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Saturday 11 March 2017

Ancient Period Skirmish Rules... Where Are They?

Throughout the cold winter months I've been slowly gathering together the remnants of various packs of troops that I've purchased over the years, with the intention of putting together some smallish skirmish forces, so that I could recreate some of the masses of un-recorded small actions that must have littered the ancient and medieval world.

I haven't made a huge amount of progress, but what I've done so far I've really enjoyed. There are a few Ancient Spanish and their Roman enemies on the painting table and I've been converting all sorts of left over bits and bobs to create some medieval Welsh warriors to face up to some Fireforge English men-at-arms.

Where the whole thing falls apart, at the moment, is the total lack of a set of rules that I can use when the forces are ready to take to the tabletop. I've tried every combination of search entry on the Internet to try and locate some, but all to no avail. One search threw up some references to a set of skirmish rules to be produced by Victrix and published by Mongoose Publishing, but all I could find was some increasingly fractious discussion posts, in which the Mongoose people repeatedly said that Victrix kept putting back the publishing date. I think they were originally meant to be available at Salute in 2015! Now, I can not find them on either the Mongoose web site or the Victrix web site.

It appears that quite a few gamers use the fantasy skirmish rules, Song of Blades and Heroes and some use the Lord of the Rings Battle Strategy Rules and I have copies of both of those.




What I'd like to know is, where are the Ancient period, one-to-one skirmish rules? I have a copy of Lion Rampant, but they use 12 figure units fighting in a block rather than true 1:1 skirmish action. If anyone out there can suggest a rule set that I can get my hands on, I'd be eternally grateful. I really want to get these little chaps onto the tabletop in deadly sword and spear play!



So... does anybody know what happened to these:



Addenda 09/12/2020... Since I posted this article in 2017, the wargaming world has been inundated with sets of skirmish level rules, many of which, are absolute top quality gaming systems, with more innovation than you can shake a dori at. In just three years, we have progressed from all but nothing to a situation where the skirmish cup overfloweth. My personal favourites are Dux Britanniarum and Infamy! Infamy! by the Too Fat Lardies, Clash of Spears and Mortal Gods. To be fair, S.P.Q.R. by Warlord Games is a pretty good effort and, for a short time, had to be applauded for filling the Ancient Period Skirmish Table Top Game Gap.

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