Reading 'Saga' is certainly a mind-opening experience since my last ancients games was a rousing defeat under third edition. The explanation for the pause is quite simple. I got interested in 54mm collectors figures to improve my 25mm painting skills. That was succeeded by yet another interlude triggered by acquiring two horses as the result of a campaign to learn from nature to improve my cavalry horse painting skills. Before all that I used to play Jim Hinds' 'Le Kriegspiel Ancients" back in those dark days when San Antonio Hobby was out of Minifigs then this country was out of stock!

Getting back into wargaming or at least actually contemplating doing so is a terrific time for reflection. one terrific reason for reflection is to also contemplate the rather large assortment of ancients rule sets accumulated over the years. So the question is how to characterize them. Dusty Koelhoffer's idea of using generations to sort them out is a good one. My sorting effort use the standard of what kind of game should these rules give the player. That results in these classes:

INITIAL - The classic example here is DBA. These rules are intended to give a short game with limited rules complexity and using few units.

CONTINUING - Examples here are 'Shieldbearer,' 'DBM,' 'Tactica,' 'Might of Arms,' 'Spear and Shield,' 'Shock of Impact,' and 'Newbury Fast Play Ancients." This is the classic amorphous grouping of kind of average games. The units involved aren't as few as the INITIAL sets while their overall level of rule complexity isn't at the HIGH SCHOOL level. Compared to the upper end of the scale, these rules are mostly played for relaxation or recreations of actual battles.

HIGH SCHOOL - (By the way this term refers to the most advanced and classy form of equestrian dressage not to human education after 8th grade) Examples here are WRG 6th and 7th editions plus possibly 'Ancient Empires.' Those tend to be classed as HIGH SCHOOL because they are considered to be the ultimate in ancients war gaming. Mastering them requires time and significant effort.

To use an old British expression then - "you pays your money, and you takes your chance." There are a tremendous number of options out there and the best choice is what do you want and need. If you'd rather spend more time searching out shield patterns for your favorite late Roman units and don't want to try to learn a set of rules which seems uncomfortably like a densely written computer operations manual, then you've got some real choices. But then if your needs relate to something else then you've also got choices too.

Dusty's point about the overly-realistic chrome of 6th edition proving to be toxic struck a responsive chord here. The problem is when does the simplifying of ancient warfare become too great in DBM for it to be a believable set giving players an acceptable feel for ancient warfare? After surviving high school (not the horse one, the other one) latin classes plus several college courses on Roman history, they are a people whose army I take rather keenly. My question is what makes legionaries really legionaries? According to DBM, it's no longer armor, weapons, or troop quality; instead it's functionality. Now legionaries from the Republic through to the last elements of civilization hanging on in the former province of Britannia are all Blades.

In some ways this is a Good Thing as several archaeologists like Michael Bishop and Jan Coulston are extremely convincing in their contention that later period legionaries wore mail not leather corselets. When armor classification ceases to be a critical factor in a rules set, this is one point on which one can expect, hopefully and thankfully, to disagree on with other gamers. Nor will we ever need to argue over who was truly a member of an elite organization. But still a gamer is quite welljustified to ask whether or not this set provides an reasonable approximation of their chosen military system.

The downside of all this is we must now accept the inherent assumption that one legionary is basically just the same as another. Given the history of the Roman army this is a very debatable judgment call. It appears the only way the various army lists for Rome vary is in the strength and composition of their forces. So the Book 2 list 56, early Imperial Roman, varies from only in how many legionaries you can select and what auxiliaries are deployed with them from a #78 eastern late Roman empire list. Until I play all of these lists and think over the results it would be quite unfair and premature to speculate on how successful this compromise will prove to be.

Perhaps after too many miserable days at work when an apparently simple and narrow change to a computer system caused unforeseen and utter chaos the thought of modifying WRG isn't too terribly appealing. If you accept the notion that the whole DBM package of rules and army lists is a complete system then tinkering with one part of it may have unplanned and unpleasant results unless compensating changes are made elsewhere. From other still painful experiences with computer systems, small initial corrections can have a horrible habit of ultimately generating major modifications causing still more drastic changes.

Perry Gray's comments about 'Legio' were very interesting as I had just written to him asking his help in finding a source for these rules on this side of the Atlantic. Several years ago I wrote another letter to the editor of 'The Courier' suggesting it was time for ancients wargaming to look in some different directions and frankly to some new rules authors. That letter suggested the time was past for seemingly endless rounds of arguments about our then current single-pathway approach to ancient wargaming with Phil Barker as the sole authority. It also advocated supporting those new authors whose ideas seemed worthwhile. Those suggestions are still valid even today.

In 1992 'Slingshot' magazine printed a fascinating series of articles as a rules forum, in which an assortment of authors had a interesting dialog on various questions of wargaming. I remember watching in fascination as the author of 'Shieldbearer' Michael Young's thinking evolved as he wrestled with the perennial question of troop classification.

Someone once suggested the best authors to get to know aren't the famous and well-known ones but rather those who are trying to get established. These newcomers are almost always more accessible to the public and are still at a point where they're willing to act positively on outside suggestions. Bob Bryant's 'Might of Arms' set is a nice example of this in action. Since at least 1990 Bob has worked on this set by polishing and refining it. This set is another real alternative to WRG's various products and their author is quite open to either discuss or change them.

Scott Holder's report that some persons tend to find there's a similarity after about 20 - 30 games with DBM is interesting. If this condition is experienced by other gamers then we've got a dilemma. on one hand, the sameness may in fact accurately simulate some the conditions of ancient warfare.

For example Roman armies tended to get defeated in rather monotonous conditions either their battle line never stayed intact (ie Adrianople) or when it failed contact its foes (ie Carrhae). At the risk of sounding like a believer in 'Chariots of the Frauds -- Ooops Gods,' sometimes ancient war gamers really ought to ponder about how LITTLE we really know about ancient battles. As a gamer with the 3rd century middle imperial Roman army it's hard not to agree with Professor Yann le Bohec's recent book 'The Imperial Roman Army.'

"During the third century, moreover, changes whose details our meager documentation only allows us to guess at were introduced. The crisis involved a huge shake up in tactics, strategy and recruitment."

So DBM's alleged sameness might reflect only the limited number of cases we have to draw on.

But then again perhaps Phil Barker did get it wrong by going overboard on the question of simplifying ancient warfare to squeeze down DBM to a manageable length. If so, we may be suffering from a condition caused by his abstracting the troops types involved to the point where they aren't very different. This whole point may be obscured by the proliferation of DBM army lists. without a lot of practical playing experience using the DBM system, it's exceedingly presumptuous to conclude this minute slicing-up of the ancient and mediaeval worlds is or isn't valid Still it would be interesting to have enough experience to find out how book two armies 10, 33, 49, 56, 64, 78, 81 and 83 differ that is if they do infact differ.

When I quit gaming ancients back in 1975, WRG was just about the only viable option and just about the entire dialog on ancient warfare had to be channeled through Phil Barker or one of his surrogates. Now we have a wide variety of authors and a wide variety to chose among. Also if nothing else we can write our own rules or at least support those are trying to do so.