I'm introducing (stealing?) a concept called 'Wheel of Time' that covers a certain nation and its army lists in Ancients from its first year to its last through a small number of rounds (each with its time period), with players attempting to expand to new regions and basically paint their maps with their colors.
Each player has his own map, on which to expand region by region through successful attacks. But he may also conquer regions on his own map through successfully defending against other players' attacks on their maps.
Every attack is played out as a mirror match, with the attacking player selecting the attacking army list (available for the time period of the round in question), the defending army list (suitable for that time period and plausible for some part of the attacked region), as well as the map terrain to be used. No allies are used. The defending player in each attack is determined through a pre-set rotating schedule. Players can select the same attacking army lists in the same round, but not the same defending army lists.
The player inflicting the most casualties in total in the two games of the mirror match is the winner of the attack, who (whether attacker or defender) will expand on his own map.
The victory conditions for the tournament as a whole will differ, depending on the number of rounds and regions.
Any of the themes below looking interesting? Or any other ideas? Opportunities and variations are endless!
- Carthaginians (490 - 146 BC, 4 rounds, 9 army lists)
- Persians (553 - 329 BC, 3 or 4 rounds, 5 army lists)
- Romans (490 BC - 1049 AD, 7 rounds, 21 army lists)
- Franks (260 - 1049 AD, 5 rounds, 5 army lists)
- Nomads (25 - 1122 AD, 3 rounds, 12 army lists)
- Seleucids (320 - 63 BC, 4 rounds, 6 army lists)
- ...
- ?
) and Romans may be superior. Which in itself is not a problem, since we'd be running mirror matches, having all players represent not only the nation itself but also its opponents in two separate games.