I'm trying to pick up the pieces of a "Dark Age" project from some years back. I invested in some Kallistra figures (Saxons, Vikings and some Romano-British and Celts to act as Welsh/Irish/Pictish allies), principally to refight with two of my sons the wars of Alfred.

I had settled on the Dux Bellorum rules by Daniel Mersey after a lot of searching for something that replicated the hard slog and brutal ebb and flow of infantry combat of the period (and 'slog' is a word which I think I came across in  an earlier rule-set, Andy Callan's D.A.I.S. (Dark Age Infantry Slog) which I think inspired Mersey's pre-cursor to 'Dux' rule-set, A Glutter of Ravens).

I quite enjoyed the rules - I painted up some bases from each side (about a third) - but the rules were a little 'two-dimensional' in some respects. 

Does anyone have any other suggestions for rule sets that aren't *too* sophisticated, and that do a particularly good job at representing the infantry melees of the period with some colour and verve (rather than rule-sets that include such types of combat as an afterthought and are really aimed at Byzantine or Late Roman milieus). 

I am not inclined towards skirmish rules and really want to re-fight battles of a couple of thousand men upwards (and anything that includes campaign or pre-battle manoeuvring concepts would be a bonus).

Any help from Dark Age veteran gamers here much appreciated!

Saga should work well, played both

I always thought Saga was a skirmish rule-set - do they have a version for larger battles?

It is more skirmish, gives a good game though

We found Saga was more about knowing your opponents dice board as well as your own. We thought it felt very false. Some armies are almost unbeatable. Shades of WRG

You could try Sword and Spear. They will not work for armies that rely on skirmish tactics (eg Parthians), but should work well for the period you are looking at

Saga is a good game - I'd say it's large skirmish 30-50 figures a side in 3-6 units. But it's not really attempting to be a historically accurate rule set - it is verging on fantasy / mythological and is very much a game rather than a simulation. 

There is a Too Fat Lardies set of rules for this period - may be Dux Brititanium - the name is too similar to the Dan Mersey set for my memory 

Hail Caesar and To The Strongest are too other good ancient / medieval sets of rules - but both are generic with army lists for this era. Both represent linear warfare pretty well. 

Is warfare in this era a bit two dimensional anyway?

Yes, Fred, you're almost certainly right.  I think that's the challenge of finding a way to make it *interesting* that doesn't really on corny pseudo-mythology or glued-on skirmish concepts.

Gosh, that makes me sound terribly fastidious.

I'm a great fan of TFL's Chain of Command, so I might look up the other Dux - although from memory it's aimed more at the period of the Adventus Saxonum than the michelhere.

When I last looked (and that was the time of the 2 x DUX and Saga releases) They were the three main sets.

Each provides a "skirmish" experience, through Dux Bellorum more resembles a big battle.

My own views on each:

Dux Bellorum: (Daniel Mersey, Osprey)
A relatively traditional wargame with some innovative command chit issues.
My small group found the use of chits led to lengthy indecisive battles until one side rolled remarkably well.
These seem best suited to the late-Roman, Saxon incursion or "Arthurian" period, though there's no reason they shouldn't work for later battles.

Pros: 
Excellent representation of key troop types (Shieldwall, Warrior, Skirmisher, Light Horse - even Roman heavy horse).
Good range of armies: Late/Post Roman, Saxon, Welsh, Pict, Irish.
You will certainly get your clash of shieldwalls with these rules.

Cons:
Defensive command token use seemed dominant, and skirmishers seemed particularly useless.
Folk on forums assured me "You'll eventually work it out" without providing much guidance.
Perhaps the implication was that skirmishers could unlock shieldwall deadlock.
My group and I never worked it out.


Dux Britanniarum: (ToofatLardies)
Another set aimed at the Saxon invasion / incursion.
If you enjoy your lard, there are mechanisms you'll recognise from Sharp Practice and Chain of Command.
The game's focus is the clash of fast moving Saxon warriors with the post-Roman shieldwall.
I believe skirmishers and horsemen are also included - Hey, It's Arthurian.

I haven't played these rules, so won't do pros and cons in any great detail.

The rules contain an innovative campaign system, and a very nice map of post Roman Britain.
It looks good, as a means to generate a series of battles and represent your lord's fluctuating fortunes.
A supplement called The Raiders introduces Irish and Picts (Maybe also Welsh, I can't remember) with a few special rules.


