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So this is something that I've been putting off for a while now, but I just don't thing I can resist anymore. I want to start historical gaming! There! I've said it!

First things first: I'm not interested in WW2. Not really interested in WW1 either. Looking for something a bit more old school, so American Civil War (yeah as old school as that is! ) is probably the most recent period I'd consider. Ideally I'd want Hellenistic or Roman republic or empire, but I'm really not picky.

I'm going to be looking to find two small armies and a ruleset so that I can always find someone to play. A big plus if the armies can be easily expanded upon and if they're already painted.

What do you guys think? What should I be looking for? Any recommendations? Do you have something that May interest me?

There are several other recommendation threads in this forum for historical games. You'll be able to get a variety of opinions from them.

My standby is Hail Caesar from Warlord games. A fast, flexible game which covers Ancients through the Dark Ages & can accommodate both 15mm and 28mm in a variety of basing. If you do want to try American Civil War, its sibling rule set - Black Powder covers that period.

DBA is good for a matched pair of small armies that you can expand later for larger games.

There are people on eBay offering pay for paint services for DBA armies.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Simple-Ancient-Medieval-Wargaming-Including/dp/1291090185/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1386088200&sr=8-2&keywords=DBA

Take a look at Warlord Games rulesets Hail Caesar, Pike & Shotte, and Black Powder. Black Powder is for 18th and 19th centuries. Hail Caesar seems to be well liked; haven't had the pleasure of playing it myself but I did just order it.

If its ACW you're after, may I recommend "Longstreet" by Sam Mustafa?

Keep in mind, historicals (outside of flames of war) is a different animal. Unless you intend on supplying your army and your opponents army, your best bet is to find local historical gamers/clubs and see what games they play, otherwise you may find yourself without an opponent.

I'm actually pretty interested in Hail Caesar. Does anyone have any experience with the 'Conquest of Gaul' box set ? I'm worried it may be unbalanced.

Hail Caesar is good, it all comes down with historicals what kind of money you have to spend in my mind. With Hail Caeasr the most important aspect when basing miniatures is know the middle point of a unit, as such it can be done in any scale. I personally play in 6mm because its cheap, i like the look of hundreds if not thousands of individual men on the battlefield making it feel like a proper battle and lastly they are easy and quick to paint.

Apologies for awful photos here, will try again in the morning with better natural light, but a roman unit like this took my half an hour to paint and the effect when you have ten plus of these units on a table top is really nice. Also worth noting i am not a great painter, those with better skills will get a better result just as quick.

The main issue for me as well is collecting an army bigger then i will ever need, i like being able to swap units in and out, and this is where 6mm being so cheap is a bonus

godswildcard wrote:
I'm actually pretty interested in Hail Caesar. Does anyone have any experience with the 'Conquest of Gaul' box set ? I'm worried it may be unbalanced.

30 Romans + Scorpion vs 60 Gauls

If you organize the Romans into 3 units of 10 (2 ranks of 5), and the Gauls into 4 units of 15 (3 ranks of 5), the advantage is to the Romans. If you play the Gauls as 6 units of 10, the advantage would shift to the Gauls. Turn one of the units of Gauls into skirmishers & I think you would have an even battle.

The Gauls hit hard in the first round, but the Romans generally can take it, then win the battle on the second round of fighting. To win, the Gauls will need to get to the Roman flanks & that requires a few extra units.

The box set will get you started with a 1 division game, but HC plays best with 3 or more divisions.

chaos0xomega wrote:
If its ACW you're after, may I recommend "Longstreet" by Sam Mustafa?

Keep in mind, historicals (outside of flames of war) is a different animal. Unless you intend on supplying your army and your opponents army, your best bet is to find local historical gamers/clubs and see what games they play, otherwise you may find yourself without an opponent.

Clubs are great for historicals.

If you want a low price, matched pair of armies, then DBA is the ruleset to go for. A typical DBA army costs about $50 for all the required figures to make all the options. That is bare metal, mind you.

chaos0xomega wrote:
If its ACW you're after, may I recommend "Longstreet" by Sam Mustafa?

You certainly may as far as I'm concerned ... please tell me a bit more about this game.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
If its ACW you're after, may I recommend "Longstreet" by Sam Mustafa?

Keep in mind, historicals (outside of flames of war) is a different animal. Unless you intend on supplying your army and your opponents army, your best bet is to find local historical gamers/clubs and see what games they play, otherwise you may find yourself without an opponent.

Clubs are great for historicals.

If you want a low price, matched pair of armies, then DBA is the ruleset to go for. A typical DBA army costs about $50 for all the required figures to make all the options. That is bare metal, mind you.

What exactly is DBA? I saw the link to the rules, but where would I find the minis and what not?

The beauty of historical gaming, or one of its beauties, is that you can get historical miniatures from a very wide range of companies.

