Considering Hail Caesar/War and Conquest/Clash of Empires – a few questions

[aktr]

Hi,
I’ve wanted to do ancients for a while and I’ve finally persuaded a friend to give it a go, we will most likely be using the crusader rules to start with but I’m also considering other rule sets
So I have a few questions regarding Hail Caesar, War and Conquest and Clash of Empires
all assume using 28mm figures – we will most likely be doing something in the era of the Greco – Persian wars or the Macedonian wars if it make a difference (I got carried away and now have 64 Persian infantry, 12 cavalry and 32 Hoplites)
So the questions
•   How long does an average game take? We normally have about 2 hours playing time not including set up
•   How many figures per side? My friend might be put off if we start getting above 100
•   How big a table does it need? I can do 6x4 foot maximum
Also a quick rundown of differences between the 2 would be useful
If there are any others you can think of feel free to suggest them – only caveats are uses 28mm models and has a physical book I can buy rather ten just a PDF
Cheers
Andy

[Pijlie]

I never played CoE and don't like Hail Caesar very much (a bland, slow game in my experience) but I am very enthusiastic about WAC. As a matter of fact I wrote a blog about it here http://pijlieblog.blogspot.nl/2013/12/why-we-all-should-know-about-war-and.html.

Feel free to browse my blog but for your convenience I put the text below:

Why we all should know about War and Conquest: a review.

A few weeks ago I played my first game of War and Conquest. A ruleset that was published during the last death throes of Warhammes Ancient Battles (WAB). I used to play a lot of WAB. I always thought WAB a magnificent, if in some places clunky game that gave me hundreds of hours of fun. I even played a WAB tournament once which says something because I hate tournaments. But I enjoyed this one.

WAB however was destined for a long and slow death bed. An overhaul for the main rules was postponed and delayed for years. Supplements were always promised and sometimes published, but always late. GW really put some effort into the slow strangulation of what must have been one of the most succesful Ancients wargaming rules ever and finally delivered the neck shot in 2010 with the monstrous WAB 2.0: expensive, fault-ridden, badly edited and even clunkier than WAB 1.5. Everybody who had until then be willing to have sympathy and hope for WAB effectively lost this after paying 45 Euros for this pile of glossy toilet paper. And after the closure of Warhammer Historical in 2012 WAB was finally and truly dead.

Several successors presented themselves. War and Conquest, Clash of Empires and Hail Caesar appeared in a relatively short amount of time around WAB's demise. In terms of marketing success HC was the absolute winner. My club adopted it in the wake of the Black Powder successes, I bought it and played it a number of times. But au contraire to BP this game felt a bit bland, the troop types too generic and the game pace too slow to really peak my interest. COE en WAC were anonymous wallflowers. My Ancient armies started to gather dust in favour of other periods and rulesets.




And then some friends of mine convinced me of the virtues of WAC. I bought a copy at Crisis 2013 in November and read it. It did look at least as good as WAB 2.0, but still I was weary. Then, two weeks ago, I played my first game of WAC with my dusted-off Saxo invaders and Romano British "Arthurians". I was very, very pleasantly surprised!

WAC is, in short, WAB as WAB 2.0 should have been. It bears many, many similarities with this game. That should be no surprise given the fact that the editor of WAB, Rob Broom, is the writer of WAC. Describing WAC is therefore best accomplished with a comparison with WAB.

Like WAB, WAC builds up an army in units made up from individual figures that fight and die individually. This does not make it a skirmish game, since the unit/warband is the smallest building block of the game (generals aside). Like WAB, units in WAC fight as the sum of individual stats and although the d6 rolls are calculated differently the needed rolls itself are the familair basic 4+ and 3+. Individual figures are removed from play when they "die" and function as casualty counters in this way, just like in WAB.

But a lot of WAB´s problems have been solved in WAC. The combat-winning super Characters have disappeared. WAC Personalities give you the standard upped Morale check when nearby, a limited strategic option to increase Initiative and Morale checks and an extra hit in combat here and there and that´s it.

