Goin' Old School

I had a chance over the last few weekends to get back to my roots and do some old-school gaming. I generally enjoy some of the rules that have come out in the last decade or so, but there's a feel to the old-school games that stirs something within me that a lot of the current crop just doesn't. Although, to be fair, some of the more recent rules rely heavily on mechanisms from the venerable days of wargaming's infancy. Pioneers like Don Featherstone laid a foundation that keeps being built upon.

The memorable aspect of wargaming from my early years in the hobby, an aspect I still admire, is that there was a subtlety that came from complexity. No one who's lived through doing a reaction test in WRG ancients will forget the painstaking list of modifiers. Some recall them with dread and horror, but I always liked that the rules tried to take into account all the circumstances that might affect a reaction. In current rules, checking reaction (or morale) is often a fairly straight-up die roll. It's a sad event to have a unit rout off the board because you happened to roll a "6" and your morale is a 7+ even though you appear to be on the cusp of victory, are surrounded by friendly units in good order, and the enemy is routing before you.

So, here's to a couple old-school games that still have the magic.

Game 1: Ironclads

The first old-school game was Yaquinto's The Ironclads, which we've adapted for 1/600th scale miniatures. Back in the day, we used to play a lot of Ironclads. Kevin Smyth got me into it nearly 25 years ago, which even back then was almost 20 years after the boardgame was published.

We started back then with an adaptation to the 1/1200th scale Lyzard's Grin ships and briefly tried to keep things on a hex grid. When Toby Barrett's 1/600th line of Thoroughbred Figures ships came out in the early 90s, we went after them with abandon and forsook (eventually selling off) our 1/1200th ships.

Ironclads was still the rules we used, we just converted movement and range from hexes to inches and I made up some turning circles using dear, old Aldus FreeHand (R.I.P.). We played Ironclads in 1/600th for years. It was a popular event at conventions and there was a point where Kevin and I probably knew the whole complex chart of hit determination, allocation, and effect by heart (not surprising, since we ran the charts for all the players).

A few other temptations came along, like Smoke on the Water and Iron and Fire, but we always came back to Ironclads. More recently, we got all excited about Sail & Steam Navies from Bay Area Yards. Sail & Steam Navies has a lot going for it, with a few glitches. I printed and laminated many, many full color ship cards at great expense and we played several games, but after a while the itch for Ironclads comes back.

Kevin had the great idea to host an Ironclads game at our upcoming Enfilade! convention in May. The scenario Kevin came up with is a hypothetical Confederate attack on Pensacola, a kind of reverse Mobile Bay. The Confederates have a handful of later ironclads, including the British- and French-built ships that never made it into Confederate hands, as well as some wooden gunboats.

Kevin worked out an ingenious method for handling all the many, many guns of the fort. Using Ironclads' standard shooting, the time spent working out the fire of each single gun would be an enormous time-suck. Instead, with a few die rolls, we got a reasonable result that well simulated the effect of "racking," the slow, steady loosening of armor due to repeated hits with large-bore solid shot.

We played a trial game at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland, WA to test Kevin's theories. The game had Dave Schueler and I running the Confederates and Kevin running the fort. Because it was a trial of the fort rules, we left out the possible Union naval units that would help the fort. I ran the CSS North Carolina, the CSS Nashville, and the CSS Stonewall, all ironclads. Dave ran the ironclads CSS Tuscaloosa and CSS Tennessee II along with three wooden gunboats.

We managed to tear great chunks out of the fort and even took out several guns (with only left them with lots and lots more). Our ironclads fared well getting a lot of armor damage ("racking") from the fort, and occasionally a critical hit, but nothing serious. The wooden boats got knocked silly and Dave withdrew them from the fight before they became flotsam.

In addition to streamlining the fort's gunfire, we did away with pre-plotting movement. There always seems to be players piling their ships into each other (unintentionally). It's always fun, of course, but a bit awkward and slows down play as you have to adjudicate the mayhem.

