The Web is good at providing people with an outlet for their particular obsessions. Before the Internet, fans of the obscure pursued their interests in relative anonymity, perhaps using the occasional newsletter to link those following such things as the one-hit rock group, a defunct sporting league, the unknown poet, or even the wargame with a small, but passionate following. The net now allows these scattered, yet dedicated experts to create web pages as both a shrine to, and the major information center for whatever caught their interest years ago. Wargaming has dozens of these now. Mike Nagel’s Ancients site at www.net-gate.com/~mpnagel/ancients/welcome.htm is a good example of this.

William Banks created Ancients in 1988 under his Good Industries imprint. It is a simple game of pre-gunpowder tactical warfare, with each of its sixteen scenarios using one 8.5 x 11 inch map, a small number of the nicely-done counters (which give an aerial view of the battle), and minimal rules, even with the optional ones thrown in. Banks included generic army lists and a scenario generator for design-your-own purposes. The game’s two editions sold well and Banks soon added King of Kings (Good Industries, 1990) as a strategic counterpart and scenario generator for Ancients. Wargame reviewers, who normally trash any game that has less than fifty pages of rules and is playable in under ten hours, decided that they actually liked this one, pausing only to criticize the box cover art just to keep in practice. (I'm not sure that the artwork is all that bad, but then again, my bad taste is legendary.)

Eventually, Ancients and King of Kings migrated to 3W, which gave both an overhaul. Ancients was re-released in 1992 in two volumes and now featured sixty-four scenarios. Naval rules, scenarios, and maps (mostly water) were added, along with new cover artwork. The two volumes were combined in a one-box fourth edition in 1994, shortly before 3W’s demise. King of Kings also was redone as Imperator, this time with areas instead of hexes.

Ancients also began appearing in Gamefix magazine in 1994, with the first issue featuring two new scenarios and maps. Subsequent issues have carried more scenarios, reprinted maps from the 3W edition, and offered more rules. One Small Step, which now publishes the magazine as Competitive Edge, continues to support the game. Even better, last November, they announced that they would issue the entire game as freeware over the Web. See www.jps.net/oss/home.html for details.

The nicely-done Ancients site offers fans all types of interesting material. There is a survey of the game’s rules and history, answers to rules questions, a comprehensive scenario list, five Japanese scenarios, and six tournament ones. Simple games tend to generate variants, and the site has an extensive collection of these. They include a method for using Empires of the Middle Ages (SPI) as a campaign game, an advanced rules system based on DBA/DBM, some optional rules for varying game length and chariots, and a three-player scenario. There is also a reprint of my Strategist (November 1994) article featuring gunpowder rules, Hyborian armies, and methods for using Men-At-Arms maps and Prestags scenarios. (shameless plug)

Sites like this one should serve to enhance players’ enjoyment of the game, and the Ancients pages do it about as well as anyone else. Hopefully, Nagel will add materials on King of Kings and Imperator in the future. In the meantime, those thinking of doing tributes to their favorite games should visit.