Play Testing Some New Ancients Rules

The Good Guys (Romans) on the right, and the Seriously Misinformed on the left.

 

Last weekend four of us (keeping proper social distance of course) convened at General Pettygree's estate to play test a version of his BAR rules, modified for Ancients battles. Rob and Bob played the Baddies, Germanics and Macedonians, respectively, while the good General fielded his Republican Roman and I pulled my Late Romans out of retirement to save civilization from the Barbarian threat.

Rob's Germanic hoard and my Late Romans faced off against each other and we basically did an excellent job of whittling each other's army down to nothing over the span of several hours. General Pettygree's Republican Romans stared down Bob's Successor Macedonians (these were gorgeous figures) on the other end of the table. Rob got the best of my Late Romans on the left side of the table, while Pettygree defeated the Macedonian porcupine better known as a phalanx.

The purpose of the day's match's was to give the rules a play test so the outcome of the two games did not really matter.

For what it's worth, I had two 60-figure Late Roman legions and 24 archers on foot (and another 12 on horseback) plus 12 Cataphracts and 24 heavy cavalry. By game's end, a few legio figures were wandering around the field and all of my cavalry had been turned into Alpo. Rob lost most of his German war bands, but he still had a strong cavalry contingent and a fair number of archers (also known as machine guns, I dare say). Match goes to the Germanic Barbarians.

Late Roman Equites (right) charge into a mess of Messersmitts (left).
I forgot that my lads were Guard class troops.
Might have helped, probably would not  have any impact on the result.

My Late Roman Cataphracts pile into a mob of Germans.

Some of My Guys ( on the left) pile into a bunch of Baddies (on the right).
I won't lie, numbers make all the difference. The Romans did not come out on top in this melee.

One of the few highlights of my day as a Late Roman legio nearly wipes out a German war band.

I don't know what happened on the other side the woods/table, but it appears that the Republican Romans got the better of the Successors' Macedonians. So it was a tied score: Bad Guys 1 and Good Guys 1.

The Batailles dans L'Ancien Regime ("BAR") rules mechanics seemed to work well with Ancients armies, but I imagine that there will be quite a bit of tweaking of the rules before our next table top clash between the Good Guys and The Bad Guys. My feeling was that the archery was way too powerful relative to their numbers in the game and I would imagine that most of the rules tweaks will come from that area of the rules. There was one instance where I had my last 8 archers fire off a hail of arrows at a Germanic war band, cutting down 6 of the Bad Guys. 

The melee and morale mechanics worked just fine so I don't imagine that there will be too much tinkering with those parts of the BAR rules.

We shall all reconvene at General Pettygree's country estate the first weekend of December and cross spears and swords once again with some revisions to the rules.

Oh, by the way, I found 20 unpainted Roman Cataphracts in my Pile O' Lead back at the home base in Hesse Seewald. What should I do with these figures? Hmmm.

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