I’ve decided to post my first draft of the rules. A total of 3 1/2 pages plus a half page of design notes. If you give them a go, let me know how they work.
You can find them here.
Print and Play Podcast- Meeples and Miniatures Podcast
- Meeples & Minaitures - Coronavirus Special
- Meeples & Miniatures - Episode 283 - Gaming Review of 2019
- Meeples & Miniatures - Episode 282 - Working in the hobby vs Playing in the hobby
- Meeples & Miniatures - Episode 281 - Gaming with the Next Gen
- Meeples & Miniatures - Episode 280 - Chat with Gav Thorpe
- Meeples & Miniatures - Episode 279 - Saga: Age of Magic
- Meeples & Miniatures - Episode 278 - PSC Games: Snog, Marry, Avoid
- Meeples & Miniatures - Episode 277- Supersystem
- Meeples & Miniatures - Episode 276 - Gangs of Mortal Barons
- Meeples & Miniatures - Episode 275 - Small Scale Sci-Fi
- The Wargames Website
John's Wargame Page 
I think you should avoid all reference to the number of bases, and simply call a unit a unit. If people want to represent them as 4 bases, let them. Also I suggest making these rules BW driven, so that they are entirely “platform independent”. For what it’s worth, I think the arrival of your copy of “One Hour Wargames” will give you yet another complete perspective.
Just my 2c.
In the next draft I’ve included the notion that large single bases would work and that the player can mark hits, with the third hit usually eliminating the unit. The reason I use multiple bases is that it is a way to keep markers off the table.
I have feedback!
I have played 9 games of this with my room mate so far. We have done Gaugamela (3 times),Cannae(3 times), And 3 nondescript battles between Hannibal and Alexander the great.
What I noticed off the bat: Warbands are useless. Hannibals African infantry were too evenly matched with romans, and alexanders companions were too evenly matched with the Persians, and hannibals cavalry.
What we did to fix this was grade units as superior, average, or inferior. We upped the charge bonus for warbands and cav to +2, and cataphracts to +4
and gave everyone a +1 to charge
troops get +1 for each grade above the opposing. This made companions, African infantry, and other historically badass units act like they did historically.
We played each battle 2 times, RAW and they took between 30 minutes and an hour. After modifications, each game finished in about 25 minutes.
we were also very confused as to how the elephants moved randomly… so we used a warhammer artillery die to solve that.
I managed to do a side battle with another guy on my floor with Parthians and Romans.
We did it RAW, then with the modifications. The modifications really helped.
RAW we really enjoyed them , But the battles took longer than we had thought, because most of the time units were only rolling 2 dice, and a 6 was very hard to get.
we used baseline DBA lists for our nondescript battles, and we used modified lists for the battles based off Wikipedia estimates, figuring about a whole legion (or legion equivalent) per base.
We haven’t used artillery yet, no comments there.
My houserules were just something that my roommate and I thought felt right, I would love to hear what you have to say about them John. Thank you for writing a simple set of rules, and letting us play them.
By the way, I got to play them on a full sized table, we have quite a few in the basement of my dorm, so I was able to make lots of cardboard cutout armies!
Thanks
Austin
Hi Austin,
I’ll start with the bad first since there is not much of it. 😀 I am not a fan of giving too big of an advantage to any chargers. I think +3D might be a bit outside what i wanted. That said, I think WB are under-powered but from only 1 replay. The battle was kind of close as the Romans had 4 units left when the Celts broke.
I don’t have a high opinion of cavalry being able to break formed infantry frontally. Catafracts maybe and possibly other shock cavalry like Companions. But the latter, only when lead be a great captain (Alexander/Pyrrhus etc). Also not a big fan of giving havy infantry a +1D when charging. The big players already have such bonuses.
Hoplites might be an exception when fighting other hoplites. Phil Sabin (the guy that wrote ‘Lost Battles’) seems to think Hoplite on Hoplite battles were exceptionally violent. Hoplites fighting other hoplites deserve a +2D on the initial charge and +1D there after.
I like your idea of Superior/Average/Inferior. Those that fight well and those that don’t. I originally rolled it all into “armor” but I think this would work better. If your armor is worse, roll 1 less die. If your unit grade is better, roll 1 more die.
For Warbands, you might try this. Charging Warbands get +2D against infantry. Also if a Warband wins a melee it will get +1D on the next melee assuming remains in contact. Otherwise, +2D still applies when it charges in again.
Finally, I think that an attack on a unit’s rear should get +2D and not the usual +1D. I think this is better because that represents the panicked flight of the unit from the melee.
Hope to hear some more feedback from you soon.
John
PS. I’ll be posting the mods I mentioned.Maybe early next month a new draft.