Ancients
Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 10:24 am
Hey guys,
So as a lot of you know, I started a little project of collecting models for Thermopylae in 6mm - Spartans vs Persians, fight in the shade, et cetera et cetera. I sort of had a think, though, and realized I'm going about it in a kind of antisocial way, without even seeing if anyone else around here was at all interested in ancients! (I know Prim at least has been collecting some stuff for Hail Caesar in 28mm.) So here is me asking, heh. I'll sort of throw out some of my thoughts on things, see if anybody else is interested and/or wants to weigh in.
Scale: Personally, as everyone pretty much knows, I'm all for 6mm. There are a couple things going for ancients in 6mm, I think. First, Baccus has a ridiculously comprehensive range at typical 6mm prices - they have some 500 point army packs for Hail Caesar that will run you around 50GBP. Second, you get that cool big battles look, which I think is pretty fitting for ancients, with units of a few hundred individual models rather than a few dozen.
Rules: The nice thing about ancients is that there is a plethora of rulesets, pretty much all of which don't really care how you base your armies up or what scale they're in, as long as you and your opponent do it the same way. I own Warmaster Ancients and Sword and Spear, and Hail Caesar is more-or-less "rules Rick Priestley and his friends cooked up to play Warmaster Ancients while drunk," so that would be easy to get into as well.
The point being that the rules really wouldn't matter in terms of how armies were collected - for 6mm at least, if you put your dudes on 40mmx20mm bases you'll be pretty much golden for any ruleset it seems.
Period: This is where things get sticky and it helps to communicate and stuff. Most rulesets will allow you to play a game of, say, Hittites vs Celts, but it would be a bit, well, dumb. I've started, as I say, collecting to the Classical Greek period, but there are some nice things about, say, Imperial or Republical Roman periods in terms of having a plethora of opponents to chose from.
Of course, I do realize it's entirely possible that ancients, and especially at the scale I'm interested in, is a bit niche for the size of our gaming group, heh. In which case I'll just quietly collect both sides of a battle and cheerfully do it the demo way.
So as a lot of you know, I started a little project of collecting models for Thermopylae in 6mm - Spartans vs Persians, fight in the shade, et cetera et cetera. I sort of had a think, though, and realized I'm going about it in a kind of antisocial way, without even seeing if anyone else around here was at all interested in ancients! (I know Prim at least has been collecting some stuff for Hail Caesar in 28mm.) So here is me asking, heh. I'll sort of throw out some of my thoughts on things, see if anybody else is interested and/or wants to weigh in.
Scale: Personally, as everyone pretty much knows, I'm all for 6mm. There are a couple things going for ancients in 6mm, I think. First, Baccus has a ridiculously comprehensive range at typical 6mm prices - they have some 500 point army packs for Hail Caesar that will run you around 50GBP. Second, you get that cool big battles look, which I think is pretty fitting for ancients, with units of a few hundred individual models rather than a few dozen.
Rules: The nice thing about ancients is that there is a plethora of rulesets, pretty much all of which don't really care how you base your armies up or what scale they're in, as long as you and your opponent do it the same way. I own Warmaster Ancients and Sword and Spear, and Hail Caesar is more-or-less "rules Rick Priestley and his friends cooked up to play Warmaster Ancients while drunk," so that would be easy to get into as well.
The point being that the rules really wouldn't matter in terms of how armies were collected - for 6mm at least, if you put your dudes on 40mmx20mm bases you'll be pretty much golden for any ruleset it seems.Period: This is where things get sticky and it helps to communicate and stuff. Most rulesets will allow you to play a game of, say, Hittites vs Celts, but it would be a bit, well, dumb. I've started, as I say, collecting to the Classical Greek period, but there are some nice things about, say, Imperial or Republical Roman periods in terms of having a plethora of opponents to chose from.
Of course, I do realize it's entirely possible that ancients, and especially at the scale I'm interested in, is a bit niche for the size of our gaming group, heh. In which case I'll just quietly collect both sides of a battle and cheerfully do it the demo way.
Joking but also serious.