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So I am a fan of Classical History, Especially Imperial Rome, So I was wondering what you guys would think of this idea.

If anyone has read Eric Flints 1632 I'm kinda stealing the idea from him. Basically a roman camp containing some legionarres and auxcillery were transported to the warhammer planet. They arrive in the empire. The local lord realises that the romans would be a great ally, offers them a job (I''m handwaving the language barrier...) The roman general accepts. The roman general would be the Imperial General, the BSB would be the Aquilifer. The Legionnaires would be swordsmen, and the Auxcillery would be spearmen. Then I'd use standard GW products to fill out the rest, Cannons are cannons, Wizards are Wizards, Ect.

Its a kinda far fetched idea, but it could work.

Maybe count an onager as a mortar since a mortar is classified as a stone thrower?

I think it sounds neat. So you'd be using Roman models for the main, and empire models to fill it out?

You could go really crazy and have Romans who've lost their sanity to the weirdness of this new world as flaggelants, and try to find as many auxilliaries and what not to shoehorn into the other roles.

This sounds awesom! May I recomend looking at the Imperial Roman legions from Warlord games

My Ultramarines, especially the Company Champions and other ranking members have Roman-esque gear. Modified helms and other assorted details.

I have a degree in history, so my attachment to the boys in blue was a given. My Iron Snakes look like Hoplites and my Imperial Fists have a hint of germanic knight about them.

Yeah I did have a Bret army, but some jerk stole it. And now I'm trying to decide what to buy. It will be a while before I buy anything, Real life problems, mainly my cat, who was mortally wounded fighting something. He'll make it, but paying for it is a pain.

I just don't like the fluff. WHFB isn't earth and has nothing to do with it. It's an alternate map where they stole some similar regions because they were lazy.

It gets really ugly when everyone is talking about Sigmar and Caesar and the whole Roman pantheon of gods. It becomes a different game. The same thing happens if you try and have Star Wars guys transported. Yes, I'm sure you can make rules for Darth Vader and Chewbacca, but the fluff becomes nonsense. "I rolled 12 dice of THE FORCE."

You can make Roman without having them teleported. The Tomb Kings are Roman-based in large part. All you have to do is say they were some of those guys who explored far away (like Romans in Britain) and didn't get all deadified. That's far more realistic and doesn't have conflicting lores.

I think rule is, it's totally fine to steal concepts from other games. But you have to drop whatever game fluff they came from. I don't think many people want to have a fight play out against Harry Potter and Muggles or Gandalf and Frodo.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I just don't like the fluff. WHFB isn't earth and has nothing to do with it. It's an alternate map where they stole some similar regions because they were lazy.

The fact that he's having them suddenly appear in the Warhammer World shows he knows this. Nothing in his fluff says that it is Earth, just that this legion was brought there.

There's a really, really easy way to explain this as well. The warp. It's a dimension that links many, many alternate realities. Following 40k and Warhammer fluff, it's perfectly in game plausible for a Roman legion to mysteriously be brought by something to the Warhammer world via the warp. Hell, GW has official fluff with chainswords making it there. Considering 40k is actually using our reality, and we did have several Roman legions disappear, it's even got some factual basis.

40K has nothing to do with WHFB.

This isn't just saying, oh, my Orcs are blue because of some weird mutation. It's saying your Orcs are really Smurfs and Led Zeppelin are your unit musicians.

I think if people have any interest in the fluff at all you're not going to want to see those. If you only play the game as a strategic game then it doesn't matter.

There's a big difference between saying your Slann is really a minor Old One (which is still a big fluff deal) and saying your Slann is really a human named DukeRustfield playing a game called WHFB in a building called Games Workshop and he appears to have godlike powers because he can move pieces around on the board and spill beer. One stretches the fluff and one rips it to pieces.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I just don't like the fluff. WHFB isn't earth and has nothing to do with it. It's an alternate map where they stole some similar regions because they were lazy.

It gets really ugly when everyone is talking about Sigmar and Caesar and the whole Roman pantheon of gods. It becomes a different game. The same thing happens if you try and have Star Wars guys transported. Yes, I'm sure you can make rules for Darth Vader and Chewbacca, but the fluff becomes nonsense. "I rolled 12 dice of THE FORCE."

