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So Warlord games came out with Hail Caesar, and I was looking into dipping into historicals, so has anyone played it/read through it? Is there a better Ancients system out there? Any/all help appreciated.

Got it, played it, great game.

I have it, and have played a couple of games with it. Its generally a more streamlined version of Warmaster (with Priestley as the Author).

Units or groups of units are given 'orders' in a general sense, and dice are rolled against the commander's leadership. This results in zero to three 'actions' that can be taken by the unit, in order to follow your previous orders. So you could potentially move a unit 3 times or have it stand still, or 'blunder' and move somewhere random.

Units are set at standard 'sizes': small, medium, large, with a set number of models in each (they recommend numbers of models, but you are free to use whatever you want). Model counts don't actually mean anything, except to establish how resilient and capable the units is based on it being 'small, medium, large, etc.).

Combat is done by rolling a number of dice equal to the units' Clash or Sustained value (Clash is for when units first charge into combat, Sustained is for ongoing fights). Different types of units have different values, special rules, and there are modifiers to the dice rolls.

Casualties are counted with markers (not casualty removal) until casualties exceed the Stamina Rating, where they then become disordered and potentially break or are destroyed.

They also don't really do 'army lists' but give you a rough guideline of how to establish your army lists, and they leave it up to players to balance the games or play historical scenarios. One of the games (Hail Caesar, or Black Powder gives you the points to add up if you 'must' calculate values to make lists, I think it was Black Powder).

Overall, it is a fairly free-flowing historicals game, which gives you some chances to have units not listen to orders, but resolves easily and is clearly explained in the rulebook.

As far as Historicals sets, there are:

Warhammer Ancients (now on V2, nice book, but FW has taken over the running and support has all but disappeared. No new army books yet, but all the old army books are still useable with faqs and erratas, or you could find V1.5 which still works very well).

Clash of Empires (new game, reported to be "what Warhammer Ancients could have been", set up with army lists, points values, scenarios. Tournament friendly, tournament designed lists. Lots of company support via supplements and online army lists. Many of the former Warhammer Ancients community authors are helping out with lists for this game).

Field of Glory (I don't know much about it, from reviews I've read, I'd go with one of the above three, or all three of the above - which is the beauty of historicals, romans are romans :-)

There is also De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) and De Bellis Magistrorum Militum (DBMM). DBA is basically a fast-play set of rules for wargaming in the ancient and medieval periods, and DBMM is the more complex version. They both seem to be pretty popular. DBA seems to be one of the most widely-known ancients rulesets, and has been around for quite awhile.

I've heard a lot about De Bellis Antiquitatis, and I'm kinda interested, especially as it covers multiple periods (as compared to just one) The scale is different, I know, but I could get used to that.

The mechanics seem interesting, but does the order's random dice roll affect the game negatively?

Er... Hail Caser covers from Biblical times to Medieval... You know that right?

Exactly the same as DBA which is a horrid set of tournament rules.

It... goes to Medieval? Sweet. I'll most likely pick up the book then.

What makes DBA's rules bad for tournaments?

Hail Ceasar are very easy to learn and use. Good set of rules that basically take the ideas Mr Priestley used in Warhammer/Warmaster, boils them down to a pulp and then rebuilds them in utter simplicity.

DBA is one of the most popular and successful Ancients rules of the past 20 years. It must have something going for it.

Hail Caesar is taking over as our (historical) game of choice. The rules are simple and intuitive with enough detail to cover complex situations.

The only con is a lack of official lists. Not a big issue for a basement club (we have weeks to write and negotiate between games) but would make playing pick up games difficult.

Not sure I see the obsession some have with army lists. There are tons of rules out there without supporting lists and yet people manage to turn up and play with out them. Perhaps its an ancients gamer thang......

RanTheCid wrote:Hail Caesar is taking over as our (historical) game of choice. The rules are simple and intuitive with enough detail to cover complex situations.

The only con is a lack of official lists. Not a big issue for a basement club (we have weeks to write and negotiate between games) but would make playing pick up games difficult.

davidjones wrote:Not sure I see the obsession some have with army lists. There are tons of rules out there without supporting lists and yet people manage to turn up and play with out them. Perhaps its an ancients gamer thang......

RanTheCid wrote:Hail Caesar is taking over as our (historical) game of choice. The rules are simple and intuitive with enough detail to cover complex situations.

The only con is a lack of official lists. Not a big issue for a basement club (we have weeks to write and negotiate between games) but would make playing pick up games difficult.

Its a hang up from playing GW games for too long. Could you imagine walking into the local game store and playing 40K against people writing their own army lists and unit stats?

