Slitherine

One thing I strongly suggest for the new FOG is more 'missions', rather than the straight up line em up and charge.

As an example, I have created some missions here: http://fogscenarios.blogspot.com. The idea is to take the essence (or a parody) of a historical battle, and create it as a mission for any pair of armies. I have only playtested some of the missions, but Hastings is a hoot. I playtested it with Greeks and Persians, with the Persians able to squeak a victory on the last turn. And their are more battles that I hope to create:
- Ain Jalut, with a big flank march
- Cynoscephalae, an escalating battle over a terrain feature
- Lake Trasimene / Arsuf, an attack on a marching army

However, what I have created is besides the point -- it is there really to start discussion. But what is strongly needed by FOG are more variety than 'line em up and charge' which is what so much of Ancients seems to be!

Nice idea and good initiative, Nick.

Nice idea but I am not sure that there were that many Ancient battles that weren't line up and fight.

OK, flank attacks happened and people turned up late but that can be covered with outflanking marches.

The real problem with missions is getting something that results in a fair game.

There is nothing stopping anyone playing any scenario that they want with the rules. I have several books of wargames settings for ancient battles that can be used for that but the vast majority are line up and fight.

Well, I suggest that only about 25% of battles were straight up fights. Of course, 50% plus of battles were sieges, which FOG does not cover. But I think there were plenty of battles that were assymetric. Think of the march of the 10,000, Teutoberger Wald, Lake Trassimene, Arsuf, Stamford Bridge. Others were line up and fight, but with assymetrical armies and terrain -- think Agincourt, Hastings, Crecy, Bannockburn, Heraclea, Granicus, etc. I will admit there are lots of straight up fights as per FOG -- Cannae, Zama, Magnesia. But personnally I find these boring after a while -- there are only so many things you can do as Romans vs Carthaginians when you have a billiard table with some scrub on one flank.

As to ensuring the missions are fair -- that is tough. Which is something I will leave to those dedicated playtesters. But FOW have managed to do it!

NickBowler wrote:As to ensuring the missions are fair -- that is tough. Which is something I will leave to those dedicated playtesters. But FOW have managed to do it!

I agree that the missions in FoW are not that bad in terms of fairness. One of the main missions has been changed recently because it was biassed with certain combinations of forces.

Some alternate types of battle might be a good idea to include in the appendix but I really cannot see a way to make them fair for use at tournaments. I remember playing some different scenarios in one of the WRG sets. While ther were interesting as one offs I would not want to play them on a regular basis.

It may well be that getting the campaign book produced would be a better approach.

hammy wrote:
It may well be that getting the campaign book produced would be a better approach.

Yes, that would solve some problems for sure. There are some optional rules like weather that can give some flavour to battles. The idea of having some "official" different scenarios is that it takes a while to balance one of those. Some players, like myself, do not play very often and it is hard to decide to try an untested scenario when you don't have that many ocassions to play.

hammy wrote:
It may well be that getting the campaign book produced would be a better approach.

Oooh, the Campaign book. Hooray. When is it coming out. I'm sure it was promised a couple of years ago*


*Waits for comments about Carthage and destruction.

I agree. A campaign set of rules would solve 90% of the boredom of repeatedly playing "line up and fight" battles. It was initially promised to be a supplement for the rules, but I unfortunately haven't heard too much official about it recently.

Peter C
Sword and Sandal Gaming Blog
http://swordandsandalgaming.blogspot.com/

It would be nice to see a couple of scenarios included in the rule book as an Appendix. These should really only be for friendly play to get people started, possibly graded to introduce more/different troop types. There would be no need to ensure that they were perfectly balanced as I don't think that the rule writers should be producing scenarios/missions for tournaments - that should be up to tournament organisers to come up with different formats/themes to keep people interested.

philqw78 wrote:
Oooh, the Campaign book. Hooray. When is it coming out. I'm sure it was promised a couple of years ago*


*Waits for comments about Carthage and destruction.

Hehehehe

We should consider to put that as our signature.

"EXPEDITIONUM CODEX FACENDUS EST"
Phil "the Elder"

Well I think the simplest "missions" would involve adjustments in the AP scoring system.

You could assign an army three camps. Each must be within 6 MU or another camp and comply with all other rules.

You could define victory as something other than breaking the enemy.

Again tough to balance in a tournament.