The snail-pace cavalry (haha, my skirmishers are within 8"! You can't gallop anymore!) have disappeared and changed into the brittle and fast units that cavalry was in Ancient times. Guard your flank or you will rue your recklessness. And guarding your flanks has become a lot harder. While a flank attack in WAB was next to impossible due to the enormous frontal zones of the units (180 degrees) these have been halved in WAC. Break up your battle line and you are doomed. No more loose units running around on the battle field; now your line is needed to secure your flank, like it was supposed to be and without any need for additional rules.

The annoying skirmishers that could block attacking enemy or friendly infantry have disappeared. Skirmishers can no longer engage formed infantry in combat and due to the changed sequence of charge declaration and movement no longer block charges but can move aside like they are supposed to, to harass the enemy from the flanks. Likewise, several superskills from WAB have been mellowed to playable advantages without "breaking" the rules. Early Imperial Romans are still a strong army, but no longer the hyper-disciplined robots from WAB.

War and Conquest is in many ways a better, more streamlined and more natural playing game than WAB and accomplishes this with less complexity. Mr Broom has made some very elegant choices here.

One of the more lethal faults of WAB was its lack of support. Supplements were long underway and always long overdue. In its 14 years WAB spawned 14 supplements of varying quality, most not very intercompatible, some mediocre, some brilliant. So how is WAC in that department?

WAC was published in 2011, two years ago. So far it has been followed up by eight (yes, 8!) army books containing hundreds of army lists beside a few dozen separate ones. Aha! I hear you say. It is the old let-us-pay-through-the-nose-for-army-lists ploy! Well, no. Those are all free. You can download them from Scarab Miniatures. And they are not simple word documents either. The army books are well written, well researched and well layed out and number 100+ pages each. A few other army books are in the works.

So here we basically have a much improved version of WAB, supported by hundreds of free army lists compiled into 8 free full colour (if digital) supplements. You can use your WAB armies for this game without any adaptation to speak off. You can even use the WAB supplements next to the WAC ones, if you own them and feel so inclined.

Why then, I ask thee, is not everybody playing this game? Why do people pay 30 Euros for Warlords Ancients Army Lists supplement when they can download the WAC Ancients Armybook for free and play a better game wih it? Why did I?

Because, dear reader, I had never heard of WAC. Something this review attempts to rectify.

Please mr Broom. Hire some marketing advice. You have a golden product here with immense customer value. Find a better way to let the world know about this than this lonely blogger.


PS:
As I recently (July 2014) discovered two more period books have been published inb PDF format. The ACW and the Thirty Years War are now represented!

[A Lot of Gaul]

Welcome to Ancients miniatures gaming, Andy! Hail Caesar is by far my favorite rule set for the period. It shares the same author (Rick Priestley) and a number of core mechanics with his Black Powder horse-and-musket rules - both HC and BP are adapted from his earlier rule set, Warmaster Ancients. I personally find that battles with HC tend to be fast, furious, and tremendous fun. But as with any miniatures rule set, how long a game takes to complete will depend on the size of the battle, as well as the number and experience level of the players.

The Hail Caesar rulebook is designed to be a 'toolkit' supporting scenario-based battles amongst friends in a relaxed, social setting. Along with rules for command, movement, shooting and hand-to-hand combat, among other things the HC rulebook also includes stat lines for a number of different general troop types, as well as a section of 'useful' rules giving special abilities and historical flavor to differentiate, for example, Greek hoplites from Saxon warbands, and Spartiates from other Greek hoplites.

