The Wargamer

BLUF – BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

• Drop dead gorgeous graphical presentation, well edited rules.
• Fully compatible with the WRG standard basing convention.
• Relatively complex, designed for tournament play.
• Not revolutionary, but unique enough to provide a very different yet enjoyable gaming experience from what is available today.
• Rated 9 out 10 for intermediate and advanced players.

The Wars of Antiquity, Lead Head Style

Sit back and relax. Grab some ambrosia, a good wine, some crusty bread and let’s talk about wargaming the battles of antiquity in lead and pewter just for a second. To put it mildly, ancients miniature wargamers are . . . different. Outside their colleagues from the Renaissance world (and now the lads hooked on Flames of War), the rest of the miniatures community simply doesn’t pursue the hobby in quite the same way as those who enjoy deploying masses of hoplites and peltasts. The issue in question is that the overwhelming majority of ancients contests are tournament based, and have been so since Phil Barker (a personal friend of mine and fellow member of the HMGS Legion d’ Honeur) first concocted his premier edition of Wargame Research Group (WRG) ancients miniature rules so many years ago. That was around 360 BC – seriously, it’s been that long – and little has changed.

The concept was to define each lead or pewter figure on the table by a point total based on the unit’s training, discipline, formation, armor and typical weaponry. Within certain restrictions on the number of a specific troop type one could deploy, a typical military force from the period could be constructed by purchasing figures based on a number of points. For example one player could deploy 1500 points of Republican Romans while his opponent could deploy 1500 points of Carthaginians for an equally matched contest. Within the limitations of the army list, either player could modify his army organization by purchasing less or more of a specific troop type, so long as the total deployed was no more than 1500 points worth. Irregular, barbarian based armies had a cheap point cost per figure and thus deployed bazillions of troops on the table. Trajanic Romans, on the other hand, were pretty expensive per figure, but trust me, those Legionaries are, really, REALLY good. In short the system was designed to make any 1500 point (or whatever) army equal in capability to any other 1500 point army.

It pretty well worked, and before you know it, regional and national level tournaments were springing up across the globe, as players became accountants with spreadsheets calculating the exact point combination for an army to face Persians and another if facing Huns and another if facing Assyrians. If that wasn’t enough to make the ancients community unique, it was the fact that tournaments were often wide open as regards who could fight who, with interesting historical twists being introduced like Spartans facing off against Aztecs. This brought untold snickers as outsiders would remind anyone who would listen that these were supposed to be historical, not fantasy contests. Things have a changed a bit these days, with tournaments now specifying armies of a particular era, such as the Crusades, but that has done little to change the perception of ancients folks as outsiders. And not surprisingly, the ancients community likes it that way.

What one did not see was a lot of games that replicated actual historical battles or sieges from the period. Oh certainly, there might be one or two at a convention, and these were often spectacular, such as a recent entry on Caesar’s siege of Alesia with the entire fortification scratch built to museum quality. This was the exception, however. Superlative sets of rules, such as Greg Pitts’ Ancient Empires, designed to support games that simulated actual historical battles caused an instant spark, but then faded away into near oblivion. Instead WRG hit is sixth edition and even spawned a series of spin-offs such as De Bellus Multitudinus (DBM) for large scale contests. Likewise, Scott Holder (another friend of mine) and crew produced Warrior under the auspices of the North American Society of Ancient and Medieval Wargamers as sort of a US specific WRG and it has done well. Even Games Workshop has a successful tournament based rules set, having learned that Warhammer players really do grow up and often look for more serious, historical gaming than Orcs and Gene Stealers might provide.

This is the environment the Osprey – Slitherine partnership is invading with its new Field of Glory rules and associated army list books. While the authors, some actually old WRGers themselves, do note historical battles can be played, it is obvious that this set of rules is designed to compete with the WRGs, Warriors and Tacticas of the world in tournament play. Heck, the rules don’t even specify a time or ground scale, and suggest each stand of figures averages 250 men, a little bit less than what one needs if you’re going to set up the battle of Pharsalus. But as a tournament game, it comes off just unique enough to turn more than a few heads and insure a dominant place in this genre.

Keep this in mind and let’s begin.

