What are some good Ancients Wargaming rules?

[FierceKitty]

  555555

[Leman]

Just checked my bookshelf and found Warmaster Ancients and Warmaster Medieval. Parker! Go and fetch the Roller. Warmaster original now resides with my nephew.

[jchaos79]

I recommend warmaster ancients, for sure.

[Ken]

I've been enjoying DBA 3 lately, good for quick small sized games. Sword and Spear has also been a lot of fun to play, unique command system and fun combat mechanics. Both of Neil Thomas' games, Ancient and Medieval Wargaming and One Hour Wargaming are great for a quick fix or mini campaign. I also have been playing John Acar's Throw Me a 6 using DBA lists, this has been my favorite so far. I'd like to give warmaster a try again using the skirmish mod for it.

[KTravlos]

My go to system is DBA, though I have not played a competitive game in 3 years and have yet to make the jump from 2.2 to 3.0.

If Hail Ceasar is like Black Powder this means you will have to put some work in making the lists you want. For some this would be part of the hobby, for others a chore. Really depends on your cup of tea.

I played Basic Impetus for a time and liked it, but ultimately gave up on it because a) armies were a bit more expensive then DBA, b) the battle system had too many modifiers to take into consideration for my liking.

War and Conquest and Clash of Empires are also rules-sets out there. There are also the theme and period specific free rules by the Perfect Captain. There is also Mantic's Kings of War (there is a free historical adaption).

Really speaking it partly depends on style of play. Do you like the use of special rules in order to add flavour to units? Do you prefer that the mechanisms take care of any differences? Do you like buckets of dice? Do you like spending time building scenarios and army lists or prefer to have them ready and just get stuck in? Do you wish detailed movement rules or a rough and tumble?

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Hail cheesy have lists now, rather Barkeresque...

[Last Hussar]

I played DBA 20+ years ago. Hated it. It appeared to be "Bring lines into contact, Roll Dice until one person managed to score 2 more than opponent, thus giving advantage from there on"

[toxicpixie]

At it's core that describes all wargaming...

[Ithoriel]

... and rather a lot of Real World (tm) battles too!

[Leman]

Evidently DBA=MARMITE.

[Ithoriel]

Evidently DBA=MARMITE.

True. However ...

At it's core that describes all wargaming...

[DanJ]

Warmaster Ancients has the advantage of being able to scale up from 1:1 games with 1000 points to multi player games with hundreds of bases per side.  The rules stay exactly the same, it just takes longer and that's mostly people taking.

[KTravlos]

Say what you will about DBA, but DBA 2.2 is one of the few games that I have seen properly rewarding pinning a foe and then flanking them. That was the death sentence and the game rewarded you for pulling it off.