For a better description and a few pics, go to Kevin's write-up on his blog: A good Day to Travel to Pensacola.

Game 2: WRG Renaissance

There was a time when these were the hot, cool rules on the block. I had a copy, circa 1976, of George Gush's first edition Renaissance rules (the "yellow" rules, if you recall them, though they were also published in a green cover similar to the 2nd edition), which I quite liked at a time when I was very invested in wargaming the Renaissance. In 1979, I went to the UK and managed to snag a copy of the just-released 2nd edition "green book," formally know as War Games Rules For Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries (1420-1700). I also got a copy of the newly reprinted edition of C.W. Oman's A History of the Art of War in the Sixteen Century. I had an imperialist army made up of Ral Partha figures and played as often as I could, until I went off to school in Canada...

After that, there was a brief revival when I was back in San Jose before more school in Chicago. Rick Martinez and I were involved in playing late 17th. c. with these rules, though I think that they sort of fell flat with regard to pike and shot combos, especially for that period when the pikes were just 20% of the unit. Since then, I managed to get in one game with Kevin Smyth, Wes Rogers, and Chris Craft, using Kevin's 100 Years War figures and my dining table.

Playing a game of Deus Vult with Mike Lombardi, Troy Wold, and Wes a few weeks back, Wes and I reminisced about WRG Renaissance rules and we decided to try a game. So this last Saturday, we met at The Panzer Depot and had a small, simple game using Wes' English Civil War figures.

I played the Parlimentary foote with another player (visiting from Austin, TX) playing the Parlimentary horse. Wes played a combined force of Royalist foote and horse, while Rick Ferens played another command of Royalist horse.

We deployed all our horse, three units, against Rick while I took on the Royalist center with my foote and held another foote regiment back to hold against Wes' horse.

Our horse wound up victorious against Rick and started the process of rolling up the Royalist foote from the flank. My foote in the center was pressing hard and with Wes' foote starting to get rolled up, would soon take the center. My lone foote unit managed to hold off Wes' cavalry after bouncing a determined attack lead by Prince Rupert himself. By then, the Royalists threw in the towel.

It felt pretty good to get back into the rhythms of WRG Renaissance. I have a lot of Old Glory Wars of Religion figures that I've been wondering what to do with. I may have an answer...

Other goings on
After our Ironclads game, Kevin, Dave, and I went to visit Mox Boarding House in Bellevue. This is an expansion of Cafe Mox in Ballard (i.e., Seattle, but Ballardites still resist the incorporation that happened 100 years ago). It's much, much bigger space for gaming and dining.

We looked around a bit, every chair and table seemed to be occupied. Parking was tricky; we had to park in the "customers only" spaces at an auto repair business that was fortunately closed for the day. We had lunch, which was nice, but a different menu and beer list than Cafe Mox. Between the two, I like the menu and beer at Cafe Mox better. (You can compare menus at the Mox link above.) We played Timeline: Historical Events, which Kevin picked up at the store, while we played. Fun game, but among the three of us, history geeks par excellence, the events were too easy to line up in chronological order.

While still at The Panzer Depot, Kevin and I rumaged through the discounted remains of John's Aztecs and Tlaxcalans from The Assault Group. Kevin put the idea in my head last year about adopting the Lion Rampant skirmish rules for Mexico ca. 1520. I started a blog post with some proposed unit profiles and a few special rules, which I will post eventually. In the meantime, I've been painting Spanish conquistadors, some Tlaxcalan allies of the Spanish, and just starting some Aztecs. I've also put in an order to The Assault Group for more Spanish; I need some caballeros, war-dogs, gunners, and more rodeleros.

We're also looking at doing Aztecs and conquistadors for the recently released En Garde rules from Osprey. These rules are an adaptation of the earlier Ronin rules that sets the games in Europe ca. 16th-18th centuries, with some expansion in non-Europeans like Aztecs.

Currently we're set for a go at them in late April at Meeples Games in West Seattle. We'll try out En Garde using whatever figures I manage to paint as well as having a go with Kevin's 40mm scale Three Musketeers figures.