SAGA (Studio Tomahawk)
I really ought to have enjoyed this, as it has a lot of mechanics that I appreciate in isolation.
A command system determined by battle-boards.
Various contingents, each with different strengths.
A setting closer to 800-1066, the Great Heathen army to the Norman Invasion.

The game is a skirmish with each side fielding a lord and several units - they can select hearthguard, warriors or skirkisher scum.
Command is achieved by rolling dice and placing these on a battleboard.
The different battleboards are the great selling point, and the game seems to appeal to teh type of boardgamer who likes to focus on his/her own private "tableau".

I've played about six games and didn't enjoy a single one, but I'm not that sort of boardgamer.

What I disliked.
 * I didn't see a single battle develop into the classic shieldwall of the era.
 * Unit placement, and mutual support seems largely irrelevant. Units activate individually, usually charge straight into contact, and burn as many dice to gain buffs in the resulting ruck.
 * The Lord is the best fighter by far on the field, placing him with his hearthguard creates a unit which will only lose to teh opposition hearthguard. Most of our battles ended when one Lord (with sometimes one or two survivnig hearthguard) slew the other Lord - no other survivors were present.
 * Players seemed glued to their "battleboard" to the exclusion of events (largely irrelevant as I claim above) on the main table.
 * Some of the army lists and battleboards (Particularly in the first supplement, felt cartoonish and very "Games Workshop").


Now I'm not saying SAGA is wrong, it has a large loyal following. 
I just didn't enjoy it to the extent it's in my bottom 10% of games played.
That's a matter of personal taste.

But if you're looking for something that has Vikings and Saxon Kingdoms, it's the one of the three written for this.

It's a tough question through.

On the one hand you have the Nu-skool skirmish or big skirmish games.
These typically address the specific setting, and represent the different troop types and command with a degree of nuance.

On the other there are "big battle" rules which cover 3000BC to 1500AD.
These may regard every army core as irregular shielded spearmen, with minor adjustments for a handful of nobles and a few handfuls of skirmishers.

Thanks, Steve, that's really useful.

It's weird, given how many niche rule-sets there are out there that the battles of the 8th/9th century don't seem to have received as much attention as they - on an historical if not tactical or strategic level - might seem to merit.

I think you have hit the nail on the head a couple of times in this thread already.
There are no tactics and however important two groups of spearmen, with a few psychopaths with axes intermingled, killing each other might have been, it isn't very interesting as a game.
I think Andy Callan, and later Dan Mersey did as good a job as you can by picking on the leadership roles and making you think about them.
But after about five games you've extracted most (all?) the interesting variations from the situation.
Gamers like to move units around and generally that doesn't happen in shieldwall warfare.
Line up, psych up, charge and kill.
Next battle please.

We played a lot of Dux Bellorum and rather as Guy has said, the tactics are limited and it all became a bit dull to be honest. Even with limiting the amount of dice that can be used for the defensive bonus, it seemed to boil down to who lost a unit first, then you were on the back foot for the rest of the game. Skirmishers had to work round the flanks to try and get a 'breakthrough' but rarely did so.

Despite loving the period, I think more skirmish level games such as Lion Rampant provide much more fun than two shieldwalls slugging it out.

Returned here to post an update, but then I saw SteveJ's comment, so I'll address that first.

Lion Rampant (form a position of ignorance).
I own the first edition which was very heavily oriented to the age of knights and castles.
A second edition has been released and I believe it stretches the era back to the fall of Rome.
It certainly introduces rules for shieldwalls.
If you can tryst your opponent to select a reasonably historic force, and not add in crossbows and plate armoured knights, you ca probably Squeeze an Alfred and Guthrum battle out of Lion Rampant's 2nd edition.


And now, the reason I returned.
Some while back, the good folks at Little Wars TV made several videos about the 1066 campaign.
This included a site visit to Hastings and refights of Stamford Bridge, Fulford Gate and Hastings.

They used their own free Ravenfeast rules which can be found here.

If my memory isn't playing tricks, the basic rules are designed for viking raid skirmishes where one figure represents one fighter.
They devised a big battle variant for the 1066 battles, which was pretty simple and moved along at a fair old rate.
I wouldn't expect anything revolutionary, but it's worth a look when comparing with the other offerings.

Hello

Haven't looked at them for a while but 'Shieldwall' may be ok for this - https://www.legio-wargames.com/_files/ugd/d44cbb_8aac05d10d854b269a901b3fc2212959.pdf

Free rules from Legio Wargames described as "Recreate the atmosphere of Dark Age battles in the British Isles and Northern Europe."

Cheers

GrumpyOldMan