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Hey guys, I'd love to get into a classical era tabletop game set after Alexander up until the early medieval ages.

Hail Caesar looks great, does anyone have any experience with the game, and if so how do you find the unit selection and balance between armies? Are they all playable against each other despite not being in the same time periods? Are you allowed to commit historical heresy by including post Marian-reform roman units with republican era ones, or is it very historically strict? I'd rather something with a lot of freedom but the option to play strictly historical, much like the computer game Rome 2 Total War.

Rules-wise, it's very much a 'toolkit' - if you want to mix and match in a scenario, go right ahead. A lot of historical players generally try to recreate a real (or at least theoretically possible) battle, but if you just want to play a fun game, use whatever you like.

The game is fun. If you've got experience with 40k/Fantasy, it's a big shift, because the game is very dependent on your commanders getting your army to do what you want - essentially you have to pass a leadership check each time you want them to move/charge/etc.

You get bonuses/penalties depending on how close the commander is, and a lot of units get one 'free move' if they fail - disciplined troops, or units in march column, or whatever.

At the same time, if facing a really high Ld general, you can find yourself outpositioned if they get a string of good rolls back to back.

Combat is also very simple. The rules are very much about 'block units' - individual models don't matter much, to the point that you could easily play a practice game or two with just appropriately marked foamboard blocks to decide if you like it or not. Heroes are critical but at the same time don't do much in the way of actual stabbing - it's all about commanding.

The armies are pretty balanced, and the book includes a guide (I think) for 'tweaking' units if you want to create custom ones. There's no real weakness between periods as it's all covered in points costs. If I had one warning to give you it's that 'barbarians' tend to have trouble in a fair fight against heavy infantry types (not at all like real history, y'know!) - the key thing to avoid is not to avoid that matchup, but to make sure that the size of armies and size of the board pair up sensibly - the way a barbarian infantry horde beats a legion/phalanx force is by getting around it - at that point you can use your superior numbers and attack the vulnerable flank and rear. If you've got an army too big for the board, you're looking at a solid line of legion/phalanx troops from board edge to board edge, and you can't do that - see Thermopylae for what happens at this point.

The army lists are all for a given historical period, but each unit has a given points cost, so nothing stops you buying a unit of Triarii at the points listed because you feel like it provided your opponent is fine with it.

locarno24 wrote:
Rules-wise, it's very much a 'toolkit' - if you want to mix and match in a scenario, go right ahead. A lot of historical players generally try to recreate a real (or at least theoretically possible) battle, but if you just want to play a fun game, use whatever you like.

The game is fun. If you've got experience with 40k/Fantasy, it's a big shift, because the game is very dependent on your commanders getting your army to do what you want - essentially you have to pass a leadership check each time you want them to move/charge/etc.

You get bonuses/penalties depending on how close the commander is, and a lot of units get one 'free move' if they fail - disciplined troops, or units in march column, or whatever.

At the same time, if facing a really high Ld general, you can find yourself outpositioned if they get a string of good rolls back to back.

Combat is also very simple. The rules are very much about 'block units' - individual models don't matter much, to the point that you could easily play a practice game or two with just appropriately marked foamboard blocks to decide if you like it or not. Heroes are critical but at the same time don't do much in the way of actual stabbing - it's all about commanding.

The armies are pretty balanced, and the book includes a guide (I think) for 'tweaking' units if you want to create custom ones. There's no real weakness between periods as it's all covered in points costs. If I had one warning to give you it's that 'barbarians' tend to have trouble in a fair fight against heavy infantry types (not at all like real history, y'know!) - the key thing to avoid is not to avoid that matchup, but to make sure that the size of armies and size of the board pair up sensibly - the way a barbarian infantry horde beats a legion/phalanx force is by getting around it - at that point you can use your superior numbers and attack the vulnerable flank and rear. If you've got an army too big for the board, you're looking at a solid line of legion/phalanx troops from board edge to board edge, and you can't do that - see Thermopylae for what happens at this point.

The army lists are all for a given historical period, but each unit has a given points cost, so nothing stops you buying a unit of Triarii at the points listed because you feel like it provided your opponent is fine with it.

Ahh that sounds AWESOME, exactly what I was looking for. I love the Idea of the game relying on generals. What army do you play?

Quick question about the units. So do they take casualties in combat, and thus you remove models? Like attacks per guy? It's kind of disappointing to me that the models don't really matter.

Units take hits and at a certain point will waiver and break. When broken they are removed from play. Commanders can try to rally them to remove hits. IIRC.