Old school wargaming: Smackdown in Seleucia II

We played our second game of WRG 4th edition ancients today. The rules are long in the tooth, first appearing in 1973, but the cast of gamers was even longer in the tooth. Bill Stewart brought his beautifully-painted Seleucid army to face my third-century Romans (augmented by some of Bill's Camillan Romans as ersatz legionaries). On bill's side was Rich Knapton, who was seeking to redeem himself after his phalanxes routed the first time we played. The other Roman players were Bob Mackler and Dick Larson.

We set up terrain about as haphazardly as we could, diced to see who would choose their side to deploy, and then set up our forces. On the Roman side, Dick commanded the cavalry, included my just-completed dromedarii unit. Bob commanded the center legionary units, the bolt-shooters, and a unit of lanciarii. I commanded another two smaller legionary units plus the auxiliary troops.

Roman mounted wing: dromedarii in front with catafractarii and equites behind

The Seleucids were divided with Rich having the two "common" phalanxes, a unit of cataphracts, some psiloi, the light cavalry, and an elephant. Bill commanded the argyraspides (a.k.a. "silver shields"), a unit of cataphracts and another partially-cataphract cavalry unit, the peltasts, and more psiloi.

Rich came up with an idea to use command markers that we would use each turn to mark what we would do. It worked OK, but WRG ancients really don't allow for changing your orders each turn and we had a lot of paper cubes on the table, as the pictures show.

Turn one saw Dick leading with his camels against Rich's cataphracts. It was a bold move—but doomed to fail. Even disordered against smelly camels, Rich's cataphracts could hurt the unarmored dromedarii enough to send them running, especially when they were supported by an elephant.

The dromedarii labor in vain against bigger, heavier opponents

In the center, Rich slowly advanced with his two phalanxes screened by his light psiloi, while Bob did the same with his legions.

The armies advance

On my side, Bill moved aggressively forward with his peltasts and cataphracts. He also ran his light javelinmen towards Bob's bolt-shooters. The bolt-shooters' fire was about as desultory it gets and Bill's light infantry just ran them over, leaving a nice hole in the Roman line.

The Roman line breached by Seleucid light troops

Meanwhile, my auxilia was mixing it up with Bill's peltasts. The first round was in my favor and I pushed the Greeks back. However, subsequent rounds did not go my way and the peltasts eventually wore me down until I routed away.

Roman auxilia push back the Seleucid peltasts for one glorious round before getting their butts kicked

In addition, Bill sent his cataphracts against my strongest legionary unit. In the initial round of kontos versus pilum, the kontos won, pushing me back in disorder. In subsequent rounds, I got pushed back three more times, which finally broke me–at which point we realized that the final three push-backs shouldn't have occurred because the cataphracts, having to resort to hand weapons after the initial charge, weren't inflicting enough casualties to cause a push back ("more that inflicted and at least one per figure"). Without being pushed back, the legionaries would have recovered their order and started pushing back the cataphracts, who would likely have rallied back to charge again later. C'est la guerre, c'est la stupidité. We weren't going to turn back the game three turns to rectify things, so we just wrote the two units off.

Cataphracts versus legionaries

On Dick's flank, the Roman catafractarii got to grips with Rich's cataphracts. This contest continued through the game. Neither side did enough casualties to push back the other, so they just sat in a disordered scrum while events moved around them. The Roman equites fought against Rich's elephants and light horse with the result of getting routed off the board.

Events in the center started looking grim. Bill's argyraspides smacked into Bob's rear legionary unit while it was changing formation. In disorder, the legonaries were helpless and routed immediately. Bob's elite lanciarii got bested by Rich's vile psiloi scum and his remaining legionary unit was suddenly facing two phalanxes.

Things are looking bad for Rome

But then THE MIRACLE happened. Beset two to one, Bob rolled high for his random factor and Rich rolled low for both his phalanxes. In the ensuing mêlée, Bob routed both phalanxes in the first round and fortune smiled on Rome for the first time in the game.

