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Hey everyone,

So, I have decided to ask Dakka before I travel over to TMP. My friends and I are looking for an Ancients rule-set. I was always interested in Historical gaming, I have played most eras from Dark Ages up until Moderns (major eras, I missed a few things like War of The Roses). But, now that my previous group has dried up and mostly gone separate ways, my friends want to get involved.

Basically, we are trying to find a good era and rule set that we can try. Majority of them have only played Warhammer, so nothing too complicated or the like (compared to some systems I've played, 40k is pretty bare and general). We have decided that we want to either do something with the Romans (cliche I know, but hey it's a cliche for a reason) or the Vikings. However, I am not too well versed on rule-systems. Anyone have any good rules that can cover that area, aren't gonna make us spend a few thousand dollars to get off the ground (after fighting through the money hog Warhammer was, we don't want to have to do that again. At least, not involuntarily ), and as a bonus we can play solo? Often it's hard to get a group together so...something that can be jury rigged to work solo might be preferable to us all.

I've seen some big names like SAGA, Hail Caeser, etc. How do these all compare in scope and purpose/intent?

Thanks so much for any sort of information we can get

EDIT: Don't ya hate it when you notice mistakes as soon as you hit submit...3 times...

Saga is a fun fast game using 25-45 figures. The rules & special dice are a bit expensive, but I think you can still get a whole army for about $100.

Hail Caesar is also a fun fast game with a large army focus. Standard unit sizes will put an army at about 250 28mm figures. Its a nice rule set if you have a lot of figs, or are into army building. Not sure if its the best place to bring in new players.

A few questions:
What figure scale do you want to play?
Are you interested in ancients tournaments?
Are you looking for "big battle" style or skirmish style?

Romans/Vikings will give you plenty of options any way you go.

Jack_Death wrote:
A few questions:
What figure scale do you want to play?
Are you interested in ancients tournaments?
Are you looking for "big battle" style or skirmish style?

Romans/Vikings will give you plenty of options any way you go.

For scale most of us are used to 28mm, although I don't like the cost of it usually (might just be used to GW, all other systems I usually gamed in 15mm).

No tournaments for us, there just aren't enough people interested to do anything worth while

Most of us like big battles, but only if it's a manageable system

One of the big advantages of Historicals is not needing to pay GW's prices. Plastics run about $1 per fig. Metals range from $1.5 to $2.5 per figure.

Architects of War is retailer of Gripping Beast's Saga. Its a good place to start for Saga in the US.

http://www.architectsofwar.com/grippingbeast.aspx

The only ancient's system that I know is SAGA, but you can get the rulebook and 2 armies for 100$. I think it's excellent.

A box of their plastic Viking Hirdmen and of their Dark Age warriors, will comfortably make two 4 point war-bands. If you guys have historical models already then it's likely you already have models you could use for it.

You don't need to use the special dice for it, they're easy to translate into normal D6s to try the game out. I decided it was worth getting them though to avoid the mental translation every time I assigned dice.

quozl wrote:
The only ancient's system that I know is SAGA, but you can get the rulebook and 2 armies for 100$. I think it's excellent.

A box of their plastic Viking Hirdmen and of their Dark Age warriors, will comfortably make two 4 point war-bands. If you guys have historical models already then it's likely you already have models you could use for it.

You don't need to use the special dice for it, they're easy to translate into normal D6s to try the game out. I decided it was worth getting them though to avoid the mental translation every time I assigned dice.

SAGA looks like a lot of fun to me, but I would call it a "skirmish" game. For big battles, my background starts with WRG and proceeds thru Tactica, Armati, DBM, with DBA and a few small battle sets thrown in for good measure. I haven't tried any of the latest and greatest in the DBx family (DBMM, Warrior) and I have only perused Fields of Glory so perhaps my opinion is a bit dated. I still think that Tactica is probably the best ancients game ever (HUGE handsful of dice!!) but I've played more Armati than anything else (for reasons that would be a. obvious and b. self-serving if I was posting with my IRL name, full disclosure).

One of the benefits of the DBx systems is that many other rules authors have adopted the basing convention as a sort of "industry standard" - no rebasing to try other games. Individually based minis can of course be "movement trayed" to allow mix and match as well. One of the downside of the rules I have mentioned is that we are talking big armies - hundreds of miniatures.

If your players are used to Warhammer and you're interested in Romans, you could try picking up a copy of the old Warhammer Ancient Battles rulebook on ebay or similar.

The rules are basically identical to WHFB (circa 6ed) just without the fantasy elements like magic and such, the rulebook comes with full army lists for Romans and 'Barbarians' as well as a few more concise lists for things like Greeks, Achaemenid Persians and others.

