Slitherine

Eques wrote:But I was just using that extract to show

What the author, and a very few play testers, thought of his own rules

THere was no Fog of war in 7th.

DBM had some in the 'will I roll a 1 or a six'. But that was hardly ground breaking

Eques wrote:

Which is pretty funny for the author to decide this prior to publication.
And having witnessed plenty of 7th...he was wrong as well.

Well yes I am sure there was a lot wrong with 7th edition. The almost unreadable prose for a start

But I was just using that extract to show that fog of war mechanics were once seen as highly desirable in tabletop and boardgames, and those who first started to introduce them were applauded for breaking new ground.

That is a contrast to these days, where players just seem to want to slide their pieces all over the place like chessmen.

Not sure the bit you quoted said anything about fog of war; just that the author thought that it was more realistic. I seem to recall most of his rule sets had a paragraph or two saying previous sets were rubbish and this one was great (or 'realistic' or 'historical' - all of course being shorthand for "my rules are the best, unspecified people say so"). There was never really any explanation once the new set arrived of why the old set was no longer historical/realistic/great which all seemed a bit "marketing" to me.

grahambriggs wrote: which all seemed a bit "marketing" to me.

Which is kind of funny since we all know the author. And the author wouldn't know "marketing" if it was stapled to... well you get the idea.

philqw78 wrote:

Eques wrote:But I was just using that extract to show

What the author, and a very few play testers, thought of his own rules

THere was no Fog of war in 7th.

DBM had some in the 'will I roll a 1 or a six'. But that was hardly ground breaking

Fog of war on the miniatures table is hard to do without umpires and/or scrupulously honest players. Back to Back games do this wonderfully although I have not seen an example of a pitched battle multi unit game such as an ancient battle as it needs two of everything I believe it has been done . Suits skirmishes and smaller scales - 5mm where lines of sight are much more in scale with the figures. What it tends to do is reduce aggressive players to ultra cautious ones . They are also great deal of fun including to design and umpire .

Pehaps a mod for FOG(AM) would be to allow the player with the initiative to hold back up to say 2 units off the back of the table as a reserve and either bring them on ( in the Joint action Phase?) from the rear edge and/ or place either of them directly to the rear of an identical unit in type ( LH, MI Cav etc) and width of bases provided no enemy units have an unimpeded direct line of sight to it and it is in you own half.

grahambriggs wrote:

Eques wrote:

Which is pretty funny for the author to decide this prior to publication.
And having witnessed plenty of 7th...he was wrong as well.

Well yes I am sure there was a lot wrong with 7th edition. The almost unreadable prose for a start

But I was just using that extract to show that fog of war mechanics were once seen as highly desirable in tabletop and boardgames, and those who first started to introduce them were applauded for breaking new ground.

That is a contrast to these days, where players just seem to want to slide their pieces all over the place like chessmen.

Not sure the bit you quoted said anything about fog of war; just that the author thought that it was more realistic. I seem to recall most of his rule sets had a paragraph or two saying previous sets were rubbish and this one was great (or 'realistic' or 'historical' - all of course being shorthand for "my rules are the best, unspecified people say so"). There was never really any explanation once the new set arrived of why the old set was no longer historical/realistic/great which all seemed a bit "marketing" to me.

Here is some text from DBM

"our intent is to provide the simplest possible set of wargames rules that retain the feel and generalship requirements of ancient or medieval battle. The rule mechanisms used start from the premise that the results of command decisions can be shown rather than the minutiae of how orders were communicated and interpreted ... No order writing or record keeping is necessary and time consuming reaction tests are dispensed with. The resulting system is much faster ... It emphasises the talents of the general rather than those of the accountant, requires much less effort, and, despite the increased use of simple dicing procedured, keener tactical awareness."

So clearly the author thought 7th edition was rubbish at simulating command and control.

