Being a treatise of the trials and tribulations of a newbie as he engages upon a new wargaming topic

Part One: In the beginning...

Greetings. As the title suggests, I'm looking into doing something new and completely out of step with my usual gaming interests. Hopefully, this will turn into a semi-regular column as I investigate my chosen period and develop a collection for it.

Ancients!! 1 This will be a radical change for me. I have only dealt with naval topics in my gaming collections prior to this point, so everything will be new. Figures, rules, terrain, and other accessories for this period are all a little mysterious to me at the moment.

The first item I had to consider was the specific time frame. "Ancients" covers a huge span of time; 3000 BC (BCE for the politically correct) to 500 AD (CE) is the usual spread of years. As you can imagine, a lot of things happened during this time frame, with lots of different empires and armies taking to the fields of battle.

I decided upon Romans to be the anchor of the collection for several reasons. One, the Roman Empire was spread throughout the Mediterranean basin (and beyond), insuring a wide variety of opponents Oust in case this collection gets to epic proportions). Two, most people have heard about Romans, eliminating a lot of the headscratching that can be seen at conventions when players are looking for a game ("Risorgimento, what the heck is that?") . Three, there are numerous sources for figures. Seems like every company that produces ancients comes out with a series of Romans. This will provide a large variety of figures for the collection. Four, it just seems to be an interesting period, and, most importantly, should be fun.

The next piece of the puzzle was what scale to use. One of the benefits (and hidden traps!) of this period is the multiplicity of scales available. While I'm not sure, I'm reasonably certain that someone makes 2mm figures for Romans. 5mm figures are out there, notably from Heroics & Ros and Baccus. The H&R figures are based singly, while those from Baccus are in strips of multiple figures together in one piece. 10mm figures are available. Romans are very popular in 15mm, being produced by more companies than I can count. 20mm Romans are in production, including plastic figures. Romans are also available in multiple flavors of 25mm, from 'true' 25mm to hulking 30mm giants. And I don't doubt that suitable figures can be purchased in 54mm, probably in plastic.

So, what did I choose?

It will be a big plunge for me, but I will be going with the large, economy-size 25mm figures. There are a lot of companies producing them, which will provide a lot of variation in my collection, and they look magnificent. There is a plan bouncing around in my head also about basing them individually for skirmish games, and then using special 'trays' so the same figures can be used for large-scale battles. Hopefully, I will be able to work the particulars out so it will all be possible.

Next time: The hardest part - RULES