Rule Sets and more Rule Sets - Ancients & Medieval

Rolling back the clock to 2009, Phil and I started off on our Ancients wargaming project.

Back then the newly released Field Of Glory rules had just come out and were the talk of the town.

Down at the club Phil and I were playing Napoleonic's and only stumbled on Ancients after Steve Oats and Martin put a game on using 6 mm figures. I was instantly hooked and Phil and I decided to buy into the period.

We both purchased the FOG rules together with our first 10mm armies - Carthage and Rome and went on to own Persians, Macedonians, Greeks, Indians and Gauls

This set the scene for the next three Years and we played FOG to death and in the end just became bored. There were other periods made available in 2011, World War 2, English Civil War, Seven Years war all of which we got more involved in. Ancients took more of a sunset period.

Since then I have had the urge to put a Thursday night game on and have tried out other rule sets, of which included the new DBA3.0 rules, Hail Caesar, Sword & Spear, Impetus and ADLG, not to mention the much maligned DBMM!

I am writing this post as I find it most odd that the Ancient period seems to be the black sheep of all periods as far as rule sets go. When Ian introduced us to spearhead I instantly like them, 8 Years later I still like them and have never sought to look for another set of replacement WW2 rules.

The same can be said for Principles of War, they are even today a very good set of rules.

General Quarters has stole the show over Victory at Sea and despite it's abstract nature Grand Armee still provides me with the most fun Napoleonic rules to date, probably borne out of the fact that Mark has put on some brilliant big historical battles, all of which I have very much enjoyed.

This cannot be said for ancients however and I seem to have gone through a lot of different rules, non of which have really hooked me since Field Of Glory.

Recently I have been putting on games on Thursday using the Impetus rules and more recently ADLG which is a hybrid set mixing elements of DBA and FOG.

It's certainly been a colourful experience for various reasons and after ditching Impetus we have been focusing on learning the ADLG rules these last two weeks.

I think that there is plenty of detail in these rules and they are not badly written, last nights game flowed a lot better than the week before and we got a decisive result by 10.15, a miracle!

The problem for me with ADLG is that the rules are trying to be too clever. The amount of effort and fiddly sub rules does not for me make the game better, it just bogs down gameplay. Being a competition set there are a lot of sub rules for movement and these have just been lifted from FOG.

If I am being brutally honest I would actually prefer to just play Field Of Glory again if I wanted that much detail, but do I?

I'll stop here and mention the revised DBA 3.0 rules. These were revised in 2014 and a new hardback book with army lists was published. I think that for a Thursday night or even a customised Saturday game these rules probably work the best for me, albeit they do lack some extra detail.

That said you have to ask the question, is this detail necessary?, does it make the game better or more enjoyable?

It's a difficult dilemma, the DBA rules allow you to create a "big battle" version using 36 elements.

The problem is that there are no army lists with point values to allow you to custom build your own lists. You are stuck with just multiplying the basic lists x 3, perhaps not such a bad thing?

That said the actual game mechanics are possibly the fastest and easiest to manage. Turns are played quickly and the push back of troops makes for a more realistic game. Another big plus for me is the complete freedom of casualty markers or coloured markers on table.

As good as DBA plays it is held back by its simplistic army lists and perhaps the lack of additional detail in other sets.

On the other hand I look back at the games of DBA we have played and would vote them as being the most fun and headache free set of Ancients / Medieval rules played.

So where is this all going?, nowhere really! I was just taking a snapshot and making a few observations.

For me there are plenty of other periods I have bought into more deeply such as WW1 and WW2.

I am not going continue in the search for the "Holy Grail" of an ancient rule set. I actually think that the period is just a difficult one for whatever reason.


I have less time and patience than I did in 2009 so would find it very hard to push along a new set of rules so my conclusion is that I will probably bring out the DBA 3.0 rules next time I fancy putting on a game. I could be tempted with the help of Frank and Ian to play DBM or even DBMM with some proper play testing but for me I would say DBA 3.0 strikes the perfect compromise in a set of ancient rules.

ADLG is a good set of rules but I am not prepared to endure the torture learning these rules to the "T"
I just don't see the return on the investment.


I think that for the Medieval period Mark might be best to re ignite the Poleaxe rules, but the period for me is very linear. Troops just lined up and clashed together. It does not share the same nuances as say the renaissance or ECW periods so perhaps poleaxe might suit the period best?


It's a funny hobby this wargaming....................