Thanks for all your help everyone!

So looks like our main selections at the moment are SAGA, HC, and WAB. I'm sure there are others, but these seem like the big names.

SAGA seems nice, although I would like something a bit...bigger scale

Hail Caesar also looks very nice, and my group is actually quite fond of Warlord (although, we don't like the counter method instead of removing models. We like to be able to visualize the damage our troops are doing to each other. But, it's better than nothing). Not quite sure how the system plays though, but when it comes to model count we are all up for it. If we didn't want to play with 250 models on the table, we wouldn't be playing Ancients

WAB seems like a good starting point, as they are familiar rules (we have played WHFB before so it won't take much learning). Gonna be interesting to find a copy though, as I have found a lot of the WHH to be hard/expensive to get a hold of. Probably because they are some of the better rules GW has written.

For large scale historicals, you have:

Warhammer Ancients 1.5 (oop)
Warhammer Ancients 2.0 (oop and harder to find since it had a shorter run)
Hail Caesar
War and Conquest (written by Rob Broom, guy who worked on Warhammer Ancients, free army lists online)
Clash of Empires (also with free online army lists)
Dux Bellorum (dark ages mass battle - saxons, late roman, etc.)
Dux Britanniarum (skirmish, late roman v saxons)
Deus Vult (mass battle, focus on the crusades)
Day of Battle (medieval mass battle)

Most of the above play mostly similar, except for Hail Caesar (which plays like warmaster rather than warhammer fantasy). They each have little nuances that make them different, so its really a matter of picking one.

I play Warhammer Ancients (either edition, and have many of the supplement army lists). I currently have a roman army. I also bought War and Conquest and like the way they read, but haven't played yet.

SAGA is definitely skirmish in orientation, but Warhammer Ancients can easily be played in skirmish fashion (warhammer fantasy put out rules for warhammer skirmish, so they'd be a simple port), and Hail Caesar released skirmish rules in their Dacian supplement. Dux Britanniarum is one that my friend and I are going to start soon.

There is also field of Glory, which I think is Ospreys rules set, it's fairly expensive and is reasonably popular. It also has a lot of supplements for different eras.

I haven't played it except for a demonstration at a show, so I don't know much about the mechanics.

There's always http://www.freewargamesrules.co.uk/ Where you can find the odd gem.

The big names surely FoG, and DBA, and Impetus.

DBA is currently OOP but you can download the rules from the WRG site. The WADBAG explanation is also very useful and can be got here.

fanaticus.org

The advantage of going with FoG/DBA etc rather than Warhammer Ancient Battles is that the base sizes are standard for nearly all rules except WHAB. Thus any army you build can be used with many different rulesets.

Warmaster Historical is worth a look too, though OOP.

DBA side note, the author is finalizing v3 of the rules, should be out soon-ish. The WADBAG version (2.2+) is the 'heretic" version that is used at HMGS-east convention tournaments.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The big names surely FoG, and DBA, and Impetus.

DBA is currently OOP but you can download the rules from the WRG site. The WADBAG explanation is also very useful and can be got here.

fanaticus.org

The advantage of going with FoG/DBA etc rather than Warhammer Ancient Battles is that the base sizes are standard for nearly all rules except WHAB. Thus any army you build can be used with many different rulesets.

Warmaster Historical is worth a look too, though OOP.

Warhammer Historical is more extinct than OOP!

Warhammer Historical has a good following and it should be easy to find rules secondhand. However, it has the disadvantage that the base size is different to nearly all other Ancients rules, so you will need to rebase your armies if you change system. This, combined with the definite OOP-ness, makes it a poor choice, IMO.

If there is any divide in the Ancients community*, it's over basing. DBA/FOG uses a stand system, all of the Warhammer style games assume some sort of 20mm basing. Which route you go is really dependent on who you are playing with & which style of rules you prefer.

While Killkrazy makes it sound like DBA is dominant, I've never seen it played. All of my games have been with WAB, Hail Caesar and Deus Vult.

Out of all the rule sets discuss, I would recommend Hail Caesar for you. Its a fun, flexible rule set that will be easy to learn & supports lots of figures. It also lends it self to team play, making it a good choice for a group of friends. At the same time, it works well enough as a competitive set that our club has used it to run 2 campaigns without issue.



*PS - the other divide could be over scale, but we've not gotten into that discussion yet.

I would not say dominant, though DBA is widely played and still has a following more than 20 years since the first edition, which says something for its qualities.

There are people who came in through what might be called the "trad" wing of ancients and people who came in through GW games. This manifests in the basing divide you mention.

(I've never seen WHAB being played, BTW, but I am aware it is a pretty popular rules.)