Each block has a charge and hand-to-hand rating for Close combat. You don't roll by soldier by by blocks or units engaged.

It is more like GW's old Warmaster system than WHFB or Warhammer Ancient Battles.

If you must have casualty figure removal, get a copy of Wargames Research Group War Game Rules 3000 BC to 1485 AD, published in 1980.

That's the last major Ancients mass battle game I am aware of that still used casualty figure removal.

Of the ancients rule sets (rules dealing with anything from 3000BC to the end of the middle ages) I've played, Field of Glory is the most similar to RTW 2 and my preferred ancients rules.

I have not played all of them though

MaxZ wrote:
Are they all playable against each other despite not being in the same time periods? Are you allowed to commit historical heresy by including post Marian-reform roman units with republican era ones, or is it very historically strict? I'd rather something with a lot of freedom but the option to play strictly historical, much like the computer game Rome 2 Total War.

Pretty much any ancient & medieval wargame will allow you to play ahistorical match-ups as well as historical ones.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If you must have casualty figure removal, get a copy of Wargames Research Group War Game Rules 3000 BC to 1485 AD, published in 1980.

That's the last major Ancients mass battle game I am aware of that still used casualty figure removal.

Really ? What about WAB ? It, and its successors (Clash of Empires, War & Conquest) have casualty removal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

MaxZ wrote:
Quick question about the units. So do they take casualties in combat, and thus you remove models? Like attacks per guy? It's kind of disappointing to me that the models don't really matter.

There are two main approaches in ancient/ medieval rules. In games like Hail Caesar, Impetus and my own Sword & Spear, there is no casualty removal and units remain on the table until they rout or are wiped out. Typically in these games all combat is unit vs unit and any casualties and loss of cohesion are tracked through tokens or hit markers. In other games such as WAB, figures are removed to indicate losses and the number of figures left in the unit determines the number of dice rolled in combat. FOG is a sort of hybrid of the two approaches.

It is more like GW's old Warmaster system than WHFB or Warhammer Ancient Battles.

Warlord Games' core games are all suspiciously similar to the GW specialist games (anyone would think they were written by Rick Priestly and the Perry twins or something).

Black Powder/Hail Caesar/Pike and Shotte are very much 28mm updates and reskins of Warmaster, and Bolt Action is a 28mm update and reskin of Epic:Armageddon.

There are two main approaches in ancient/ medieval rules. In games like Hail Caesar, Impetus and my own Sword & Spear, there is no casualty removal and units remain on the table until they rout or are wiped out. Typically in these games all combat is unit vs unit and any casualties and loss of cohesion are tracked through tokens or hit markers. In other games such as WAB, figures are removed to indicate losses and the number of figures left in the unit determines the number of dice rolled in combat. FOG is a sort of hybrid of the two approaches.

Just so. Imagine that each 'block' of troops represents a legion cohort, or similar sized mob of dudes. With units hundreds or thousands strong, having 30 models and giving you one attack each, or whatever, doesn't really work. The models are essentially there to give a nice quick visual representation of what the unit is - the fact that you don't remove them model by model means that you can afford to base them up in 2 x 2, or 3 x 2, or even entire unit blocks, which are easy to transport, faster to set up and move, and allow you to model dioramas into the units themselves.

Rather than removing a unit, the usual approach is to track "this unit has taken 1, 2, 3, or more 'damage' points" - representing a mix of casualties, disorder and morale damage. Said damage is often marked with suitably gory casualty models but if you don't have them a die will work fine.

once a unit has taken enough casualties, its effectiveness starts to suffer - you'll fail command checks more often, it'll start to fight less effectively in combat, it'll fall back and ultimately it'll break and run.

What I would do is to model each block with a number of bases (probably as many bases as the unit has damage points) and when the unit takes a damage point to replace a base that has normal soldiers on it with a base that has wounded and dead models on it to represent the damage point.
That would be a really nice visual way of representing damage points. On the bad side, it would mean buying and painting double the amount of models... At least historical miniatures are relatively cheap.

It's a great idea!

You could make a base with one casualty and three normal figures, a base with two and two, three and one, etc to show the number of damage points.

If I remember correctly, Warmaster Ancients units normally can take three damage points before being removed.

In WRG Ancients 7th edition, a unit can take up to 15 fatigue points, but you have to record combat fatigue and shooting fatigue, which is simply running out of ammo.

I still really enjoy Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) 2.0 and Clash of Empires also.

I look forward to the release of Gripping Beast's Swordpoint.