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Author Topic: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval  (Read 16487 times)

Offline Antonio J Carrasco

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #45 on: May 20, 2019, 01:33:58 PM »
Just a quick note. Francisco has been kind enough to send me the draft for the rules to playtest them. I had a two games already, with my son. He commanded an Anglo-Dane force and I a band of Vikings. At first, the rules looked daunting, but truth is that after a few moves we had learnt most of the key elements and got to play very fast. The second game was really fast paced. Knowing the gist of the rules, we only needed the ocasional check to the particulars of the rule (mostly when some trait was involved); for everything else a check of the QRS tables was more than enough.

By the way, characters are really, really important. Not because they are great warriors -although they are better than average- but because they are key to keep your army moving forward, rallying troops and steadying those who are faltering. You need command points for almost everything, and only characters generate CPs. Lose them and your advance will stall.

Offline Easy E

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #46 on: May 20, 2019, 03:39:10 PM »
I look forward to giving this a go someday! 
Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing

Offline seldon

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #47 on: July 09, 2019, 11:14:49 PM »
Heads up... we will be running CLASH of Spears demos at Historicon...




Offline Ethelred the Almost Ready

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #48 on: July 10, 2019, 03:39:17 AM »
Great figures there.  As you can tell, I am already hooked!  So many questions in anticipation.
On your Blog you mention play testing.  Is this a stage you are still in, and if so are you still wanting the odd extra tester?
It looks like a unit is about six figures, is this correct?  Just planning on what I might want to buy (my only ancients miniatures are some very old 15mm Minifigs Greeks but I would like to go 28mm for this).
Are the figures in your photograph Victrix plastic figures?  I do rather like metal and may go for a combination of Gorgon Studios, Foundry and Crusader for many figures but may add plastic for archers and psiloi.
Although the focus is initially the Western Med, is it easy to build profiles for other cultures (please don't use factions!!!!!) such as Persians, Thracians or even to use the rules for my Vikings/Saxons or Orcs and Elves?

Offline seldon

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #49 on: July 10, 2019, 11:17:52 AM »
Let me see,

Unit size. There is no unit size limit, 6 to 8 models is like a sweet spot but sometimes due to fitting in the points you will do other sizes. Larger or smaller units have pros and cons and overall 6 to 8 appears to be a good number but is not a rules requirement.

The carthaginians attacked by peltasts are victrix greek hoplites with carthaginian heads, I wanted armored carthaginians with non roman equipment ( greco-punic wars ), and the peltasts are victrix.

The second picture is wargames foundry romans and wargames foundry gauls, so they are lead, just like you plan I use everything. Don't have Gorgon Studios yet but I've seen it and look great.

Correct, although our army lists cover western mediterranean we will release together with the book, online, the point system so you can design other armies.
Of course sometimes you can just use the one you have in the book, you could use Western Greeks to do the original Greek city states maybe add some individual color, but if not the point system will be there. In that builder there will be a few extra traits not in the main book that are experimental for dark ages, or even a few for fantasy as those are work in progress for future supplements. We have done quite a few dark ages games, and a couple of lord of the rings games.

Regarding playtesting, we are almost done on that and getting ready to send the book to the printer.

ok, hope that answers a bit :)

cheers

Francisco

Offline Ethelred the Almost Ready

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #50 on: July 11, 2019, 06:11:14 AM »
Thanks for the reply.
I am just too lazy for gluing together a lot of plastic figures so I will mainly use metal.
I am still uncertain whether I go for Sicily or an Athenian squadron /marines in the Aegean at the end of the Persian Wars.  At least I can make a start on some Hoplites.

Offline seldon

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #51 on: July 14, 2019, 04:02:26 PM »
Look at my romans and gauls up there on the pictures, are all Foundry miniatures.. I just bought a beautiful Gallic chariot at Historicon, metal too. Not expecting large units of chariots in skirmish games but, in same case where it is a zoom in of a larger battle I could have a character doing known hit and run...

so plastic or metal, whatever gets us doing 28mm ancients on the table and not having to paint 200 ( at least at onece :)

Offline Marine0846

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #52 on: July 17, 2019, 04:07:50 AM »
Just came upon the thread.
Be thinking about small unit fighting along the line of your rules.
What a break, I don't have to write my own.
(like I could.) lol
So am very excited. :)
Love what I see of your rule book.
Very well done.
I am in, when the rules come out.
Semper Fi, Mac

Offline seldon

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #53 on: August 03, 2019, 12:30:30 AM »
Marine0846,
I was hoping for a set in this scale for a long time, tried so many alternative rules but every time they say skirmish it tends to be pretty bland and I wanted a game where your decisions matter. Like bolt action, it is a platoon level game but by no means a silly game, you make lots of decisions.
So that is why about a year ago now we started formalizing some design concepts we were using for this scale and suddenly a true system materialized.
I hope people will like it when it comes out end of year..

In the meantime let me show you guys a fun starter army, smaller forces can be used but this would be a standard force:

An Italian force for CLASH of Spears

This is a 600 pts pretty standard force from the Italian tribes list.

