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1/72 scale figures 20/25/28mm figures anglo saxons basing wargame rules wargaming

Prelude to Wargames Rules tested

So having had a good start to the year painting wise, by August I had enough units to do some gaming. My wargaming has always been predominantly “solo”, so road testing rules on my own is natural for me.

Impetus elements of Anglo Saxons, Carolingians and Normans ready to do battle

I should also say that from my earliest wargaming days I have tinkered with rules.

It is a quirk of fate that the first wargames book I read on rules came from my local public library (remember them?). So being a child you take what you can or rather see. So what did my local library have in the adult section? Well a single Donald Featherstone book. And his book was called “Advanced Wargames”. It was a book about wargames and the advanced bit meant nothing to me.

years after my public library discovery I bought my own copy of this book. It actually contains material that has been “invented and popularised” decades later such as grid gaming

So armed with Advanced Wargames I started rule based wargaming and of course met a big problem. Advanced Wargames is a set of chapters dealing with “aspects” of wargaming. Drawing on multiple sources and authors the book covers most areas of rulesets yet they are not joined up to provide a single useable ruleset.

The assumption was that you had a wargames ruleset/s already and some prior knowledge of the whole idea of rules based wargaming. Then you would cherry pick additions and improvements from the book.

I think this is the origin of my “tinkering” with wargames rules. Give me a set of rules and I will invariably add in some “house rules”.

So back to my road test of the rulesets of Neil Thomas and Daniel Mersey.

I have posted previously about my reluctance to move from seriously thought out but quick DBA into the very simple world of AMW. Yet this ruleset is very enjoyable and is more subtle than you might think.

In Ancient & Medieval Wargaming (AMW) by Neil Thomas there are four period rulesets

  • Biblical Wargaming 3000BC – 500BC
  • Classical Wargaming 500BC – 300AD
  • Dark Age Wargaming 300AD -1100AD
  • Medieval Wargaming 1100AD – 1485AD

My choice here was obvious – Dark Age Wargaming.

I used his rules without house rule changes on this occasion. Well with one exception.

I use Impetus sized elements having abandoned DBA with its restrictions on depth. And I had settled on 1/72 20-25mm figures on 80 mm wide bases which Impetus assumed would be for 15mm although the rules clearly gave you the option for 1/72 basing.

In fact Impetus rules whole approach to basing was so refreshing when I encountered them. And for me they have set the tone for most of the last decade.

I think they were in the vanguard of “BW” measurement or base width’s. This simple decision meant the end of the need to “rebase” figures when switching between rulesets. Of course if you only have one ruleset it is never an issue.

I have almost as many rulesets as guides to painting figures if not more……..dozens.

AMW assumes you have DBA based figures so uses 4 40mmx20mm bases giving you an 80mm x 40mm element and 8 of these make an AMW army.

In effect you need 32 dba bases which is not so good if you have 12 unit dba armies: And most of my thinking had been on these compact DBA army lines.

table size and figure basing all go together for me. I fixed my maximum table size at 6’x4′ imperial and 1.8m x 1.2m metric. 3 collapsible picnic tables from lidl are the foundation
surface finish is 3 x 20mm thick mdf 4’x2′ (1.2m x 0.6m) boards to minimise warping covered with felt in this case

Then I read an article in the Lone Warrior magazine of the Solo Wargamers Association. There the writer suggested a cheap way to build armies was just use the 40mm x 20mm bases as single elements and/or reduce figure count to just say 1 for light troops, 2 for medium and 3 for heavy troops. Well it was something like that because it was the principle that made the difference to me. It broke me fully away from DBA “figures per base rules” and Impetus gave me the solution of 1/72 figures which I prefer – yet now on a smaller 15mm scale base size I also prefer.

The net result is I use 80mm wide bases and actually a generous 60mm depth for all units. This allows the impetus suggested “diorama” approach, better showing individual figures you have carefully painted rather than their being very squashed together under DBA.

You sacrifice ground scale though. I guess in this I have followed favourably the increased “abstraction” approach on ruleset design. Abandoning figure removal for losses in the 1990’s? was the start of this “abstraction” and for some the descent fully into gaming and away from any simulation. I love history yet I love gaming so the compromise matters.

Neither AMW nor Dux Bellorum require explicit command bases but I like them so here is one – from my much delayed “Normans in the South” project – none other than Tancred d’Hauteville looking at the shield design.

Using single base elements meant that required base removal in AMW rules was not now possible. The fix here was simply to use two dice. The first was used to show the 4 “virtual” bases while the second showed the 4 points value each virtual base could sustain before being knocked out and removed from play. I have also used three dice in other games (18 so showing 6+6+4 at the start). But the rules in AMW use base counts to indicate available attack dice. Unless you like mental arithmetic, showing the two aspects gives a simple visual indicator.

A few years later Neil Thomas used this “one number” technique to good effect in his fastplay “One Hour Wargames” (OHW) rules where units are a single base elements with a value of 16 which equates to all the elements morale/resistance/casualty value and overall strength in one number.

With AMW you need not fear flank issues so the shieldwall has gaps between each element/unit ! you can of course place units in base to base contact – i was reflecting the AMW book diagrams!

So I played two games with AMW. The first was essentially two shield walls crashing together and the second was a cavalry led force attacking a shieldwall.

The mighty Norman/Carolingian or Franks in AMW speak start their assault on the Anglo Saxons shieldwall. AMW give suggested army set ups although you still have plenty of choice in the small army lists in the text

The third ruleset test game was another shieldwall versus shieldwall this time using Dux Bellorum.

atmospheric artwork throughout the Osprey book makes its use feel positively different to the text heavy AMW where a central batch of irrelevant but professional model armies fails to add any real value. The AMW font is bigger so the text is much easier to refer to in the heat of battle though!

These rules are aimed at a narrower period AD367-793 and with a nod to fantasy gaming called “Arthurian Wargaming Rules”. These rules use the “BW” concept, being published in 2012, 5 long years after AMW.

a solid pair of shieldwalls square up for Dux Bellorum. The dice are colour coded for the unit grades such as “nobles”.

Again there were no tweaks for once. Indeed in both cases as I fought shieldwall battles a side benefit was to better understand the design of these two rulesets. Because shieldwalls in both rulesets result in quite a static and very balanced game you can see the effect of a limited number of the author’s variables in action.

Here is an Anglo Saxon Command with to its front my version of a shieldwall in 1/72 Strelets plastics on an Impetus 15mm scale 80mm wide element base.

In my next blog I will consider what happened in each game.

the ring and dice combination solved my AMW rule problem when using only base instead of 4.