MikeHorah wrote: Pehaps a mod for FOG(AM) would be to allow the player with the initiative to hold back up to say 2 units off the back of the table as a reserve and either bring them on ( in the Joint action Phase?) from the rear edge and/ or place either of them directly to the rear of an identical unit in type ( LH, MI Cav etc) and width of bases provided no enemy units have an unimpeded direct line of sight to it and it is in you own half.

Similar to the FOG N reserve rule. I like. It woudl be a nice wrinkle instead of a flank march. Probably not too effective in most games as the battle isn't that far toward a baseline. But in the 5x3 tables that could prove interesting.

dave_r wrote:Here is some text from DBM

So clearly the author thought 7th edition was rubbish at simulating command and control.

For the unknowing they were both written by the same gentleman who will all have gained much joy from for laying his rules. And much commenting on trying to decipherr his rules.

My point was not that 7th edition was better, just that mechanisms replicating a commander's imperfect control were once seen as highly desirable whereas today they seem to be viewed as rather tiresome inconveniences.

My point was not that 7th edition was better, just that mechanisms replicating a commander's imperfect control were once seen as highly desirable whereas today they seem to be viewed as rather tiresome inconveniences.

I can't see where you're coming from here as a number of the V2 changes are designed to reduce the manoeuvrability and control from V1.

>whereas today they seem to be viewed as rather tiresome inconveniences.

Thet depends very much on where you are! If you are in the FoG forums, there is a decent-sized grain of truth in that. Even with V2 changes.

Or to flip that statement around...if command-and-control type stuff (i.e. limitations) is a significant part of what you want from an ancients ruleset, then FoG is probably not your game of choice.

dave_r wrote: Here is some text from DBM

"our intent is to provide the simplest possible set of wargames rules that retain the feel and generalship requirements of ancient or medieval battle. The rule mechanisms used start from the premise that the results of command decisions can be shown rather than the minutiae of how orders were communicated and interpreted ... No order writing or record keeping is necessary and time consuming reaction tests are dispensed with. The resulting system is much faster ... It emphasises the talents of the general rather than those of the accountant, requires much less effort, and, despite the increased use of simple dicing procedured, keener tactical awareness."

So clearly the author thought 7th edition was rubbish at simulating command and control.

It's a fairly standard formula: point out the main changes and claim they're perfect, disparage the previous set for not focussing on those areas. I wonder if the DBMM intro is in a similar vein?

But I think all this intro is saying is that the command and control of other systems (presumably 7th) is more detailed, whereas DBM makes it abstract and saves time. And it did. The PIP system in DBM was quick and elegant - though I always felt it could stand a little more 'flavour'. I didn't play 7th, but recall that the order system in 6th wasn't particularly onerous (though other parts of those rules certainly were - morale for example)

ShrubMiK wrote:
Or to flip that statement around...if command-and-control type stuff (i.e. limitations) is a significant part of what you want from an ancients ruleset, then FoG is probably not your game of choice.

Are there any you would recommend from that point of view? FoG seems to have somewhat captured the market as far as I can make out.

Eques wrote:

ShrubMiK wrote:
Or to flip that statement around...if command-and-control type stuff (i.e. limitations) is a significant part of what you want from an ancients ruleset, then FoG is probably not your game of choice.

Are there any you would recommend from that point of view? FoG seems to have somewhat captured the market as far as I can make out.

Augustus to Aurellian by Phil Hendry has card based activation for C&C and fog of war via hidden movement. It is specifically designed for Roman warfare.

It depends what you are looking for exactly. One of the bug pluses (and also minuses) of the modern ancients landscape is that there are rules to suit all tastes, but finding opponents for many of them can be a challenge. And I'm not really interested in trying to get to grips with something that I'm not going to be able to play regularly. So I limit myself to two of the bigger rulesets, FoG and...

At the risk of being burned at the stake...

Personally I would recommend DBMM, okay you can still see everything on the battlefield, but there are mechanisms to ensure that you can't do everything you would like at the time when you would like to do it, and also to cause some troops to sometimes do things you would rather they didn't do. It's certainly not a detailed bottom-up simulation of command and control, but it does IMO capture in an abstract way a good flavour of how commanding an army was not like a game of chess. And you need to give a bit of thought beforehand to how you structure your commands, and have some idea of how you intend to use them.