Format and Design

The actual rules cost $ 34.95 US and come in a hardback book sporting 178 glossy pages full of color illustrations and charts. Type is relatively large Times New Roman so it’s an easy strain on the eyes. Original artwork by Peter Dennis adorns the cover, while inside each major chapter, and a bunch more pages as well, are illustrations from many of the Osprey books that cover ancient and medieval warfare. Here the late Angus MacBride has always been my favorite, and despite the fact that it is a bit of shameless advertising, it is nice to let the new reader know what the armies of this era really looked (translation – not like the Hollywood Romans in Rome: Total War and other games). The book is also handsomely illustrated with many color photographs of miniatures on the table. Some are just nifty looking period dioramas, others are actual settings that show the miniatures actually based and deployed for the game. Most importantly, all come from the ubiquitous lens of Duncan MacFarland, the editor of Wargames Illustrated Magazine and another personal friend of mine (yes, I do get around). Full color examples of play abound, have a top down view and are strategically placed throughout the book to give meaning to the words on the accompanying text.

The text itself is a bit less formal and pedantic than that of WRG lore, yet there were a few passages I had to reread a couple of times before I finally got it. There is a convenient table of contents as well as an index, with a very nice glossary and “how to paint section” topping everything off. Oddly enough, the four pages of quick reference charts needed to play the game are bound into the book and are not easily removed. I found this to be a bit puzzling for an otherwise well done affair.

The chapters within generally follow each phase of a complete turn of the game, each section having a colored page edge distinctive to that chapter. Within this colored strip is sort of a mini table of contents in that all the sections on the two pages open are listed in bold, with other sections within the same chapter listed in regular script. The chapters are:

• Introduction
• The Basics
• Troops
• Battle Groups
• Command and Control
• Starter Armies (kudos for the authors on this one – two small armies from each of the Republican Roman and High Medieval periods a newbie can throw together without advanced algebra)
• Playing the Game
• General Movement Rules
• Impact Phase
• Manoeuvre Phase
• Shooting Phase
• Melee Phase
• The Combat Mechanism
• Joint Action Phase
• Battle Group Deterioration
• Victory and Defeat
• Special Features
• Reference Section
• Further Information
• Index
• Playsheets

Obviously you are going to need a ruler and up to 20 six-sided die in three colors, 10 in one color and five each in the other. For 15 mm, figures are mounted on bases 40 mm wide and of varying depth. The number of figures on a base denotes the type of unit it is, specifically if some sort of close order or open order soldier type. It’s all very WRGish with Heavy Foot boasting four miniatures on a stand whereas Light Foot has only two.

The companion books (no doubt a polite reference to Alexander’s butt-kicking personal mounted bodyguard) run $ 19.95 US and are pretty much laid out the same as the basic rules, but are paperback and only (only?) 72 pages in length.  The illustrations are there as are all the other accoutrements found in the larger tome. However, this is really an army list book and not surprisingly there are lots of charts showing troops and point totals for tournament play, along with a pretty decent synopsis of the campaign or ancient empire the lists depict.

In general each list provides a bunch of troop types and commanders, many of which have names that left me clueless both in definition and pronunciation (Carthaginian Thureophoroi – say that five times fast without stopping). Each troop type is then categorized by its Troop Name, its Troop Type (Type, Armor, Quality and Training ratings), Capabilities (Shooting and Close Combat), Number of Points per Base, Number of Bases per Battle Group (in the game, the standard generic unit of play and sorta like a regiment) and Total Number of Bases in the Army. For example Late Roman Republic Legionaries are Heavy Foot, Armored, Superior, Drilled troops classed as Impact Foot and Skilled Swordsman. They cost 14 points per base, of which 4 – 8 bases make a Battle Group and of which a minimum of 12 and a maximum of 44 bases are allowed in the army. For the faint of heart or less than mathematically inclined, each nationality also has a starter army just as in the basic rules book.

As an example, the Rise of Rome companion volume lists the armies of Mid Republican Rome, Late Republican Rome, Gallic, Pyrrhic, Later Carthaginian, Illyrian, Spanish, Later Macedonian, Attalid Pergamene, Numidian or Early Moorish, Later Seluecid, Later Ptolemaic, Pontic, Spatican Slave Revolt (for all you Kirk Douglas fans out there), Early Armenian, Parthian, Later Jewish and Bosporan. Oh yes, you also get all their allies thrown in for good measure. Nice.