up cheap secondhand but the Web site has 100's of army lists. Address here.

link

Figures-wise 100 to 200 might be the numbers needed, based on Hastati costing 10pts Princepes 12pts and Triari 19pts and a 2000pt Army.

Hope that helps vtsaogames

It does, thank you.

Good review… you've encouraged me to give it a try to replace my warhammer fantasy 3rd edition gaming…

Thanks
Francisco

Yes the word of mouth advertising seems a bit slow on this set of rules. You have convinced me though Pijlie I have just ordered a copy! :-)

Or tipped me over the edge really as I had a previous inclination. Any good for an ECW variant do you think?

Not crazy about the cover, but that doesn't make any difference to the game itself, and I must say your review has me interested. Does WAC cover Medieval or is it only Ancients? Thank you for the excellent review!

Thank you all for the compliments and I am glad you enjoyed the review. I was really enchanted by trhe game. It reminded me of those first few magical games played with WAB years ago.

Fotherington, there is apparently a book in the works for the 30 Years War. Books for Napoleonic and ACW are already finished, so I would say yes!

If you follow the link from my blog to Scarab Miniatures you will find Army books for Ancient, Biblical, Dark Age, Medieval and Renaissance periods as will you find books for the Condottieri era, ACW and Napoleonic era.

It is mentioned in the Army List Books that the numbers and names are taken from the DBM Army Books. Does that apply to the content as well, or is the content actually researched by the WAC Army List author?

I have absolutely no idea. It would probably be best to direct these questions directly to Scarab Miniatures. As I understand there are several Army Book authors, so you might need to specify which books you mean.

Hi and thank you for the support and commentary

War & Conquest army lists are broken into two categories – the first, fully expanded and detailed lists with variants where needed. Currently, these are listed individually in the relevant Period section. Some have been put together myself, others by members of the community. We update them into new versions when new information comes to light (or usually when I made an error when calculating values!!)

Second, also compiled by the German gaming community (and as often mentioned, our thanks to them) are a series of Army Books, covering a multitude of 'short lists' to be used as a stop gap for those needing a specific army to game with. Also found in these books are edited versions of the extended lists mentioned above (usually in blue.

Eventually, my intention is to have fully expanded versions of all the lists each compiled into their own 'sub period' book. With over 500 lists free online, this is of course a major work but thankfully members of the community are also helping out expanding the lists or sending me suggestions.

All this will remain free online, so all you need to do is buy the rulebook, download your list or lists of choice and get gaming.

We also plan some more printed publications, more on that in the new year.

Seasons greeting to you all

kind regards

Rob
scarabminiatures.com
warandconquest.co.uk

And the rulebook is down to 20 GBP, I see.

People, this is your moment!

had a few games now, mainly Declining Romans vs various Barbarians, rules work well.

Ahhh, if some bright youngster of the new pc generation would put the army list-making on Lone Wolf's Army builder…. I'd even pay him for it ….

Belgian Ray

That certainly would be helpful

Lots of pictures from a recent War & Conquest Gaming Day at Exeter can be found here link

Next events Gravesend (on the coast to the east of London, accessible from around the UK and Europe) and Devizes

We hope to see plenty of gamers at one or the other (or both)!

Kind regards
Rob

It may interest you to know that since my review armybooks have been added for the Renaissance (army lists collection) and the Thirty Years War.