When I first started coming up to PW over two years ago, I did so mainly to play 25-mm WRG ancients with some of the Maryland residents. I really did not figure that ancients in general took up much of PW's time. I always assumed that the guys in the main room played fun games with rules that either fit on index cards or that were made up as they went along. How wrong I was. Let me tell you that PW is an absolute hotbed of ancient wargaming. And leading the way is the aging Lion of Ostlandt himself. In the last 26 issue of the Review, there have been 15 articles on ancient wargaming (anything pre- 1485). Now this tells me one of two things: 1) I have so much spare time on my hands that I can go back and count articles and relate useless PW Review article trivia, or 2) ancient wargaming is alive and well here at PW. Both are equally true. The reason for this discourse is the recent print expended in the Review on Tactica. That plus, it seems, Wally is in regular contact with Tactica's author, Mr Confliffe. It's nice to see space going into the period no matter in what contact. It's also typical of the Lion to not pass judgement on the "realness" of Tactica. in fack its incredible simpficity should appeal to Wally. Fortunately, Tactica articles make up only 1/5 of those seen in the Review, the rest being battle reports and rules sets. Some of the Tactica print was prompted by me. I passed on two articles written by friends and because I was unable to get them in print via the NASAMW newsletter, I felt that the Review would be a good outlet for their views. Maybe too good. I don't think a rules set this simple warrants such extensive press. Yet, any press is good press, I guess. That and some of Wally's Saturday afternoon gang played a couple of games using it, and one (Brian DeWitt) even graduated to playing in a recent tournament using WRG. Watch out Wally, you could be next! My interest in writing a set of rules stemmed from being invited over to Wally's house and seeing his smaff 6mm ancients coflection (two stands worth). I had been toying with the idea of a "big battles" set of rules for quite some time and Wally's surprising interest in the period spurred me on. Having some basic ideas (again, stolen from other magazine articles and rules sets) as to what I wanted, a 6mm set seemed to fit the bill. Unfortunately, my set still requires paperwork, but not much. Anyway, I've seen some of Wally's games use paperwork. So there. What follows is my attempt to portray ancient battle of the largest scale, somewhere above the nuts and bolts of WRG, but somewhere below "grand tactical" (see PW review Dec 1989). Halfway through the process, I received a copy of some rules Phil Barker has worked on, essentially something that can be played in 45 minutes. Stealing (oops, mean borrowing) many concepts from that set, I plunked them down in mine, hence what you see on the following pages. Anyway, Wally asked someone to contribute something in response to his WRG rules. Here goes. Maybe I too can parlay this simple set of numbers into a $20 set complete with full color pictures of semi-nude women to finish the package. Couldn't get any worse.1 think. Back to PW Review April 1990 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1990 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com