Civis troops:

large unit of 9 tribesmen ( heavy shield & throwing spears )

two units of 6 samnite warriors each ( partial armor & heavy shields, throwing spears, guerrilla type troops )

Milites:

One unit of 6 campanian hoplites (full armor and heavy shields, long spear, these guys prefer to fight in the open if they can they would rather overlap shields in close order, but they are tough hombres so if they go in open order they can still kick your butt )

Rare:

6 mercenary cretan archers, their fame precedes them



The army is lead by a Chieftain ( Lvl 4 ) and a Leader ( Lvl 3 ) , this provides 7 command points. We've seen through extensive playtesting that having at roughly 50% more CPs than units is a good reference. It is open for players to try what they want, but that seems to be the optimal choice so far.

You will notice that it is very important to have a good variety of troops, heavy armored troops serve as a good anchor and to hold ground but you need lights an mediums. The fatigue rules are tough on heavies and if you don't have those support troops to execute critical tactical objectives you will suffer. You might be an impossible to kill cataphract, but I don't need to kill you, I only need to get you exhausted and if you have no support it will happen quickly... that is one main concept in the game..

Hopefully will have a gameplay video soon..



« Last Edit: August 03, 2019, 12:33:56 AM by seldon »

Offline wmyers

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #54 on: August 03, 2019, 05:38:45 AM »
As you may remember from TMP, I am very excited about these rules!

I have to ask, are pikes addressed in the rules at all?

If so, how and what ways?

Offline guitarheroandy

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #55 on: August 03, 2019, 09:03:51 AM »
Love that Italian force!  :-*
Interestingly, I've been reading a number of recent scholarly papers on the military tactics and equipment in the 4th century BC in Italy (including the Roman proto-manipular legion, then in its infancy) and the current thought is that pretty much everyone in the peninsula fought in 'dense clouds' with a small core of heavy-armed wealthy warriors hanging around at the back to exploit the melee when (if) it happened while the mass of 'medium' infantry expanded and contracted their 'cloud', throwing repeated volleys of javelins (both shanked proto-pila and shankless light javelins) at each other until either they all got stuck in to melee or one side gave up and ran away.
What I've heard of your rules for fatigue and the way that it affects heavy troops in particular suggest that Clash of Spears may enable this model of warfare to be wargamed better than any other rules I've yet seen in the sense that it forces you to make good use of a range of troop-types in a range of ways rather than just rely on a big block of kick-ass nasty armoured dudes who'll just stomp everything into the ground.
The more I hear about the rules, the more I'm looking forward to seeing them!

Online Ragnar

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #56 on: August 03, 2019, 09:59:26 AM »
Following.
Gods, monsters and men,
Will die together in the end.

Offline seldon

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #57 on: August 03, 2019, 10:48:03 AM »
As you may remember from TMP, I am very excited about these rules!

I have to ask, are pikes addressed in the rules at all?

If so, how and what ways?

Ok, pikes is like this..

We have rules for pikes... when the troops with pikes are in close order they get benefits from them against enemies in the front.
In clash everyone fights always, so you don’t get rank bonus.. what you get is hitting first when you attack on when you are attacked.. and when you are attacked you also hit first even using a combat response called hold that does not gain fatigue.
They are just like longer hoplite spears.

The big differences is that when the troops are in open order they leave them aside and they go for their hand weapon... while hoplites still use their spears in open order. As a result a pike is a sub optimal weapon in the game... A meta gamer would generally not choose it, a player who has some pike troops and wants to have them on the table might use them even if it is suboptimal just for fun.
There are no rules for macedonian phalanx encouraging you to have twenty figures in three ranks.. that does not show up in clash.

But foot companions when on raid missions would normally leave pikes behind and go armed with javelins and hand weapons and that option is available in the Epirote list.
So if you are using that army your anchor troops will be some hoplite style troops and your foot companions will act like some kind of heavy peltasts.

This is our interpretation from reading the extensive, sometimes contradictory, information on foot companions in raiding actions which at times is intermixed with the never ending debate on hyspaspists, on thureophoroi etc..

Nobody can claim the absolute truth, but we do have an underlying concept that we observe and sort of makes sense with the concept of the rules..

Offline seldon

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #58 on: August 03, 2019, 10:57:10 AM »
Love that Italian force!  :-*
Interestingly, I've been reading a number of recent scholarly papers on the military tactics and equipment in the 4th century BC in Italy (including the Roman proto-manipular legion
...
The more I hear about the rules, the more I'm looking forward to seeing them!

That is very interesting, I would love to know what you’ve been reading.

Clash plays pretty much like that, heavies get tired so you don’t go doing lots of stuff with them. You use them as anchors or to hit enemies in arms reach..

Your mediums and lights are use to push the enemy, accomplish objectives etc..

We have tried to restrict the efficiency of missile weapons a lot, we want player to play and maneuver, not sit back and shoot..  We break up point throwing sticks in javelins and throwing spears, but that is just a convention... a pilum can be called a javelin but is clearly heavier than a peltast javelin, and we don’t want to have too many types of javelins so: javelins include the ones that you throw when you are troops that are trying to stay a step away.. throwing spears are the ones that you throw usually preceding an attempt to engage en melee..

Because of that, there are lots of interesting interactions and decisions in how you execute the skirmishing combat...

Offline guitarheroandy

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Re: Clash of Spears - Small Actions rules for Ancients/Medieval
« Reply #59 on: August 03, 2019, 11:41:37 AM »
That is very interesting, I would love to know what you’ve been reading.


PM sent... ;)