I have been gaming ancients (mostly in 15mm) since the days of WRG 4th edition back in the mid 1970's when I was a very young boy. For me ancients has just slipped off the radar as most of the current crop of rules that I have played have become bogged down in complexity and legal type writing (DBM) or have crossed over from the world of fantasy where figures are heroes and the player commands only a small part of a force not an army (WAB). IMHO the only set of current rules of which I am familiar that does anything for me is DBA- and this is probably because it focuses down on one simple aim to give a fast battle and is stripped of much pretentions to do anything else. However I tend to play this with big units instead of elements.
What I would hope to find in any new set, is a new direction partly away from the sterile world of equal points encounter battles (although I have nothing against these for those who like it but DBM for example seems to cater only for this) and towards historical matches which work. Ideally a game could be done using various sized armies from (say) 120 figures upwards to encourage new starters, be played on tables from 4 x 3 foot upwards and last about two hours- This is the reality for most peoples evening games. Sadly I feel that mirroring the same time/scale criteria of DBM games is not foing to do anything for me personally.
Not wanting to be too negative here as after reading the introduction to TAOW it reads well and I am genuinly excited to see what is happening. I am very interested in seing the rules to try them out.
I agree about the base size issue, although I really wish we could all get rid of the WRG standard sizes which I don't like- though like everyone else I don't want to rebase several thousand figures either!
Right thats all for now boys, I'll keep watching.
Graham
PS If you can write rules that give the Later Archenid Persians a chance (but only a little one) against Alexander than I will be happy and if you can stop Norman milites blasting through solid lines of Axemen I will be extatic!
