Rules suitable for my students?

[Bellerophon]

Hey all,

I've played a number of ancients games, and tend to enjoy games with a lot of flavor over DBX type derivatives. Give me Pila and Line Relief rules any day!

But next month I'm running Pharsalus and Gaugamela with my Latin and Greek students.

Any recommendations for rulesets that 13-15 year olds will grok, and can conclude in 2 hours or so?

[SJWi]

I'm sure you will get other recommendations but I would give Simon Miller's TTS a look. Quite simple to grasp, figure basing agnostic and the gridded playing surface means you don't need rulers etc for measuring movement and shooting.  You do need a gridded mat and counters but in extremis both can be improvised.

[Arrigo]

Second to the Strongest, or Phil Sabin's Lost Battles. The latter is grid based too, and present more of the big picture, so some details are abstracted, it focused more on commanders' viewpoint, but still has some combat system interaction flavor.  The rules themselves are quite easy. There are scenarios for both! I think I have played both at game convention with Phil umpiring. As for the rules complexity me and Phil used it in class basically explaining the rules on the fly, so, if you give the rules in advance it should be even better. We comfortably fit Cannae in 2 hours including discussion time.

[Frostie]

Too The Strongest is a good set to use or Hail Caesar is easy enough to pick up

[Jjonas]

I suggest Lion Rampant. You can factor in the different period troop types.
Most of the data for units are printed out on cards so looking stuff up is unnecessary. Units have preset sizes, most units roll the same number of dice. All these things make it easy for anybody to pick up. Random activation usually needs some house rule help otherwise a spate of bad luck can get one side eliminated.
You are able to point out weapon skills, some tactics, and armor and mobility as factors. No charts and the figures are removed so there are few info chits needed.

[Harry Faversham]

Try the KISS Principle, perfect for kids, with the attention span of goldfish!
Neil Thomas' 'one hour wargames'... they'll lap 'em up!


 

[Arrigo]

Jeff,

having run classical games in school, and being a Lion Rampant player, I would not recommend it for this. I love it, but the BoD system, limited commmand role of leaders, and individual unit activation do not give any impression of large ancient battles. To The Strongest and Lost Battles instead provide players with some appreciation of a bird view of a battle as ancient authors often described.

Having played both I probably would say Lost Battles has the edge in this setting due to the use of leadership point rather than unit activation. Leadership point (or Command point) are in part function of the army size and in part based on a roll so they reduce streaks of bad luck. Also the army morale rules are effective in  illustrating the brittleness of some armies and their vulnerability to critical losses (Persians at Gaugamela for example) with sudden flights from the battlefield.

[Jjonas]

For 12-13 year olds then overall strategy will probably not be the goal. Lion Rampant is easy but can be frustrating since players can lose control so easily. What you really need is something akin the oldest rules such as Charles Grant's ancient game rules or Donald Featherstone's works. The Peter Dennis Paperboys armies set has a basic rules set by Andy Callan downloadable.

Charles Grant
https://lonewarriorswa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Review-Le-Long-The-Ancient-War-Game-Grant.pdf

You can download the pdf of "the wargame":
https://www.scribd.com/document/268260920/The-Wargame-by-Charles-Grant#

Paperboys rules:
https://peterspaperboys.com/products/paperboys-rules-supplements-by-andy-callan

[ithoriel]

Given their age and the ubiquity of Games Workshop, Warhammer Ancient Battles would be my go to. Old school mechanics, buckets of dice but not necessarily the worse for that.

There is a chance that kids that age are already familiar with the mechanics if not the actual rules.

Just a  thought.

[Moriarty]

You could have a look at juniorgeneral.org?
Plenty of historical scenarios, paper figures to print out, articles on different periods etc.

[Jjonas]

Yes! I was looking for juniorgeneral.org myself but could not remember the name. Thanks.

[Major_Gilbear]

But next month I'm running Pharsalus and Gaugamela with my Latin and Greek students.

Any recommendations for rulesets that 13-15 year olds will grok, and can conclude in 2 hours or so?

Okay, so you need something that is:

- Fast-paced and fun, with an emphasis on manoeuvre and combat
- Easy and clear rules (no rules arguments or ambiguities!), that are brief to read and simple to remember
- Give a good visual spectacle, but don't need a big monetary outlay
- Abstract the fiddly stuff, but still feel detailed
- Have lots of lists to cover all the "main" areas of interest
- You can play a game in about 90mins, especially after you've got some games under your belt

My suggestion to fit the above is Kings of War Historical. (Link to store here). (Reviews of the game here and here - neither of them by me!)