Ironically, this would be the same author whose prose style you denigrated earlier, and who no doubt wrote amusingly about how DBM far eclipsed 7th edition, and DBMM far eclipsed DBM, in both realism and playability and general warm fuzzy feelingness

It does have a reasonable following, not as much as FoG, but you'll see sizable numbers of players at the big tournaments. It looks like the Guildford 1-dayer in November is going to be full, 32 players.

It's a very different game to old WRG 7th and prior though. and very different to FoG. And it's certainly not to everybody's taste! Many of the people here hate DBMM with a passion, and many of the people in DBMM land hate FoG with a passion

There are other rules which use other C&C mechanisms, such as activation rolls before a command can do anything this turn, or rolls that need to be made after each unit is moved in order to keep moving additonal units - I've experienced these in later period rulesets but not ancients, but I imagine some of the other ancients rulesets out there use these or similar mechanisms.

Ancients rules that I have no experience of myself but I have heard one or more people at my club enthuse about so must be doing something right are Armati, Impact, and Ironbow.

It might be worth signing up to the Society of Ancients - the regular Slingshot magazine often has reviews and battle reports from a number of different rules, highlighting their differences and pointing out what works well and what doesn't. The latest issue for example has 5 or 6 accounts of the same battle played on the same day by many different people using their preferred rulesets.

Aha - just noticed you mentioning Command and Colours in another thread. That seems to have a reasonable following too, and there are quite a few people around who turn it into a sort-of tabletop rules set by using a few bases of miniatures in place of counters. The rule mechanisms sound quite interesting, it sounds quite intersting from the accounts I've read and the one game I've witnessed...the main downside as far as I am concerned is that I personally can't get over the fact that it involves hexes!

stecal wrote: Augustus to Aurellian by Phil Hendry has card based activation for C&C and fog of war via hidden movement. It is specifically designed for Roman warfare.

I think a card impact on a game system which because VERY common in board games in the last years is a valauble gaem addition in general. I've partially draft up some options for FOG, need to finish it an post it.

With regards to modelling the "fog of war", I've liked the mechanism used in Principles of War. It used "manoeuvre bases". Forces (commands) were assigned to a manoeuvre base and only deployed once spotted by the enemy or when the player wished to deploy them. You could also have dummy manoeuvre bases (i.e., with no troops) to confuse the enemy; armies with better command and control or better scouting could have more of these than those with poorer command & control / scouting. Note that one could "spot" from a manoeuvre base on the assumption that, while large bodes of troops weren't present, small scouting parties would be. It made a nice differentiation between pre-battle manoeuvre and the battle proper. One further advantage was solo play. I do a lot of solo games. I could "surprise" myself by randomizing the commands (i.e., I wouldn't know which command, if any, a manoeuvre base represented until it was spotted or I wished to deploy the troops (if there were any).

I'm sure there are lots of players that wouldn't like this, but, given the issues discussed in the v2 beta, it could have addressed some of the manoeuvrability issues around undrilled foot, mounted, etc. since, as in Principles of War, one could have separate movement and manoeuvrability for "manoeuvre bases". However, such a concept is definitely beyound a minor adjustement to v1; and I think it would be hard to "add into" FoG.

Just random musing on a Monday morning.

[quote="ShrubMiK"]It depends what you are looking for exactly. One of the bug pluses (and also minuses) of the modern ancients landscape is that there are rules to suit all tastes, but finding opponents for many of them can be a challenge. And I'm not really interested in trying to get to grips with something that I'm not going to be able to play regularly. So I limit myself to two of the bigger rulesets, FoG and...


