Preferred Late Antiquity / Dark Ages Rulesets?

[Shamash-Bel]

Just interested in getting a rundown of the rulesets that people would recommend for Medieval Adventures, regardless of scale (interested in scaling it up and down).

[A Lot of Gaul]

For massed battles, my favorite rule set is Swordpoint. It has a ‘big battle’ feel with roughly 100-250 figures in 6-12 multiple-base units per side. Games of that size are playable in 2 hours following set-up. Troops in Swordpoint behave like their historical counterparts, i.e. heavy infantry battle lines remain solid until one side begins to buckle and then rapidly collapse, skirmisher units are fragile and shoot from appropriate distances, etc.

Swordpoint includes rules and mechanics that reward players for fighting aggressively, i.e. attacking and causing casualties through effective shooting and/or combat. Unit cohesion plays a crucial role in determining victory, and command models are important in aiding unit combat and cohesion.

Being published by Gripping Beast, Swordpoint works quite well for Dark Age battles. There is also a Dark Ages Armies supplement with complete lists for 48 different armies plus variants, running from 300-1066 A.D.

[SteveBurt]

Saga is very good.
Lion Rampant works well (although I much prefer Saga).
Dux Bellorum is OK
Dux Britannicum is brilliant, but only covers post-Roman Britain.
For large battles, my 'go to' set is 'To The Strongest' - a fantastic set of rules that uses a grid and allows large battles to be played to completion in a couple of hours.

[Byrthnoth]

Going off the topic title, am I right in thinking that you're looking for rules for roughly the 400-1000 AD period? Are you thinking of mainly gaming in Western Europe, or going east and south as well? I feel like there are a number of 'bronze age to Wars of the Roses' type rulesets that work well enough for the period, but may not capture a specifically early medieval flavour, if that's what you're looking for.

Dux Bellorum acknowledges the limitations of the period – lack of scope for complex manoeuvre, the fact that most armies are pretty similar in terms of technology and training (a lot of guys with beards, spears and shields) – and instead argues that successful generalship in the period means motivating troops to fight harder or be braver at pivotal moments in the battle. Leadership points represent this abstractly as a limited resource that you can use to boost your troops, and using them correctly is the meat of the game. This fits with my conception of early medieval warfare, and I also think it makes for a pretty good game. It also works with any scale since 'units' are bases without a specified number of figures, an army could be 40 15mm figures on 4cm bases, or over a hundred 28mm figures on big 12cm bases, and the game would still play the same way.

I'm still building forces for Saga, but it seems like another ruleset that does a good job of getting the feel of an early medieval battle right, but it does so in a different way from Dux. It leans hard on archetypes to distinguish one group of guys with beards, spears and shields from another, and the battle boards seem to bring across the mixture of aggression and cunning that you see in Icelandic sagas.

[smirnoff]

Massed battles Armati

[Auxilia]

Medieval warfare of foundry/terry gore

[Irregular Wars Nic]

I have to throw my weight behind Dux Bellorum too. Does a great job of flavouring the games with period/cultural feel, without being too silly about it.