There are so many Ancients rules sets around that I think it is a major deterrent to anyone starting out to actually game this period. I started when God was a lad (OK, maybe in his late teens) with WRG 6th Edition and, though I never mastered them, at least cut my teeth with them. They were my first real rules, not ones I had copied out of a book (I didn't know it was illegal then! I was only a kid!!!), but I so savoured that first win - I used someone's Seleucids against a Trajanic Roman army in a club competition and fielded all the wierd stuff. I can still remember my scythed chariots crashing into a legion and an auxiliary cohort and then rolling +4. 101 casualties I believe, and two routing Roman units....
Then, after a short hiatus when we all decided we hated WRG 7th, came the DBA/ DBM sets. They took off in a big way, but, looking back, left no sense of feeling, just that you had taken part in at best a chess game and at worst some sort of mathemetical experiment.
Then came WAB. Quirky, sometimes downright odd, often frustrating, but accessible, familiar, colourful, with a few sample army lists to get you going and I was back in the room (so long as a strict recreation of history was not what was required). They are still my favourite set, especially in their latest incarnation, warts and all. I have sniffed at Crusader, passed up Impetus and Warmaster and left Clash of Empires in my lunchbox so far, should I get peckish, but WAB still comes out top of my ancients menu.
I can live with the quirks and go with the fun. Thus, my Indians and my Medievals are all based to WAB and I am unashamed to say I am a WABBER (or whatever they call themselves in polite society).
I've never found an ancients et of rules that I'm happy with, I've a Rep Roman and Carthaginian armies in 15mm, no rule set makes the maniple system work, although my pal Postie has written his own set loosely based on WAB, these seem to work well, well they did in his last game anyway!!!
ReplyDelete