It's a very different game to old WRG 7th and prior though. and very different to FoG. And it's certainly not to everybody's taste! Many of the people here hate DBMM with a passion, and many of the people in DBMM land hate FoG with a passion

/quote]

I cut my teeth on WRG 3-6th edition using them from 1972- to the late 80's with the last edition being pretty much my favourite save for the extension to cover medieval which I always felt was a mistake as the game system had really not been designed with that in mind. It was an era too far. God's Acre rules early medieval ( Dave Millward?) had some nice touches eg not allowing knighst to charge " social inferiors" if there were other knights in charge reach.

I never made the transition to 7th which just freaked me out, nor to DBA nor DBMM (I have tried those) . But I never was a tournament player. Old style WRG had many faults of course but also some strengths. ( and I still thinks it works as system for 16th and 17th century - good old George Gush.) Biggest faults as a game design were the record keeping and fiddliness removing indvidual figures and having to calcluate the hits per fig and then the obsession with the weapons and armour interface . But the 3xD6 versus 3 X D5 for irregulars/barbarians versus regulars worked I thought.

I think we may have taken simplification re d rolls slightly too far in recent years though there was tendency to try to use every type of dice going at one stage. Peter Gilder's " In the Grand Manner" Nap rules use D5s D6s and D10's whch is one type too far I think. You end up using two types to see if you hit with artillery and just for the sake of using D10's so far as I can see. I have had a go at Impact whch has its points for quick games but I am not sure a I like the look and feel at all, and Warhammer- just too many resultless D rolls and I find it clunky.

But now " I am no longer a two stone WRG weakling - today I am two separate FOG(AM) gorillas" ( cf Mr Apollo - Bonzo Dog Do da Band).

I do like the look and feel; I do like the mechanisms; it has an elegant style; and about the only thing I don't like much is the ongoing " curse of the D6" . I would happily allow my average drilled troops (other than skrmishers) to throw 2xD5's instead of 2x D6's for CMTs and Cohesion tests and give superior and better quality drilled the option!

ShrubMiK wrote:Personally I would recommend DBMM, okay you can still see everything on the battlefield, but there are mechanisms to ensure that you can't do everything you would like at the time when you would like to do it, and also to cause some troops to sometimes do things you would rather they didn't do.

There are some 'fog of war' mechanisms in DBMM I believe: for example generals can buy mechanisms such as 'exagerrate numbers' which tend to model the inventiveness of some generals. Plus, the PIP allocation system (and the ability to change the allocation mid game) reflect C+C issues.

It's certainly a different game to FOG - though since the basing is the same pretty much it's easy enough to try it. The issue of whether you like it or not seems to be a bit the writing style (some find it impenetrable, others find FOG waffly) and a bit the level of historical detail. Adherents like the historical feel; others refer to it as "chrome" (as in eye catching but not essential).

Probably the most significant issue with DBMM is it can be difficult to find people who play it, depending where you are in the world.

ShrubMiK wrote:Aha - just noticed you mentioning Command and Colours in another thread. That seems to have a reasonable following too, and there are quite a few people around who turn it into a sort-of tabletop rules set by using a few bases of miniatures in place of counters. The rule mechanisms sound quite interesting, it sounds quite intersting from the accounts I've read and the one game I've witnessed...the main downside as far as I am concerned is that I personally can't get over the fact that it involves hexes!

Well it is a lot more abstract generally than miniature wargames (and most hex games) but works well as a game in its own right. A game only lasts about half an hour. There is a lot of "Fog of War" involved in that you can only move the troops you want if you draw the right cards.

Visually it works well with 1/72 plastics.

The downside is that, in the interests of simplicity, there are only about 8 troop types (heavy/light/medium/foot/horse etc.) so Roman heavy infantry for example have exactly the same criteria as Macedonian. It also leads to stupid things like Hoplites having missile weapons (as scenario builders classify poor hoplites as Light Infantry to give them less close combat dice).

Or its hard to represent bow armed medium foot like the sparabara because the rules don't give MF missile weapons. It would be harder still to represent the Immortals because there is no elite/sup/ave/poor rankings.