Monday, November 22, 2010

Ancients - Might of Arms Game

During Brent's visit from the Twin Cities we put together a trial game of Might of Arms with Bob, Todd, Brent and myself.  Again, no pictures but we got the test game I wanted.  Irish/Celts took on mid/late Romans.  The game system is purported to resemble the venerable WRG Ancients rules and to a degree they do.  Troop types, weaponry, and mounting schemes according to function in the army were refreshingly present.  The combat system is completely different though.

Units are composed of either three or six stands.  Figures are never removed for hits which leads to some slightly annoying table clutter but I'm sure there is a clever way to replace the chits with something more aesthetic.  According to your function on the table your options are restricted.  Light cavalry typically doesn't go racing around the table acting like shock troops and lights of all kinds will attempt to melt away in the face of charges from close order troops.

We kind of messed up due to getting started way later than intended and just put troops out.  This left the outnumbered Romans attacking and things quickly went south for them.  Still, we got a decisive result quickly, even needing to look up rules and have them explained to us.  (Brent has played a few games of MoA.)

Overall I think it's worth playing again, finding the DB[fill-in-the-blank] family of rules distasteful and Fields of Glory to be frustratingly slow.  I've played a lot of ancients over the years and frankly wish for a revival of WRG 6.  That's not going to happen so onward we few, we happy few as we quest for a viable set of ancients rules.

2 comments:

  1. I'd b happy to bring figures and a scenario in the future. I don't think our little game gave you lads a clear picture of the game.
    Brent

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  2. Certainly worthy of another go or two.

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