For some time now we have been working on developing a set of rules for skirmish actions in ancient to medieval times.
After trying many alternatives that I liked very much but that still lacked some of the elements I was hoping for we decided to take the plunge and start getting together some ideas.
A few months later, after more than 16-17 rewrites a full 60 page rulebook was taking form and we moved to the playtesting phase. We expect to publish the rules this year so keep eyes peeled for updates on this.
In the meantime I will try to show some battle reports and explain some key design concepts for people to understand what we are talking about.
The current title of the rules is Clash of Warbands, but we expect different modules for dark ages, ancients, fantasy etc.. so in this case since we are looking at ancients this would correspond to the Clash of Spears module.
The game is a traditional wargame, there are no external elements such as boards, cards or similar. The key element is managing your troops through your commanders and their command point but factoring in that as you push your units they accumulate fatigue and you need to give them time to recover or they will become unresponsive. Troops carrying more armor get tired more quickly and hence you need to spend extra care.
As I said it is a skirmish set of rules, kind of a platoon level game for ancients and medievals, and so your army will be 30-50 figures and will represent 30 to 50 men.. not the large armies usually seen in ancient games.
Your highest ranking commander could merely be a simple centurion, but at this level of action that should be more than enough. Also given the scale there are a lot of mechanics reflecting guerrilla tactics and forms of combat rather than rules regarding large unit formations or battle lines.
Your army can also be very different to what you are use to, it could be an entire force of psiloi and peltasts, or a commando force of principes, it is really up to you and each force will have it’s pros and cons.
Let’s have a look at this first battle report where a force of Carthaginians is out scavenging and they encounter a Roman Patrol.
So until we provide some insights into the rules for now you can just enjoy this after action report done with Comic Life in the gallery below or you can get the pdf here: link