True, it's not exactly historically "accurate" (...although, are any rules, really?), but it's easy to learn, quick to play, and minimises the number of loose models you need to have about. The game works perfectly at 10-15mm scale too, using centimetres instead of inches, and scaling the unit bases down to suit. That's also helpful, as not only is it cheaper to build and transport the armies, it's also easier to fit several tables in if they are each 48cm x 72cm (or about 1^1/2' x 2^1/4' in old money). Really, as it's only the unit footprint that matters in rules terms, you could even use card standees glued to suitable bases (certainly quicker than painting! ).

Plus, it's basically re-skinned Kings of War, which is a fairly popular mainstream fantasy game (not quite Warhammer, but still!), and the game is even playable against its fantasy counterpart if anybody wants to recreate any mythical battles against skeletons, giants, a Hydra, or whatever else! 

Given their age and the ubiquity of Games Workshop, Warhammer Ancient Battles would be my go to. Old school mechanics, buckets of dice but not necessarily the worse for that.

There is a chance that kids that age are already familiar with the mechanics if not the actual rules.

Just a  thought.

WAB is based on WHFB 4th/5th. As that was the go-to fanatasy game when I was around that age, I can say with some certainty that it is really far too complicated for all but the most keen to learn. Plus, it's been long out of print, so it's moderately difficult to get your hands on it easily any more (ditto the army lists and themed book supplements for the period). It's a good thought, although I should also note that "traditional" WHFB has been out of print for years at this point too - Age of Sigmar is the new game that replaced it, and it's quite a different beast entirely (the core rules fit 2 sides of A4!).

[Jjonas]

I agree Kings of War is a good idea and the pdf version is available on ScribD.

[Harry Faversham]

After cogitating on the brethren's sage wisdom, I'd still plump for OHW. Wargamers tend to overtthink about how to play with their toys, sometimes. Kids have the attention span of a goldfish, so the KISS Principle's made for 'em!
Rules an idiot can gorm within the hour, and more fast paced scenarios, than you can shake a measuring stick at. You play the proper 15 move, one hour wargame (most of 'em last half that time!). I'll guarantee, by the time the little bastards have gormed, it's more fun trying to try and blind each other with a well placed dice, or started sword fencing with their measuring sticks...
They'll have become proper wargamers,  just like we iz!

 

[Major_Gilbear]

After cogitating on the brethren's sage wisdom, I'd still plump for OHW.

Whilst I agree that it's a dead-easy set of rules, and that the speed and moderate table size makes it a good ruleset for very quick games in limited space, my main issues with it are:

1) Rather oversimplified rules. They are literally the minimum needed to actually consider it a "game". I don't really have much against this really, but I think something that's a little more of a game would stand a better chance of appealing and engaging new players of that age. Even though I spoke against it above, don't forget the enormous complexity and popularity that Warhammer held for many of that age group for several decades!

2) All the units are the same. Whilst from a big distance this abstraction is probably true, having a few minor differences between each side (and also between very similar units on same side) creates a bit more illusion of individuality for each unit, and helps "invest" the new players in the combatants on the table a bit more.

3) The OHW rules work best of all when you play the scenarios in the book. This is great if those scenarios are what you want, but rather less great if you had a specific battle in mind. I suppose you could adapt a similar scenario from the book or create one yourself, and that'd be a valid point. However, simply playing a pitched battle with each side simply lined up opposite the other will produce disappointing results in terms of gaming experience.

4) Given (3) above, I'm unsure how well OHW suits pick-up games, especially since scenarios all have set units for each side. This means limited flexibility for the forces on each side, unless you have a unit pool big enough to cover all the scenarios in the book (which is not unfeasable). However, it does mean you can't necessarily assemble a modest fixed force and then expect to use it in any game.

Another point is that I don't feel its fair to label youngsters as idiots or claim they have no attention span - even in a somewhat kindly or joking manner! From my own experiences (and memories!), if you can get them engaged and interested in something, that's the age at which they will get into it with surprising focus and intensity. An important part of achieving this is to have enough complexity and depth that they feel rewarded for their effort, but not so much that they find it off-putting or frustrating. Similarly, if something is too simple/streamlined, they may well feel a bit underestimated and be put off by it. Also, anything that helps to get them invested in the game they are playing is helpful too, and will draw them into the period and the forces.

Anyway. Despite all that, if Bellerophon is willing to put a bit of work into adding a little bit of Chrome to the OHW forces and perhaps adapting some of the scenarios a bit, then I would still consider them worth a spin - the cheap cost and easy availability of the rules is a big plus too.


(As a by-the-by Harry, have you ever played KoW? I've seen all sorts in your threads, and I was curious if what your thoughts on it were if you had - albeit that discussion might be better for a different thread).