Hail Caesar is written with the understanding you have some idea of the historical context of the armies and can work together to write appropriate army lists. The game does do a good job of providing the building blocks as well as detailed examples from different time periods. Its actually been a lot of fun to get away from "Official" and just play what works best for the game.

It shouldn't be too hard to put together lists for Hail Caesar from lists for Field of Glory or WRG 7th, as long as the basic assumptions in the rules are the same.

I mean things like pikes being better than long spears, and that sort of thing.

I guess its a competitive mindset thing, people want to have concrete units to know how an army operates/etc. But if you know your history, you should already know how your army sorta works

DBA is a good set of abstract ancient rules that because of low figure requirements mean you can probably easily afford to have three or four armies quite affordably. Even more so if you go the 15mm or even 6mm route - I also admit to having quite a few 2mm armies based for DBA.

The rules themselves are simple - once you get past Mssr Barker's style and you can usually get two or three games in during an evening session.

I would recommend the Fanaticus website as a great resource for not only DBA but for all things ancient as well

Version 3 of DBA is in preparation at the moment.

From the comments on the Fanaticus forum it looks like one objective of the rewrite has been to de-Barkerise a bit the way the rules are written. Seemingly resisted by the great man himself.

Personally I never found the DBA and other WRG rules particularly hard to understand, but they do use a lot of clauses and sub-clauses and score badly on the US government standard test for clarity of written English.

If you like playing with big armies...don't, to much pissing around with orders and other things. I read a Wargames Illustrated a couple months ago, and this guy and his group of mates played an apsalute HUGE game of hail ceaser and I thought to my self "how the hell are they going to finish this". The rule system is fine if you like playing smaller tactical games. But I find that the DB series of ancient Rules (DBMM, and DBR) are far easier to learn to and funner to play.


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Well actually the DBMM rules are a bloody task to read and learn, but once you have your head wrapped around it, its a fun game to play


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RanTheCid wrote:Hail Caesar is taking over as our (historical) game of choice.

I don't think so pal ;D

davidjones wrote:Not sure I see the obsession some have with army lists. There are tons of rules out there without supporting lists and yet people manage to turn up and play with out them. Perhaps its an ancients gamer thang......

RanTheCid wrote:Hail Caesar is taking over as our (historical) game of choice. The rules are simple and intuitive with enough detail to cover complex situations.

The only con is a lack of official lists. Not a big issue for a basement club (we have weeks to write and negotiate between games) but would make playing pick up games difficult.

Having been an Ancients player for 30 years, I've read and/or played a large number of systems including

WRG 5th, 6th and 7th. editions
Warrior
Warmaster Ancients
DBA
DBM
DBMM
Field of Glory
Shock of Impact
Strategos

They all have army lists. To a great extent, the lists are based on the long time research done by WRG from Ancients 1st edition onwards. That's partly because a lot of Barker and co's research is about as good as you'll get, and also because there isn't much interest within the academic historical community for making lists for wargames.

Things change around a bit occasionally. For example, Samurai armies' bows changed from longbows to short bows in between 7th and DBM, as far as I can remember. Sometimes the proportion of troops changes a bit, or particular troops get reclassified to a different formation type or morale class.

However, to the extent that we really know how a Macedonian or Imperial Roman or Ancient Egyptian or Inca army worked, we know pretty well now, and our knowledge is unlikely to be revolutionised by new discoveries.

The thing that makes a big difference is how troops are classified and priced compared to the capabilities in the game rules. For instance, it became clear through long experience and analysis that Blades are the most effective infantry type in DBA. That is partly an accident of the way that D6s work. You can't get lower than a 16% differential on a D6. That puts Incas -- who are all Auxilia and have no cavalry -- at a serious disadvantage to any army with lots of Blades. In a campaign setting, however, the Incas are likely to play on a table with a lot of rough terrain, which suits Auxilia, which should redress the balance.

Back on topic, Ancients players do put a lot of stock in army lists. They have been used to detailed and balanced official army lists for at least four decades. They would be surprised to see a "serious" set of rules without lists.

That said, because of the factors I mentioned earlier, if you want to play Hail Caesar and need lists, I would just look for lists from a different ruleset and if necessary make some adjustments. If the rules are similar to Warmaster Ancients, the lists for that game would probably work well enough.

Rogueyopants wrote:

RanTheCid wrote:Hail Caesar is taking over as our (historical) game of choice.

I don't think so pal ;D

Really, it is. You're welcome to drop in at the next club night and see all the other games be put away.
We have an 8 session Hail Caesar campaign starting in September.

@Killkrazy - maybe I need to clarify my point. For a veteran ancients gamer, creating lists from research or from other products is no big deal. I've already borrowed a lot from WAB army books for my game lists. The issue would be people who are new to ancients - not having lists could be a road block to understanding how the game should be played.