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I have, and love the rules. We get a game every month.

If you don't have the rules, or don't know what they are... I recommend giving them a look! They are written by Rick priestly..... enough said.

Warlordgames.com is their site

Leave a comment below, and let me know what you think of the game... I personally love it.

Also, anyone who has 28mm Celts for trade/sale, let me know.

Thanks

Austin

I've been building up a force of Imperial Romans for about a year now, getting along steadily but it is taking a time! Generally I'm painting bunches of Romans or Celts in amongst other projects.

But yes the miniatures are great, there is a massive range of miniatures (and of course, you can complement from other ranges) and very cheap.

If you haven't seen it yet I would recommend the 'Britannia' supplement, which is a really cool representation of the Roman invasion of Britain and adds a nice campaign structure and some specific army lists/scenarios to play. Of course, it would be very easy to adapt something similar for Gaul, Daecia or any other campaign you can think of.

 Pacific wrote:
I've been building up a force of Imperial Romans for about a year now, getting along steadily but it is taking a time! Generally I'm painting bunches of Romans or Celts in amongst other projects.

But yes the miniatures are great, there is a massive range of miniatures (and of course, you can complement from other ranges) and very cheap.

If you haven't seen it yet I would recommend the 'Britannia' supplement, which is a really cool representation of the Roman invasion of Britain and adds a nice campaign structure and some specific army lists/scenarios to play. Of course, it would be very easy to adapt something similar for Gaul, Daecia or any other campaign you can think of.

There's also a book for the campaign that overran Dacia.

Hail Caesar is our go to rule set for Ancients these days. The club has played 2 campaigns + numerous one off games. We find its good for both a 1v1 (mostly) competitive game, and big multiplayer bashes.

I absolutely love the rules. Its similar to warmaster.... except I feel comfortable using my 1/72s and 28mm without any hassle.

Any tips on converting new players?

Similar to Warmaster Ancients?

Nearly identical

My group is playing it using 15mm miniatures. We wanted to have a lot of troops on the table, but with a test game discovered that things got out of hand at 28mm, and even 15mm if we didn't keep the frontages in check. The game seems designed for much larger tables than the typical 4x6'.

I'll be doing one of the later Chinese forces and I'm wondering where to find 15mm chinese, Ling I think.

Essex I think makes ling.... maybe magister militum... one of those UK companies

 Vertrucio wrote:
The game seems designed for much larger tables than the typical 4x6'.

Probably a safe argument to make.

It's almost identical to Black Powder, and I've heard that the rules for that literally are for bigger tables; as in, people playing it on 6'x4' tables have to scale the movement distances down, etc... Hail Caesar doesn't have that problem with distances, but the frontages are the same.

I've played it a number of times, and anything more than just a couple of divisions on each side pretty much "anchors" the flanks on the table edges.

 Vertrucio wrote:
My group is playing it using 15mm miniatures. We wanted to have a lot of troops on the table, but with a test game discovered that things got out of hand at 28mm, and even 15mm if we didn't keep the frontages in check. The game seems designed for much larger tables than the typical 4x6'.

There has been quite a lot of discussion about unit frontages, fortunately it can be altered slightly (and I think that is what a lot of people do). Going for 160mm frontage rather than 200mm for instance for standard unit size.

Hail Cesar is a system that I'm really interested in giving a go, luckily for me my father has a Roman army kicking about somewhere so if I'm lucky I might able to persuade him to lend it to me.

Its definitly worth stepping into, plays very easily and the range of models from Warlord is splendid indeed.
I myself has a Roman army and one for Germania

I play Galatia, Gaul, Britons, germania, early(pagan) Saxons, picts, Welsh, vikings, late Saxons, and Slavs.

Super fun game. The rules are easy, but dynamic.

Plus its really fun to field my ancestors.

I use 80mm frontages and less figures. If I want to play a full sized 200mm frontage game, I can just use more figures. For me, the issue is lack of table space. I can do larger, but 6x4 is easier for me.