You can make Roman without having them teleported. The Tomb Kings are Roman-based in large part. All you have to do is say they were some of those guys who explored far away (like Romans in Britain) and didn't get all deadified. That's far more realistic and doesn't have conflicting lores.

I think rule is, it's totally fine to steal concepts from other games. But you have to drop whatever game fluff they came from. I don't think many people want to have a fight play out against Harry Potter and Muggles or Gandalf and Frodo.

Tomb Kings are Egyptian...

Oh yah. But I saw a GW convert to Roman. I think it was official GW. And there are some non-GW skeli minis who are Roman. It comes from those Jason and the Argonauts fights.

Huh. Interesting. I did find a blog about a guy who did Reman legions. Basically WHFB Romans, only it was named after Remas. So there we go, they're actually a Reman Legion transported forward in time.

So how would people feel about these:
Using Praetorians as Greatswords (they didn't use greatswords however, so it would be real ornate guys with a sword and shield)(I'm actually leaning away from this one myself)
Using Onagers as Mortars (Same basic principle only uses muscle power instead of gun powder)
Using Balistas as Great Cannons (They threw giant stones just as great cannons fired cannon balls.)

Personally I am not a fan of mixing armies 1500 years apart in timeline, not even with a "Hi, I am from a parallel universe""Great, wanna join our war?""Sure, why not." background.
Only Undead Romans (with Zvezda miniatures) might work.
But that's my personal opinion, maybe because I am familiar with history. Then again I haven't read the Jim Butcher novels on Romans teleported to another world (Codex Alera)

 Kroothawk wrote:
...Jim Butcher novels on Romans teleported to another world (Codex Alera)

Neither have I but now I kinda have too.

Legionaries are literally shock troops competent against spearmen, pikemen, light troops, other shock troops, light cavalry, heavy cavalry, bowmen, siege, counter-siege...

That's maybe a lot.

LittleOrk wrote:
Legionaries are literally shock troops competent against spearmen, pikemen, light troops, other shock troops, light cavalry, heavy cavalry, bowmen, siege, counter-siege.

I didn't know the Legions ever had to deal with other shock troops, heavy cavalry, siege or counter-siege... until the civil war thing were they tore at each other.

also pikes, when were they invented?

Shock troops : Against the macedonian and seleucid equivalent, for example. In fact, it's probably their favourite opponents.

Heavy cavalry : Seleucids, Parthians and Sassanids had a lot, and legionaries had to deal with them a lot (generally by using terrain or pinning manoeuvers). After the third century, Romans stopped to be able to have good heavy foot units (units from Gauls - that mean also Britain, Spain and Portugal, not only France - even asked for not having to use... metal helmets).

Siege : Roman took a lot of cities by assault.

Counter-sieges : Legionaries sometimes relieved besieged cities or even defended their walls.

Pikes were used the first time, if memory serve, by Macedonians under Philip II (Alexander the Great father).

You should read this series:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videssos_cycle

It's almost identical to the idea you're talking about. Although transported to a different fantasy setting as opposed to Warhammer.

So now I have two book series by two authors I really like to read... Awesome.

There is also "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (Mark Twain) and Starship USS Enterprise travelling though time.
Doesn't mean that it is generally a good idea to mix settings that wide apart. But it depends on your fellow gamers, I guess.

yea pikes were Macedonian in origin, the use of them with the phalanx was devastating to their foes when Alexander the great started his conquest.

Do it that would look so cool, would they be late empire legionaries or classic imperial looking ones?

Late empire will be dead. Legionaries don't really exit anymore (i don't remember if the name is even used).
Late roman empire is a cavalry empire, with a lot of spears and bows. Heavy disciplined infantry don't exist anymore. Hell, at least in Gaul, infantry asked for not using metal helmet and heavy armor anymore (that was granted).

"Classic" (say, between August and Trajan) are far better, and you can hope teach them the new armament and tactics pretty fast (Roman army was renowned for their rank officers).

 BrotherGnaeus wrote:
Do it that would look so cool, would they be late empire legionaries or classic imperial looking ones?

Early roman legionarre before the empire and before they got the empire established
Mid Roman legionarre is the one you would want to use they were the best equipped infantry in the known world and thanks to their rigid command structure new ideas could be passed through the ranks


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an example the roman style emprahs children, they had a very roman appeal and its why i love them