Triumphant legionaries see the backs of their beaten foe

While Bob was restoring our center, I charged my second legionary unit into Bill's cheeky psiloi, who had broken the hole in our line by wiping out the bolt-shooters. Caught in a quandry about whether to run or stand, he stood rather than evade through his argyraspides and disorder them. The legionaries broke the psiloi in the first round and they scurried off through the phalanx, which remained stationary to avoid disorder.

Next, my pursuing legionaries charged into the flank of Bill's argyraspides while his previously unengaged cavalry charged me in the flank. I looked like curtains for my legionaries, but the hung in for the first round.

Legionaries in an ugly scrum

Meanwhile, Dick had reformed the dromedarii and run them around to harass Rich's fleeing phalanxes, which by now had no hope of recovering and returning to the fight. At this point we called the game. Bob's other legionary unit had recovered and was ready to throw its weight into the battle on my flank. It was a qualified Roman win.

Post mortem

It was great playing WRG ancients again. I have always been a huge fan and this project has been a lot of fun.

We definitely need to play more to get more experience. I used to play WRG 5th edition ancients rules, Bill, Bob, and Dick used to play 6th edition, and Rich's story keeps changing (I think he started with 3rd edition). The upshot is that none of us played 4th edition and even the versions we played were played back in antiquity. (I think my last game of WRG 5th edition was played sometime in 1979 when I still had pimples.)

Our inexperience lead to some frustration, but we're all agreed to play again in the near future. I've got more painting to do...

Base-ic Instinct

I am a rebel, an outcast, a dangerous radical with views no decent human would hold. On the Group W bench of wargaming, I am the one that others move away from. Why? Because I believe that the WRG-DBx-FoG standard base sizes for 25/28mm ancients are too small. Way too small. Absurdly. Ridiculously. Small.

I have made a nuisance of myself on various newsgroups as I proclaim the good news that we ancients gamers can be set free from cramming big figures on little bases; set free from using one or two fewer figures on a base just to get any to fit; set free from cantering cavalry figures at an angle on the base to keep them from hanging out front and back; set free from having armies that look like 50s-era college kids stuffing themselves in phone booths and Volkswagens. But I go disregarded, despised, and derided. A prophet has no honor in his own country.

The base sizes for WRG ancients, on which the later rules were based, were essentially set back in 1969 when the 1st edition rules were published. Both 1st and 2nd edition rules used inches for the base sizes. It wasn't until 3rd edition were released in 1971 that the measurements were converted to millimeters and the final category, light-medium and light-heavy infantry, were added. WRG described a frontage per figure, but really, the 3rd edition basing took a 60mm frontage as its basis. On this frontage, you could fit four close order troops, three loose order troops, or two open order troops; thus 15mm, 20mm, or 30mm per figure. In the WRG rules, that made a difference because combat was resolved by how many figures were in contact. So, on average, close order troops would have twice the men in contact as open order troops.

The figures available at the time were small compared to today's offerings. Scruby, Greenwood & Ball, Minifigs, Hinchliffe, and Lamming were the main manufacturers. Officially, the scale was 25mm, which meant that from top to bottom, the figure measured 25mm. It was a loose scale and there was a lot of variety of actual size within it. For example, Ral Partha Miniatures, which came out in 1975, were "true" 25s and looked smaller than most. Partially, this was because Ral Partha were more proportional, which made them look less chubby and trollish that others. In any case, the figures current at the time fit the bases, even if tightly so in some cases. The newer ranges blew all that away.

Dixon miniatures were the first in my experience that really exhibited "scale creep." Marketed as 25mm figures, Dixon were a bit bigger and chunkier than other ranges. Throughout the 1990s, newer ranges came out that only increased the degree of scale creep until someone finally put away pretense and started calling them 28mm figures (or "heroic" 25s). But don't think of it as a mere 3mm difference--especially because most 28mm figures are really 30mm figures. Comparing the A and A Miniatures I used for my 3rd c. Romans to Minifigs figures of the 1970s is like comparing well-fed grown men to children.