We play with 6mm figures (mainly Baccus figures) and with reduced frontage (120 or 80mm). This gives a really great look and the play is a lot of fun. I can easily run a scenario and the new players pick it up and enjoy it, and will return time after time as it holds up too.

I highly recommend it. I just wish I had more time to play it and played more frequently.

Skipper

We play. Its actually very popular at my flgs among the middle-age+ crowd.

They (Warlord Games) are coming out with a Germania campaign book (in addition to the Brittania and Dacia books they have). It looks pretty cool:

http://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/rules-books/products/germania-hail-caesar-supplement


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 aapch45 wrote:
Also, anyone who has 28mm Celts for trade/sale, let me know.

At my flgs, they have a box of I think 30 Celts for like 20 bucks or something (before discount) by Wargames Factory.

I don't collect Celts, but it seemed like a good value...sculpts were so-so IIRC

Had a chance to look through an almost complete Germania Campaign book at Salute, looked very neat! Very cool looking campaign battles series that looked similar to the one in the Britannia book, if you are familiar with that one.

 Pacific wrote:
Had a chance to look through an almost complete Germania Campaign book at Salute, looked very neat! Very cool looking campaign battles series that looked similar to the one in the Britannia book, if you are familiar with that one.

Oh yeah...both the Dacia and Brittania ones look cool, one day I will get them all!

This game looks interesting. How should a guy get into this? Buy Conquest of Gaul and expand the armies provided?

 aapch45 wrote:
Also, anyone who has 28mm Celts for trade/sale, let me know.

Just to confirm, I was at my flgs today, and they had a box of 32 Celts for 20 bucks retail. Company is Wargames Factory. I got a box of ancient Germans, same price. Came with 30 dudes, and 75 weapons....not too shabby for the price. Sculpts aren't MIchelangelo, but they're not bad at all, either.


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 TheCustomLime wrote:
This game looks interesting. How should a guy get into this? Buy Conquest of Gaul and expand the armies provided?

Yup, exactly. If you dont want Romans or Celts, they've got a bunch of other lines as well (Greeks, Persians, etc). But that box is a good deal in that it comes with the rulebook (not a soft copy, but the actual rulebook). You WILL have to buy more models eventually though, because the game splits up armies into divisions of 4 units...you need at least 1 division to play a game, and units are typically 20-40 men. Of course, you can halve all that and play as you like with no real consequence to the game (you dont remove individual models off the board ala 40k...a unit of dudes is just a visual representation of the unit). The good nes is that Warlord Games models are very reasonably priced (very very much so when compared to stuff like 40k), and there are others out there making ancient models for even cheaper (as noted above).


Although Warlord Games sells 28mm models, any models will do (for example, they dont make Egyptian or East Asian models, but there are other shops that do, for example, Wargames Foundry). Some people play 15mm games at my flgs, but most play 28mm.

If you get into it, they have 2 Army List books that provide stat lines and point values for just about any ancient-medieval army that I can think of.


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 aapch45 wrote:
Any tips on converting new players?

If you run into a history nerd that's a table-top gamer, I imagine the game would sell itself. There are alot of smart gamers, and nerdy gamers, and history is something to be smart and nerdy about.

For general interest players, you could ask if they like history, historical movies and fiction, try to narrow it down to a particular time period, region, etc. Alot of people like Samurais, Knights and stuff like that. This neo-pagan stuff has people interested in Vikings and Druids and stuff like that. Warlord Games makes a couple other games (Pike & Shot, and Black Powder I think) that I've heard are similar game systems for more recent history, like if someone was interested in gaming the Boston Massacre, or a Zulu war, or what have you.

One selling point is the ability to model and play with your own make-believe, or not-so-make-believe, ancestors.

