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Hi all.

I was wondering if anyone could suggest a good early medieval war-game for me to take up. Preferably set between 500 and 1200 C.E. and not too expensive. Any ideas?

To be more specific, I would love to have rules that allow me to play out battles set in the crusades, so the game also needs rules for middle eastern factions if possible.

Saga, Hail Caesar, Lion Rampant and Deus Vult all fit the bill and are pretty good in their own ways.

Saga and Lion Rampant will work well for 'smaller' model count armies. Rules are fairly simple. Also, you don't actually need the dice for Saga as there is a translation chart to just use regular d6 dice.

Saga has Crescent and the Cross, which is a crusades (Levant and Spain) specific.

I haven't played it, but there is also Soldiers of God for crusade specific combat.

i had some fun with ancient battles from gw. Hail caesar should be great too.

Hail Caesar! is the spiritual successor to Warmaster Ancients in many respects. Warmaster Ancients is a great game but out of print. Medieval Armies, in particular is hard to find and usually more expensive. The main rules can be found on eBay between 20-45 dollars with Medieval occasionally going for $100.

WMA is generally 10mm though, which isn't for everyone.

What Scale are you looking for?

15/10 mm gaming is very cheap. Regarding Rank n Flank mass combat games. Field of Glory is quite detailed, as is Impetus. DBA is more simplified, Kings of War even more so.

Otherwise as has already been mentioned Saga is great.

As other have mentioned Saga and Lion Rampant are good for large skirmish level games. Hail Cesar is for larger battles. I would also recommend you take a look at Sword and Spear and Sword Point, both well reviewed "ranks and flanks" style ancient/medieval wargames.

I've looked at Deus Vult: Burn and Loot and it looked ok, albeit a bit expensive. Lion Rampant looks cool too. I want to do 28mm, since I absolutely love Crusader Miniatures and Wargames Foundry's minis.

Kings of War: Historicals has what you are looking for, if you want a fast and simple game.

Certainly sounds like Saga:Crescent & Cross or Lion Rampant are most like what you're looking for. Hail Caesar tends to work better for big battles so if you're looking for low cost its probably not the best choice.

It's worth mentioning that Saga and LR both play with comparable numbers of miniatures (typically about 30-50 per army) and pretty much any force built for one will translate quite well into the other. LR has units of 12 (infantry) or 6 (cavalry and elite infantry) while Saga forces are bought in groups of 4, 8 or 12 depending on the troop type. You could do a lot worse than get both and see which you prefer in terms of gameplay.

Saga is pretty good.

On a more 'alternative' approach, if you prefer skirmish to massed ranks, strangely, gw's old lord of the rings:sbg rules work quite well for historical games. It's got a fair bit of popularity amongst some folks for a pseudo-historical rules set. We use them for our dark ages games, with caveats, of course - simple stuff like avoid the movie characters, magic and the more esoteric stuff like balrogs and elves and what not. Stick with gondor and Rohan and chop and change as required, and you have more than enough stuff that fits quite a lot of historical eras. For what it's worth, the main reason I recommend lotr:sbg is the rules set I still quite sublime. Very under appreciated and under rated.

At its core though, while it's a Wargame based on a movie that's was based on a fantasy book that was written by a guy with a fascination for Nordic mythology, the perry' s had a big involvement with it, and despite its fantasy bearings, it has one foot firmly set in a historical grounding.

Probably not what you are looking for, but could be worth a look all the same. Cheers!

I really like Lion Rampant.

Ok, I've been reading up on SAGA and Deus Vult: Burn and Loot, and both of them seem to fit my theme. I'm planning to build an army to represent an italian town, but somewhere is western europe (they will have fled the Islamic invasions of sicily and southern italy). I will most likely use the Early Crusader States lists to represent them if I go with Burn and Loot, and the Normans list if I go SAGA. My plan is to use Wargames Foundry's norman spearmen to represent the Crusader Spearmen (with B&L) or just plain Norman Spearmen, and Gripping Beast minis for commanders and cavalry.

The theme of this project is to play through several in-game years with the town, with them having to defend their town from viking raiders and enemy armies, and work out some sort of "peace mechanic" to figure out what happens in between battles. I also want some of my army to embark on a crusade to retake the holy land and bring me back some pita bread, thus the request to have the game set during that period.

Hope that makes sense,

Ember

Surprisingly, Saga has not released an Italo-Norman board. That would be a FANTASTIC addition to Saga. Norman Knights, Muslim Foot/cav, Byzantine/Greek Levy, Lombard cav all rolled into a single board. It would easily fit with the Crescent and the Cross armies.

I always suggest DBA.

You can make an army for the price of a box of games workshop minis, and the rules are fast and simple.

It is also infitely expandable (you can run any size army as long as you do it in multiples of 6 or 12) and can be adapted to any period