How are the Field of Glory rules?

A friend told me earlier today that it's a streamlined re-presentation of older rules (DBMM?).

godswildcard wrote:
How are the Field of Glory rules?

A friend of mine says he enjoys them, and that they're fairly easy to understand. The guy's a lawyer, though, so YMMV.

If you want Romans, Warlord Games has a starter set for Hail Caesar that has Early Imperial Romans and Gauls/Germans with the hardcover, full-sized rulebook. And if you need some more Romans I've got some for sale.

What scale and stuff do you have?

 infinite_array wrote:
The guy's a lawyer, though, so YMMV.

I'm a lawyer and what I've heard about FoG so far doesn't sound fun to me.

DBA is the acronym for De Bellis Antiquitatis. It is a set of rules for Ancients/Mediaevals using small armies for quick playing games.

An army consists of a standard 12 "elements" -- bases with one to four figures on each -- plus a camp. There are usually some optional elements in an army, however the total number of models required is fairly small, allowing players to quickly and cheaply build usable forces. (There is also a "big battle" variant, which allows you to have three normal armies in your side, if you want to play larger games.)

Troop types are defined by their battlefield function rather than weapon and armour type, so you have "Bows" who are any close formation troops armed with long range missile weapons, "Blades", who are any troops armed with close range hand to hand weapons, "Spears", "Knights" and so on.

Each turn you roll a D6 and that is the number of action points you have to move your units. Elements can be combined into big units, allowing you to move the whole army more easily, however there are tactical reasons to want to move individual elements, so there is always a balancing act between the number of action points and the desire to move your troops around.

First released in about 1990 it has proved a very popular game that is still widely played. Read more about DBA here...

http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/

I recommend scales other than 28mm for ancients.

I personally like Warmaster Ancients, but they are just proto-rules for Hail Ceasar. You can get a whole army in 10mm for pretty cheaps.

 Easy E wrote:
I recommend scales other than 28mm for ancients.

Just dollar-wise or is there more to it?

I would say the looks of it as well. You can fit a lot more 15/10/6mm miniatures in the same space as you could 28mm miniatures.

It also helps with space size. Hail Caesar and Black Powder sort of need huge tables if you don't want to mess with the movement rates of 28mm miniatures. You can make them work on a 6x4 table if you scale movement down, but then it looks better when smaller miniatures are moving smaller distances.

In most rulebooks you can use either 28mm or 15mm and the base size and movement distances are reduced for 15mm.

A lot of rules also cater for 6mm with a similar reduction in base size and movement, however it is also possible and visually interesting to use the 28mm distances and mount an overabundance of figures on each base.

For instance, a close order infantry base normally has 4 models in 28mm or 15mm. You can fit probably 24 6mm figures in the space of 4 28mm, and it gives a good impression of the solid block of infantry.

10mm are small enough that you can use the 15mm base sizes and put maybe 10 models on each base, in two ranks, compared to 4 15mm models.

If you stick with the smaller base sizes of 15mm, you can play battles on a smaller table.

And YMMV; but I find 15mm so much easier to paint than 28mm, and they look just as good if not better. Especially en masse.

I have a hard enough time painting (seeing) the detail on 28mm, I can't imagine trying to do so on 15mm

I do admit, 15mm has been tempting from time to time, but in the end, I'd just want to put twice as many 15mm as 28mm on the table and gain no savings for $$, storage or table space.

10mm and 6mm are much easier to paint than 28mm. Much of the detail is not necessary and instead you can get a broad impression with only a few colors.

They are also more cost effective. It is much easier to get two opposing armies for any ruleset you may want to play.

They take up less space for storage, transport, and playing.

They look really cool ont he table and look like a proper army rather than a pair of football teams playing at war.

Well, I think I'm ready to start picking up models...probably looking somewhere between 10mm and 15mm... I kind of feel that 6mm is to small.

That said, are there any good bundle deals for that range to be found? I don't even know where to look!!

If you're planning on looking at FoG, I know several retailers that offer 'army deals' based on the army lists in the FoG books. You could probably use them for Hail Caesar as well.

If you don't mind waiting, West Wind/Forged in Battle are running their War & Empire Kickstarter for their Ancients range and ruleset. The miniatures do look really good.

What did you settle on? Ancients? Like Romans or what?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also -- don't buy your miniatures via a KS project to start with. You'll be waiting so long for them that your interest is bound to flag in the meantime.

I'd probably have more fun with Romans and Greeks circa 140 b.c. as both could be easily expanded on in the future and could be made geared towards other things too (like adding Persians and Gaul later on to have more options)

Donnington do army deals based on FoG starter armies; have a good range of decent models. Most of my 15mm stuff comes from them.

That said; international postage can be expensive...

EDIT: Fixed link