Hail Caesar is army-focused, with unit casualty removal, a moderate amount of die rolling, and an emphasis on 'friction' in command and control. Armies are organized into 'divisions,' each comprised of a number of individual units under the command of a single leader. One of these 'division' leaders is designated as overall army commander, or alternatively there may be a separate commander-in-chief. The rules are quite flexible in regard to unit size and figure basing, with unit frontage being the key factor. And while the rules truly shine in large, multiplayer battles, they also work perfectly well for two-player games with as few as 5-6 units per side. For such, a 6' x 4' table should offer plenty of room for maneuver.

For more information, here are links to some detailed online reviews of Hail Caesar:

https://meeples.wordpress.com/reviews/rules-reviews/ancients/hail-caesar-review/

http://rabbitsinmybasement.blogspot.com/2011/06/hail-caesar-first-look.html

http://toomuchlead.blogspot.com/2011/09/hail-caesar-full-review.html

Hopefully these will help you decide whether or not Hail Caesar might be your 'cup of tea.' In any case, the important thing is to find a rule set that best matches the particualr wargaming tastes and preferences of you and your friends. Best of luck in your search!  

Cheers,
Scott

[Hu Rhu]

How many figures per side? My friend might be put off if we start getting above 100

Your restriction on the number of figures will make most ancient battle rule sets difficult to reconcile, especially if you choose Persian, Greek or Macedonian armies.  You may wish to examine more skirmish based rule sets.

[Mithridates1]

Our little coven has switched to Hail Caesar.   We like the Rules and the game they produce,  we get a result in under 3 hours.   You may need to pare down the number of units used in each Division to fit the table - thus you might try 2 x 24 infantry, 2 x 8 skirmishers and 1 x12 cavalry in a Division.   Another Division might drop the cavalry (or use smaller units) and add another infantry or skirmishers.
 
Garry

[Hobbit]

I have to say that I also find HC to be fairly fast and furious BUT I do think that you need a certain mindset in order to get the most from it. If you're very competitive and/or a rules lawyer then it really, really isn't the right set of rules for you. If you're very laid back and see a game as a social experience rather than a competition then you'll probably get along with HC.

An option to consider with HC is to simply use far fewer figures per unit than the rules suggest. I've played games where we've used 8-12 figures for "standard" sized units and as few as 4-6 for "small" units (this was largely because we had quite a restricted playing area). So long as both sides do the same then this doesn't really impair the playing of the game; whether or not this impairs the aesthetic is a different issue. If you decide you really like it and want bigger units you can always expand later.

[pbjunky1]

We've not tried WaC yet (but I recently bought a copy so will give it a go soon). We have used  HC & CoE at our club (and WAB of course).
With HC as others have said you can put your own interpretation of 'small/medium/large' units so don't necessarily need hundreds of figures - but it does look good with lots on the table and the rules handle large scale (we use around 600 inf & 50 cav in total) very well in fact it will complete in around 2-3 hours however many minis you use. It is for a more free and easy game, definately not for rules lawyers. I do agree for me the game can seem  just a little bland compared to WAB. We have played it & will continue to use it for very large games.
We tried CoE (had quite a few games when it first came out) but really didn't get on with it. Initially the rules look well laid out and clear but getting into games we found that actually that wasn't always the case and sometimes we just had to take a ruling from what was infered. The army lists were significantly biased towards Romans and armies using elephants. The rules really lost a lot of colour in the way they down played characters in the armies. I know some WAB supplements went a bit over the top but many were fine and for me the balance of general troop types versus characters worked really well and helped bring life to games. CoE did have some good flanking rules and comat results had a few nice elements to them but overall  we found them flawed and disappointing.
We'll continue using WAB, HC for large games and give WaC a go.

[julesav]

Given your needs for speed of play and limited numbers of figures you may want to look at the 'Basic' version of Impetus, both Basic Impetus and it's army lists are free downloads so it'd be a cheap experiment.

The other 'small size army, fast play games' worth mentioning are DBA (De Bellis Antiquitatis) and it's fantasy variant 'Hordes of the Things'.

Rather conveniently basing is compatible between both Basic Impetus and DBx systems, and I believe that both systems are fairly widely played.