The upshot is that the figures no longer fit the official base sizes. This has become a nearly religious war for some in the gaming community. There are several "flat-earthers" who see no problem with the old base sizes and will not accept any official--or unofficial--change, even as they resort to increasingly absurd expedients to fit newer figures on the old base sizes. The Warrior rules (a re-issue of WRG 7th edition ancients) offer an alternative larger basing for 28mm figures, but I don't see that it's caught on.

When Kevin Smyth and I did our WRG 6th edition project, we simply doubled the size of the DBA/DBM element bases. Doing this changed the basis from a 60mm frontage to 80mm, thus 20mm, 26.666mm, or 40mm per figure. The base depths also changed to 30mm for close order infantry, 40mm for loose and open order infantry, and 60mm for all mounted.

This new basing accomplished what are, in my opinion, the main reasons to base figures: Comfortably accommodating the number of figures required by the rules, protecting the figures on the base, and providing an aesthetic complement to the painted figures (many an ugly paint job is rectified, or at least mitigated, by a nice-looking base). The following pictures provide examples of figures based on the larger bases compared to the size of the standard base.

Close order infantry: 80mm x 30mm (20mm per figure) compared to 60mm x 20mm (15mm per figure)

Loose order infantry: 80mm x 40mm (26.666mm per figure) compared to 60mm x 30mm (20mm per figure)

Open order infantry: 80mm x 40mm (40mm per figure) compared to 60mm x 30mm (30mm per figure)

Close order cavalry: 80mm x 60mm (20mm per figure) compared to 60mm x 40mm (15mm per figure)

Loose order cavalry: 80mm x 60mm (26.666mm per figure) compared to 60mm x 40mm (20mm per figure)

You might look at some of the pictures and think that you could fit the figures on smaller bases. True, but they would be cramped. This is especially true with close order troops. You can see this pretty clearly when you consider that the base size that would accommodate two close order infantry figures using the standard base size (30mm x 20mm) is the same size I use in the larger scale for one figure (20mm x 30mm):

I've adopted the larger basing for the 28mm Field of Glory (FoG) project I'm doing now. Other gamers are using the same bases and re-basing figures mounted for other systems (like Warhammer Ancient Battles and Crusader Rules).

What about that 26.666mm?

When I first determined the larger basing, I asked myself the same question. That is one odd base size to measure. If you're basing for WRG 7th edition, DBA, DBM, or FoG. you don't need to worry about it. When I adopted the new size, I was basing for WRG 6th edition, which meant that I needed at least one singly-mounted figure for casualty removal. However, I based for 6th edition using two figure bases maximum because it helps with formation changes, expansions, and contractions. This meant that my loose order figures required 53.333mm bases for two-figure bases; another oddity of size.

Enter Litko.

Before the WRG 6th project, I always cut my own bases out of 0.10" plastic card. It was a lot of work to score, cut, and prep all that plastic. Being pretty ham-fisted myself, I wasn't sure how I would be exact enough in my measurements. Even easy measurements came out a little off, so that the best of my bases is a rough quadrilateral with approximate dimensions. I had friends recommend Litko for some time. I e-mailed Ken and asked if he could cut bases to my sizes and he responded that he could cut custom bases to within 0.001mm. I was sold. I've never based with plastic since.

Me and WRG

I consider War Games Research Group (WRG) 5th edition ancients as the first "real" wargames rules I played. Back when I lived in San Jose, CA, there was a game store in nearby Campbell, CA called The Gametable. Long gone now, it was started in the mid-70s by three brothers: Larry, Michael, and Phil Duffield. A bit like Jack Scruby's Soldier Factory, which was then in San Luis Obispo, you could play games there on the tables they had set up throughout the store. The main table was a large 12' x 6' wooden behemoth where we played miniatures.

