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I'm looking to get my ancients wargaming fix, but got no idea whats out there really.

Looking for something along the lines of DBA, ie, a high miniature count but multi-based so it becomes a low unit count. DBA however, I did not like at all, either in rules or its tendency for "five warriors standing in a nice neat row" as a unit - I want to take proper advantage of 15mm's "epic" scale and field a big squashed up phalanx!

My ideal from what I've seen so far would be Kings of War rules, using 15mm ancients models on Flames of War sized bases.

Can anyone help me out here?

Also, cheap mini providers much appreciated!

King of Kings was a rule set I played at that scale. It had huge squashed up units and your generals had personalities etc. Was a great game.

You had a center commander, left and right flank commander (so you can split the armies between players if you wished) and just went from there.

Ill have a quick google for ya see where my teacher got them from back in the day.




Maybe its not king of kings. Hmmm, will try bring up the name out of my brain over today if I can...

Anyone play it, whatever its called? I dunno what the historical people are playing these days

Old guys do. I remember speaking to some at the last games day. But I cant for the life of me find any info on it.

In early October there is another games day, im very sure ill see some guys there and ill ask em.

Whatever the game is, I highly recommend it though, if it helps.

Sorry dude.

Modified KoW Rules for historical purposes:
[http://www.hourofwolves.org/?view=articles&which=KingsOfWarHistoricalAncientCombat]

You can find very nice looking minis to fit your needs a Zvezda Miniatures. They have tons of historical minis, all digitally sculpted with very nice detail. Most armies don't have a ton of variety though.

Well, Hail Caesar is easily converted to different scales, but with wide, shallow units and the occasional possibility of unit reforms, I guess you couldn't easily cram a whole unit on a multibase. With 15mm minis and, say, 40mm square bases, I'd say you could have a good go at cramming anyway.

(Assuming that's the kind of thing you want? Lots of minis on a few bases rather than a few minis on lots of bases?)

Legions of Battle and Mayhem are fantasy games, but with unit creation rules that can easily cut out fantastic elements (just leave out wizards and monsters) and be used for historicals, if you like the look of them.

LoB seems to have unit footprints and basing similar to Hail Caesar - four 28mm human-sized infantry minis on a 40mm square base, two cav on a 50mm square, and several such bases for a unit. In fact, IIRC my initial flick-through, units are made up one one, four or six bases, and unit reforms only involve changing from 1x4 or 1x6 bases, to 2x2 or 2x3 bases. You might easily stick most of your minis on 40x80mm or 40x120mm bases.
The game seems geared towards 28mm minis (specifically, bunching your warhammer-based minis into wee sub-groups of four) but with a tip that you can stick smaller-scale minis on the same size of multibase.

(Also, Hail Caesar can be based how you like, individually or multibased, but a 40mm square or 40x60mm seems most efficient and convenient for the game.)

Mayhem is a multi-scale game that uses square bases of the same size for almost everything. It's up to the players, but the recommended size for 15mm is a 50mm square. Exceptions are individual commanders on round bases (as per Warmaster, HC, LoB), skirmishers on 25mm squares, hordes on 50x100mm, and great hordes on 100x100mm!
(Double length/width bases might be needed for minis that are too large, but I think that's more of a problem for 28mm, where things like chariots won't likely fit on the recommended 60mm square. But I digress.)

Impetus, a popular historical game, uses 120x80mm bases for 28mm. I haven't paid very much attention to it, but most players whose units I've seen seem to like building small dioramas on that big footprint. No reason you couldn't just cram the minis on instead, I think. I also don't know what the suggestions for smaller minis are, whether to shrink the base size or simply pile more minis on.

Then there's Warmaster Ancients, though the suggested base size for 15mm is the same as 10mm - 40x20(+)mm. Even with three bases per unit it could end up with the same kind of DBA effect. Good luck finding a copy too, though since Hail Caesar is one of the descendants of that, I wouldn't lose much sleep over it.