The description of the game submitted to HMGS East for inclusion in the Historicon program was the following:

"The Death of Achilles"

A Fast Play Ancient Warfare (FPAW) scenario, with some home-brewed special scenario rules (see articles on Achaeans and Trojans in Saga, e.g. modified Hero and Anti-hero).

Hektor has died, and the Trojans are in desperate straits, when to the rescue comes the beautiful Penthesileia, Queen of the Amazons. Lurking nearby is Memnon, the son of Eos (dawn), and his Army of Ethiopians. The Achilles of myth nearly ran the table, killing both the Queen (whom he loved at first sight) and Memnon, a great warrior of equal skill and power (but not, oh pity!, so well connected to Zeus). Paris and Apollo completed Achilles destiny by striking him down as he, heady with success, stormed the city.  How will this play out in FPAW? Each player will have 1-2 heroes and at least 2-3 units. It's gonna be fast, and it's gonna be bloody.

Each side consists of 4 commands; each command consists of 2 heroes (1 general and 1 champion), individually based on 40mm x 40mm wooden bases, and 3-4 4 stand units. In addition, each side has a base camp, comprising several beached ships for the Greeks, and the famed Skaean (left) gate for the Trojans. 

Although I had carefully crafted the OoB’s, I discovered during a Marathon play-test held two weeks prior to Historicon that I was overly ambitious and had scale back the troops by (approximately) 20%. I had planned to run the game at over 700 points per side, but that resulted in too much congestion. In the end, there were exactly 601 AW points of figures in each army, although those totals are inflated by the costs of 4 heroic generals and 4 champions per side. Each unit is composed of either 4 stands of foot/cavalry or 2 chariot models. The exceptions are (i) the three stand unit of wedging, Amazonian armored cavalry, and (ii) the two units of Danaan mixed close order spear/bow, which are 12 stands each.

After some experimentation, I decided to base the heroes in pairs on the 40 mm squares. This follows from a poetic convention in the Iliad, wherein heroes more often than not team up to fight. Thus, Achilles and Patroclus, Ajax and Teucer, Agamemnon and Menelaus, etc. Each 40mm base counted as a single hero in DoA. This scheme allows one to include more "celebrities" in the game without cluttering up the table or busting the AW budget (for tournament gaming).

The basing of the 12 stand Danaan close order mixed spear/bow units was experimental, but it worked very well and was very visually pleasing. Each of the these units was based on two 120mm x 60mm stands, each of which was made by gluing two Renaissance Ink 60x60mm squares together using Elmer’s. The troops glued to the bases were a mixture of Redoubt and Foundry Mycenaean longspear/tower or figure-of-8 shieldbearers, and bowmen; although each base theoretically represented 6 stands (2 wide by three deep) and therefore 24 figures, no base had more than 16 figures. The figures were instead arranged to maximize animation and – this is the key – to keep the spears of the longspearmen entirely within the footprints of the bases. Since AW is a stand based game, there is no particular need to match figure counts with the nominal strengths of the stands. The idea for dioramic basing was inspired by the wonderful vignette of chaos and carnage that Jamie Fish includes in his Scots Highlands and Islemen army. While I wouldn’t recommend going overboard on this idea, I intend to include one such multi-base diorama in every army I game from now on.

The game is presented on a 8’ x 5’ table in 25mm. Each square in the grid below is 1 sq. ft. The set-up is approximate, indicating the gross coordinates of the indicated terrain features and army contingent starting positions. Terrain pieces located in the given squares are not required to completely fill those squares; the camps located in the gray squares are the sizes of the respective models used to represent them, the rest of the squares counting as clear. The Trojan army must start behind the Scamander. The Greeks will form a diagonal line (of whatever depth) from roughly the inside corner of the Bay of Troy to a point on the Greek baseline two feet from the corner of the table. The Scamander is a continuous strip 2-3" wide running along the diagonals and through the adjoining corners of the indicated squares; the rest of the river squares are assumed to be clear. The Bay of Troy is an impassible major water feature.

Death of Achilles Historicon 2002

Introduction
The Outline of the Game
Trojan and Greek Commands and Map
Realities of Hosting and Conclusion