One of the main games we played was ancients and the rules that had the most support were the just-released WRG 5th edition. My first army was Han Chinese using 25mm Hinchliffe Models figures (I couldn't resist the convict javelinmen). We started a campaign run by Larry Duffield that was based on a map of ancient Greece. It had a little of the flavor of a boardgame called Source of the Nile. Each player had a "known" area they controlled. The area had specific resources that they used to build and supply their armies. Outside each known area was white space. In order to control more land and get more resources, we had to march our armies into terra incognita, search for resources, and take on any minor conflicts with the indigenous peoples. As the white space was filled in and empires clashed, we fought battles using the WRG rules.

The campaign flourished, faltered, and failed--as all wargame campaigns do--but the games went on. Wanting an army that was more like my personality, I decided on an Arab Conquest army. The army was made to attack, attack, attack and I liked that. It was all A-class fanatical warriors, which gave the units particular clout in an initial contact round of melee.

Our army lists were primitive. Unlike today, where lack of an official list leaves you in limbo, there really weren't any official lists. We tended to use the The Wargaming Guide to Tactical Ancient Armies book, which was published by Milgamex in 1977 for use with their Ancient Warfare rules, but any home-brewed list that had sources to support it was acceptable.

The final flourishing of my Arab Conquest army was its morphing into a Ghaznavid army. The key to this army was its two elephant units, each of four models, supported by triple-armed cavalry (bow, lance, javelins). This was my first competition army. In local play, they swept all before them, but in the big competition at an early Pacificon convention, they fell flat in game one. Still, they were a pleasure to play.

In 1981, I sold my armies and went off to ten years of academic pursuit. It wasn't until I moved from Chicago to Seattle in 1991 that I got back into miniature wargaming. By that time, the scene had changed. WRG 7th edition was struggling for survival. They were, in my opinion, a truly brilliant set of rules, but suffered from complexity and the inevitable ordeal of deciphering Barkerese. No one in Seattle wanted to touch them. Some played Tactica and later Armati, and there were a few people playing DBA, but none of these rules caught my imagination, so I bided my time with other gaming interests.

I finally got back into ancients when Paul Hannah started a DBA group in Seattle about six years ago. Even though I never considered it my ideal cup o' tea, DBA grew on me and I built several armies, played several games over the years, and contributed to the "total wanker" rating of a few of the armies (Old Saxons and Mitanni). From DBA I graduated to DBM because I liked the bigger armies and more in-depth approach to playing a game. I enjoyed DBM, too, but I always felt a little put off by its over-genericizing of the troop types. It just plain rankled that my Late Roman legionaries, clad in mail armor with large shields and armed with steel weapons, were almost functionally equivalent to butt-nekkid tribesmen with wooden clubs: Bd(O) versus Bd(F). Nevertheless, I played several tournaments and likely contributed to an overall decline in the standing of Late Roman armies (sorry, guys).

All through these years, I still pined for a game of WRG. I purchased sets of 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th edition rules on eBay. I also got all the published army lists for WRG 6th and 7th, and even found a used copy of the old Milgamex lists to supplement my badly deteriorated original copy. Eventually, in 2006 I decided to embark on a 28mm ancient project for WRG 6th edition. Fortunately, I had Kevin Smyth to join me in my folly. The enticement was the excellent 28mm range of 3rd century Romans produced by A and A Miniatures.

We opted for using larger bases and played on an 8' x 6' table. We didn't get a lot of games in before other projects pulled us away; however, I have a nice WRG ancients army for the first time in more than two and a half decades. It's not complete; I still have light cavalry to finish, a couple generals to add, and heavy infantry units to expand.

I'm now playing Field of Glory. I like these rules and I'm working to get broader play for them in the Seattle metro area. I can see a lot of the heritage of WRG ancients in them. I have toyed with rebasing my 3rd c. Romans for FoG, but I won't. I'm working on a 28mm Carthaginian army for FoG and plan on a Republican Roman army, too. But I'll keep the 3rd c. Romans as they are for the time when my WRG urge will strike again.