I'm back, sorry guys I've been a bit dormant.

Anyway, after reading over all of this, and doing some reading of my own (stumbled upon a guy at my school who owns some of these rule sets), I think we're going with Hail Caesar. While it's not the most advanced rule set we could go with, we all seem to understand the rules of it better than the other possibilities.

About models real quick, since I have a stunning lack of many Ancients models. I am pretty sure we plan on gaming in 28mm, as we all like that scale and are okay with the obvious price implications, so who makes the better 28mm Ancients? I know more sci-fi companies than ancient haha

There's a huge number of different armies in Ancients. Do you have any ideas about what period you may be plaing?

E.g. Greeks vs Persians, Punic Wars, Crusades, Wars of the Roses, etc.

For periods, there were 3 major eras we wanted

1: Imperial Romans versus...pretty much everyone (most likely Late era)
2: Vikings vs Saxons (or other enemies of Wodan)/ Dark Ages
3: Greeks vs Persians

We like to be able to visualize the damage our troops are doing to each other. But, it's better than nothing

Use casualty models instead of boring dice or counters.

 washout77 wrote:
For periods, there were 3 major eras we wanted

1: Imperial Romans versus...pretty much everyone (most likely Late era)
2: Vikings vs Saxons (or other enemies of Wodan)/ Dark Ages
3: Greeks vs Persians

Warlord Games do a pretty extensive set of minis to go with Hail Caesar.

Gripping Beast are probably the go-to guys for Vikings and Saxons IMO, their plastic Thegns/Hirdmen are supposedly really good and pretty decent value.
They also do a lot of ancients stuff including Late Romans etc.

Victrix do hoplites in boxes of about 50, good for building up a Greek army on the cheap.

And last but not least Wargames Foundry have a very extensive catalogue of just about any ancients army you could ask for, the drawbacks being no plastics
and fairly dated design.

Those are just the ones I can think of, there's bound to be a ton more options for you.

Warlord, Gripping Beast, Victrix & Wargames Factory all produce plastic kits for the periods you are interested in.

You can add Crusader, Artisan, Foundry & Old Glory to the list for metal figures.

I'll throw Aventine Miniatures into the ring for their Romans.

I have a large Roman Army with mostly Warlord minis, but their roman legionnaires (plastic) are thin and small compared to say, Foundry. And they're about a foot or two shorter (scale) to their own Auxiliaries who are a head taller while crouched down. I'm replacing all of my Auxiliary with Foundry, as they rank up better, and scale better. I also have Warlord Auxiliary Cav that I'm not fond of. If I were to buy more, I'd be looking elsewhere.

Warlord's germans and other barbarian plastics are very good, as are their character and other figs. Their metal upgrades tend to scale larger than their plastics too.

With re: to basing, iirc, WAB, War and Conquest, Clash of Empires, Deus Vult all use a casualty removal mechanism, so work better with single basing. The others use markers or chits to track casualties (like Hail Caesar). You can really use either system of basing for any game (using markers and movement trays, for example) as long as your frontage is about the same between armies.

Hail Caesar is a decent game, I'm sure you'll get a lot out of it. Just a heads up that the basic rules don't give you ints values (though later supplements do). They expect you to be able to create your own scenarios/balance the fight by feel (though they give broad guidelines, and do outline a system to make points for models/units if you desire).

Thanks for all the help!

So, I think I'm gonna order the HC starting box since it seems to be a pretty good deal from all the things I've seen about it.

One thing I have noticed about Warlord figures that I can't seem to find a straight answer about is if they come with bases or not. From what it looks like, some kits they sell come with 20mm bases, some don't but it's never actually said which are which. I do plan on single basing, it just provides much more diversity and possibility. Anyone know if they do or not?

In regards to values and things, I don't mind that. I actually prefer being able to just use and balance my own scenarios as opposed to points. Makes it a more interesting (and more realistic) fight.

EDIT: I'm in Philadelphia, so if anyone in the region knows a "hot-spot" for Historicals then I could use the tip. I know of a few LGS, but nothing that has a good ancients base at surface

The Warlord boxes come with a sprue of 'renedra' style bases, which are like 2mm thick plastic (thinner than GW slottas), and consist of a couple 20mms, some 40mms, some cavalry bases, etc. I have zero idea what they were thinking, unless they were trying to cover every base possibility on one sprue.

Edit: here is the sprue that came in all my warlord boxes http://www.renedra.co.uk/images/mixedbasesLRG.gif

I swapped out all of mine for 20mm singles made of mdf or from Litko. Basically, look elsewhere for bases.

Well that's a rather odd selection. Would be interesting to ask the guy who came up with that about what he was thinking.

But thanks, I'll look at mdf like usual