For the sake of posting & When in Rome Project

No this is not a continuation of my epic "what is war gaming,  to be continued" saga, more of an update on the first installment, or more of a notice of an update on the first installment and a confession of sorts.

Simply put I have had the chance to reread my first post and enhance, for good or ill, those thoughts already committed.  I should have followed my golden rule from my old school days - write, wait, read, fix up, repeat and then hand to teacher with oncer* attached. There it is the first post has been re-writ and I hope it makes for slightly better reading.


Now while I have your attention I will add that the Republican Roman (see first post, near the bottom) project has been given the green light by the finance officer here at Home Base Viscous. Vendors offerings have been scrutinised as have rules and resources and one or two decisions have been made.

First  purchases are in the form of some light history reading, nothing too strenuous but enough to provide some background, I'm a complete novice when it comes to the ancient age, honestly all these sticks, stones and sandals.....  I'm rather looking forward to it really

I have managed to source a 2nd hand copy of WRG's Macedonian and Punic Wars and found Osprey publishing's Elite series on Roman Battle Tactics at a very reasonable price. Nothing too strenuous with these offerings and they appear to offer everything I need to get started on the road to conquering Carthage, I now know my maniples from my manicles!

And finally just who is going to provide the Rules of War for this foray into the unknown, well for some time I have been following the Impetus road show. The rules aren't super new and seem to be gathering quite some impetus momentum from the gaming public. They offer an element basing system favoured by the dbx range of rules allowing for some creativity with units in the guise of little vignettes, the publishers have a free down load of a light version of the rules so the discerning gamer may have a taster of what is on offer before committing the readies, to be applauded. I was quite happy to see that Mr BigRedBat of the bog of the same name is painting a small "Roman Impetus Army" to be featured in WS&S and I will be following both the blog and magazine with interest.

As too the lead, no decision has been made but the field is narrowing. Old Glory are in the frame, on price alone they are hard to beat (particularly if you have an OG army card) and the figures scrub up nicely from what I have seen so far. Aventine Miniatures are a definite goer too, if not for the bulk of the army they will most probably be represented in the form of command and special units, the figures are just too good to ignore. Renegade Miniatures also have a useful collection of figures for the period and are priced right, from my experience they are biggish figures (ww1 are at least) so you are definitely getting your monies worth if you take a skewed view of things.

There are other Vendors of course but these three have certainly caught my attention and each have their pros and cons but there is plenty of time to suss out some more purveyors of white metal before I have to see the exchequer for funding.

Where would we be without Hollywoods invaluable assistance, hmm they look about right? Might not be a Hollywood film

Watch out Verenus he's behind you!

Everyone's favourite pair of Roman Scallywags

*Note: I'm that old that a oncer could have bought a few pints down at the rubber back in my days at poncy!