You will no doubt remember that our community has embarked on quite a task, namely create/ rediscover/ borrow a wargames system that covers myriad periods, miniature scales and tastes. Less noble fellows would quiver at the task but relying on the works of Msrs. Borg, Mustafa, Barker, Bodley – Scott and of course Miller, I believe we can do it. We aren’t going to replace the works of these giants, just take the best and merge the rest!

Army size ( Ancients and Medieval)

We begin with our first love. De Bellis Antiquitatis was the revolution for most gamers of my age. Simple rules and accessible “ armies” but apparently dictated to the publisher through a malfunctioning British Rail public address system. The DBA table is smaller than our chosen Imperial et Colores hexmat. Similarly, twelve 4cm wide units doesn’t cut it it 15mm.

We suggest Impetvs bases that are 8cm wide or the To the Strongest “ wavy bases”.

Then we come to thorny issue of what constitutes an “ army”. Forty or so minis isn’t quite enough. A Basic Impetvs scale force is a great start! Eight to twelve units like the one above for pick- up games.

I do like the fact that both DBA and Basic Impetvs offer army lists with just a little variation for the list junkies. Of course, our original aim is for massive historical battles and that means referring to Commands and Colors Ancients.

The unrivalled system for battles on a six by four in Cardiff is To the Strongest. The system is brilliant and our basing still allows us to still play it. However at least half the club cannot follow the rules and many find reading problematic so we must revert not to one page rules but one paragraph rules!

To summarise, we now have the table size ( based on Commands and Colors ( 13 x 11 hex) and armies based on roughly 8cm wide units in 15mm and roughly 12cm wide in 28mm. An example of such an army for “Imperia and Colores” is below.

Apologies to DBA Medieval Spanish

Eleven hexes deep allows us an extra row of hexes for a baggage element , rate on C and C.

Twelve manoeuvre units should be fine but we can always look at fine tuning these.

Please tell us what you think ( politely). No rebasing is required and putting together lists is simple. I’ll try and get a game in within the next week. We already have a healthy interest in converting C and C ACW and World War Two into a fast play miniatures game and hopefully we shall be ready for a multi player try-out in February.

Until Saturday!

Miguel