While a large table is not required for HC, the game does play well at large scales. At the Little Wars convention we were able to host an 8 player game on a 4x15 table. We ran the game two times with a full complement of 8 players & had more trying to get in. The game had 3 hours allocated, but each was over in about 90 minutes. Big difference between testing with 3 veterans and playing the convention with 8 rookies. Most folks were happy to throw themselves into the battle as soon as possible.



More pictures here: http://chicagoterrainfactory.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/little-wars-battle-of-arsuf/

Figures for the army are a mix of Perry, Musketeer, Old Glory, Gripping Beast, Magister Militum, Miniature Design Studio, Black Tree Design, and FireForge.

Ah, this actually is looking pretty cool. I'll definitely try to win some of the players at my FLGS over. So, I should buy Conquest of Gaul, Roman/Celt Starter army and an HQ choice of some sort?

My club was interested in it some time ago, but now they seem to be more interested in Bolt Action as far as historic asks go.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Ah, this actually is looking pretty cool. I'll definitely try to win some of the players at my FLGS over. So, I should buy Conquest of Gaul, Roman/Celt Starter army and an HQ choice of some sort?

Yeah....each division needs an free-standing HQ (meaning not based with a unit), and one of those HQ needs to be your general. If you like, you can just pluck out any model and call him your HQ. The way their army lists read, is 4 units to a division. IIRC the box comes with 30 Roman, 1 Ballista and 60 Celts. To test the game, you could do 3x 10 man units of Roman legionairres with a Ballista unit, and 4 x 15 units of Celts (Celts and oter "barbarians" are typically organized into Warband units that are supposed to consist of more men than your drilled-n-ready legionarry units like Roman legionairres, Greek Hoplites, etc).

So that box can be used to play a 1v1 division game.

If you're like me, in time your going to want to beef up the # of models in each unit (just for the spectacle on the table). We play that a "disciplined" unit consists of 20 models, warbands of 32.




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 sing your life wrote:
My club was interested in it some time ago, but now they seem to be more interested in Bolt Action as far as historic asks go.

Same company. I think their rulebooks move up through time from Hail Caesar, to Pike & Shot, to Black Powder, to Bolt Action.

I'm building and painting a roman and German force . Rules seem great . I already play black powder and bolt action . When it comes to warlord games I'm a huge fan . Great fun games . Can't wait to play my first game of hail ceasar .

 MattRendar wrote:
I'm building and painting a roman and German force . Rules seem great . I already play black powder and bolt action . When it comes to warlord games I'm a huge fan . Great fun games . Can't wait to play my first game of hail ceasar .

I really think you'll enjoy it. While I don't play Bolt Action or Black Powder, plenty of people do at my flgs, and they also play Hail Caesar regularly. If you're used to playing lots of shooting-heavy games (like I imagine the other Warlord Games are, or 40k), this game is a welcome option to play, cuz its low-tech melee heavy. Rules for missile units I think are well thought out, simple, and appropriately powered for the era.

What stands out to me about this game when played is the simulation of battlefield orders, which have a chance to succeed, partially succeed, or fail, representing the communicative chaos of the ancient battlefield.

I want to. I really really want to. But I have TOO MANY ARMIES to paint as it is. If only I could get rid of this pesky work thing. Then I might actually have time to paint. It's not like I need the money for more models, I have plenty going back a decade that are unpainted. Of course, no food gets a bit crappy.

Q: how good it HC at middle ages stuff? thinking Norman invasion of Britain, or perhaps king Arthur type era?

Wondering on using a Bretonnian force against something like Empire for the models, drop the magic and use the HC rules?

They have come out with Army List books that provides stat lines for everything I can think of through the Middle Ages.

There is one Army List book covers more ancient stuff, Biblical - Antiquity, and a 2nd one that covers Late Antiquity - Middle Ages. The Middle Ages one has a Norman looking dude on the cover.

You could totally use your Warhammer models for this game. My friend uses Gondor and Rohan stuff from LoTR all the time.