Tonight I popped round to my regular SAGA opponent's for a game of Dux Bellorum.I've been wanting to have another go at these rules for a while as I remembered them as simple and straightforward, but with enough period flavour to satisfy. And also quicker and easier than a game of WAB. I don't think we'd ever had a game before and I've not played since Salute last year, so it was a proper fumble through the rules.
We used 24 point armies and reduced the LPs to 4 (rather than 32pt armies and 6LP). Sophistication was not the order of the day and we hurled our battle lines at one another without much real thought. However about half way through my opponent declared "I like these much better than Dux Brit" and I agreed. Simple, effective and easy to understand. And also all over in about an hour an a half (even with plentiful rulebook flicking) which for me is a good thing on a "school night".
Some pictures follow (apologies for the poor quality - the camera is broken, so the iPhone is being used)
In the end I lost, but my opponent had but a single unit left by the time we'd finished failing morale checks. We both (I think) enjoyed the game - its easy enough for our limited attention spans and curmudgeonly refusal to grapple with complex rules whilst being sufficiently Dark Agey. I know Martin and Scrivs have played recently and not enjoyed it as much, but I think I'm going to persist (at least until my wargame muse takes me elsewhere...)
So we've agreed to play again - next time with 32 point armies. There are some "Fall of Rome" campaign rules in the current edition of Miniature Wargames, which might inspire us to some linked up gaming too. However the fly in the ointment is the fact that we're both off to Partizan in a couple of weeks and Crescent and Cross is calling, so we may well be sucked back into SAGA...
We did persist with Dux Bellorum, but after three games did feel that they were a bit formulaic and samey.
ReplyDeleteMaybe need a years break and have a couple of games then leave it for a year again.