Gladatorial Games
in Maxi Scale
Marx Gladiators Melee Scenario Generation
by Kenneth Van Pelt
by Kenneth Van Pelt
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The Lion's Den Wargamers are a miniature enthusiast gaming club. Often times, in our search for skirmish gaming rules, we tend to borrow ideas and game mechanics from the board gaming genre. In our collection of 54mm plastics was a large selection of Marx Ben Hur Romans. As a club project we decided to create a Ben-Hur Circus Maximus game to display at a local Kansas City Convention. This was an enormous production which featured an 8 foot x 1.5 foot Spina Centerpiece on the 9' by 18' gaming table. We were featured on the main stage of that year's convention and we drew quite a crowd with chariot racing, gladiatorial combat and beastiarii events spanning the three-day weekend. In our search for rules to govern this extravaganza, we wrote our own chariot simulation. For our gladiators and beastiarii events we need a simple, playable man-to-man simulation - Melee was the solution. This article will concern itself with the miniaturization of the Melee game. A very simple and straightforward account of the Lion's Den gladiator "campaign" game and suggestions on gaming in 54mm. To Melee in 54mm There are some obvious scale adjustments to create the playing pieces for Melee in 54mm. The miniature gladiators are 2 1/4" tall and glued to fender washers as bases. These metal washers add sufficient weight to the figures and a base dimension of 1 1/4" diameter. The hexagon playing surface featured two inch wide hexes on a surface approximately four feet by five feet. Here are the details on creating enlarged hex maps. I have hand drawn hexes with a laundry marker on appropriately colored cloth before, but there is an interesting and effective alternative. Hex Stamps Create a large block printing stamp of a section of interlocking hexes. I made mine out of a thin sheet of plywood large enough to print a section five hexes by five hexes, each of two inch size. The hexes were cut from a thin piece of foam and glued to the sheet of plywood with a small space between each hex This giant stamp pad was "inked" with a paint roller dipped in acrylic house paint. The stamp was imprinted on sections over an undercoat of paint on a sheet of flexible plastic. This is a very durable and aesthetic playing surface for the floor of the Coliseum. The paint color for the plastic sheet was a medium sand and the hexes were stamped over this in a light sand color. Game Mechanics Take Form There are things you leave out of very detailed rules when you take a game to a convention. To make a game convention playable, it isn't necessary to have the added complication. What follows is the list of rulesand references of the first run we used for the show. The gladiator game would take the form of facing opponents owned by other club members. Each Lion's Den member playtested a set of twenty gladiators. Each gladiatorial class was listed on our members control sheet. In each class you could own four gladiators. The public participants were assigned a gladiator from a member's stable and would fight against another participating gladiator from an opposing stable. With the pregenerated gladiators, we avoided the whole aspect of teaching new people the mechanics of creating a Melee character. During the combat, the Den member acted as coach and rules lawyer for the people had come to participate in our game. Here is a scatter-shot of some of the rules in effect. The basic Melee, Advanced Melee, and GURPS Imperial Rome Source Book were used. The notes will give reference to where particular rules can be found. We used:
Experience points were based on the Melee arena combat with a + 1 per point of damage your gladiator scored against his opponent. One hundred experience points could be used to raise an attribute point by one. An interesting formula we developed was to allow a gladiator to appeal for mercy is as follows:
The GURPS: Imperial Rome Source Book is worth a look not only for the social milieu, but in game master terms. In character generation we need 140 Roman names! The name generator on pg. 31 was invaluable. There is one entire chapter: The Games- that puts all the really necessary information in front of you. All of this information is available elsewhere; however, this book puts it all in one place, and it's for gaming. The Gladiators The following list is the categories of typical gladiators. A house of gladiators called a familia, was run by a Trainer called a Lanist--a retired gladiator. In our games it was set up that each player would own four gladiators of each class. It is up to the player to decide which of his gladiators he sends into the arena for particular events. Gladiatorial classes are:
Mirmillo (Heavy) Broadsword 2, Leather 2/H, -2 DX, small shield I/H Samnite (Heavy) Sword 2 -1, Breastplate 41H, -5 DX, Shield I/H Thracian (Medium) Sword 2 -1, Cloth l/lH, -1 DX Shield I/H Dimachaeri (Medium) Broadsword 2, Breastplate 4/H, -5DX * Indicates a thrown weapon. Slate of Events This is an area of inventiveness for the GM. Typical fights would stage several Retiarius vs. an equal number of Mirmillo. Samnite vs. Samnite, etc. Experiment with really outlandish combinations such as: each player places two gladiators of any class in the arena and must fight all others. Or, all gladiators vs. an elephant. Depending on your taste for gore, there are a number of man vs. beast alternatives. Availability of Figures There is a local company that produces all of the Marx recast plastics. Their address is:
11528 Canterbury Circle Leawood, Kansas 66211 As a gamer, I have a decided bias toward 54rnm scale figures; however, I have not found many gladiators available in any other scale. Back to Tornado Alert #23 Table of Contents © Copyright 1996 by Tornado Alert! This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. |