All Roads lead to Rome (picking up Ancients)

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

Wait what?  Ancients? Medievals?

I’ll be honest I had ZERO interest in wargaming this period until I started attending HMGS events a few years ago. Every single Cold Wars, Fall-In or Historicon had a lot of tables with ancients being played, and tournaments as well in scales such as 15mm, 25/28mm.

While my only games at the time were Flames of War and then later Team Yankee, I would still walk over and take a tonne of pictures and gawp at the nicely painted armies. What seemed crazy to me was that you could play just about anything and the rules covered it, for example you could have Egyptians vs the Ming Dynasty, Persians vs Aztecs.

As it turns out, my good friend Scott Roach (NDNG author Obsidian23) had boxes and boxes of ancients in his gaming basement, and a deal was struck. I would grab his 28mm Romans, and we could play Hail Caesar as we were already getting into Black Powder (both rulesets from Warlord Games). Then, however, he started talking about DBA, Impetus, To the Strongest, and at the HMGS events they were playing L’Art de La Guerre… Ugh.. what to pick?

 

We ended up going with L’Art de la Guerre (LDLG going forward), since it is very similar to a popular ruleset we saw a lot of folks run, DBA. There are events at HMGS, plus the basing can be used in other games like DBA and Hail Caesar. L’Art de la Guerre was written by some wargamers in France who were trying to improve on DBA and means Art of War (like Sun Tzu, hence why all those come up in a google search).

A typical LDLG game is a 200pt affair with three Corps.  What I like about LDLG is that it allows you some flexibility in spending those 200pts unlike DBA, and its a bit larger game.    For example, at 25mm scale, we played on a 6-foot table and there was still lots of manoeuvering area.

I’ll do a deeper dive into LDLG later on once I get more familiar with it, but since this is my 2nd game ever, I figured I’d take pics and show what happened. I played Jeff Black’s Late Romans for a little civil war action ( I was running the Triumvirate list since I have the ltd edition models for Caesar and Pompey).

Let’s get started with deployment. While you pick your list as you would in Flames of War or Team Yankee, what you also need to decide at the start of the game is which Corps go where. At 200pts you get 3x Corps, and I elected to go with my Legion troops in the center and one anchor flank, and have all fast movers on the other flank.   We rolled on the terrain chart, laid down the terrain as per the procedures and ended up in a Plains with just one hill, see below.

I had my Ballista across from his Elephant, he countered my Cavalry flank with is own, and I was weaker in the middle with only 6 infantry to his 8, and he even had 2 of the eight be Elite.  My Romans in the foreground, thin lines delineate the separate corps.

Jeff’s forces

Ballista negate all armour, so perfect for knocking a few wounds off the Elephant. If it could actually hit the target.

 

Right away I learned a few valuable lessons. Light Cavalry and Infantry must evade from 90% of charges. So my light javelins (ignore that it says Cavalry) had to Evade and no longer screened my valuable Medium Cavalry.

 

Much like other games such as DBA and Black Powder, each corps is led by a general, and how many things they can do are determined by Command Points (otherwise known as pips, since we use a d6 to track). Here is where my awesome prowress at rolling dice failed me. Apart from the right flank, I was very limited with moves as I rolled very few pips. Jeff had average Command rolls and thus was able to move more (blue arrows).

Light infantry can always move through your own troops, so I moved them up in front of his Light Cav with hopes to chuck Javelins into them. Again, with my stellar die roles, they missed. I did manage to re-position some troops. I assume a flank charge is a good thing, and attempt to set this up with my Light Cav.

 

Meanwhile, Jeff advances forward. Units that are touching and lined up can be moved as one ‘group’ using one pip.   So in this case, his central corps with only 2-pips is still able to move all 10 units (1-pip to move the two light slingers as one group, the second pip to move the giant infantry block). I like this, it reminds me of Black Powder when a commander issues an order to the whole battalion.

Jeff charges my cavalry, and will be in range to charge his Legions next turn.  Insert sword and shield clashing sounds.

We were playing at a club, and they had a BBQ, and Jeff brought in some grub. While everyone was eating I took some pics of a 15mm game and another 25mm game.

 

 

Turns out not Nubians, but “Sea Peoples” who apparently were good enough to constantly attack Egypt from their ships during the collapse of the Late Bronze Age.  I knew nothing of them prior to playing Ancients.

 

Beautiful armies

 

 

Another neat concept in LDLG is the baggage train.  Each side has supplies on a large base, and if the enemy can capture, they count for a good amount, so must be protected.  I had tried to outflank Jeff with my Cav, but he used the superior moves of his commands to intercept with his own light cavalry while the main battle progresses.

 

Ballista can’t seem to hit anything on the left flank there. I’d better send in the Legion, despite presenting flanks.

 

I pulled what I thought was a clever move here on the left flank.  I charged the Elephant with the front row of my block of Legions and repositioned the back row to face elite Legion coming in, all while the Ballista takes shots at the Elite since the Elephant was engaged. I was able to break the Elephant, sadly it did not rampage into his troops!

Both sides are losing units, and the combats are getting messy.  Still, after 3 or 4 turns, you easily get the hang of the game and turn sequence.

 

As the notations state, I eked out a narrow victory because I was able to bring Jeff’s Romans to breaking point just before my own army lost morale and fled the field.   He had more wounded units, while mine were just dead for the most part.

This is a great little game, the book in hardcover is available to be ordered, but is also available as a PDF download. The rules themselves are a few dozen pages while the rest of the book is hundreds of army lists. You can even take one of your corps as allies, and the book shows who can take what, so for example, a Greek army could have Spartans as allies.. right Scott Roach?    All in all, and this is just my first full game, it’s a great ruleset, and I will be playing more of this game in the future.  I can neither confirm or deny the purchase of a Persian army in 15mm!

Take care, and see you next time.  PS: Video of this battle in my link below

 

Matt Varnish, AKA Dennis Campbell, plays Team Yankee, Flames of War, and Black Powder and now Ancients in the frozen wastes of Canadia. Check out my youtube channel for hundreds of :