Quote from: lionheartrjc on September 10, 2025, 07:22:53 AMAs far as I can remember, there is no evidence that helots equipped as hoplites performed any better or worse than other hoplites.

Richard

Thanks Richard

Reading about Brasidas' campaign in Thrace 424-423BC and there's reference to him equipping and training 700 helots as hoplites.  What would be a reasonable classification for them?

Are they just lumped in with the "Spartan periokoi and other hoplites" troop category or should they be seen as something separate and a bit worse?

I was at the Society of Ancients Battle day on Sunday with Robert Hutton, Simon Dunsterville and Richard Jeffrey-Cook where we added our 28mm scale Mortem et Gloriam Maximus refight of the Battle of Maldon 991AD to the dozen or so other refights of the same battle that were using a variety of rules and scales often focusing on very different aspects of the battle.

In our game it was a close fight.  The Anglo Saxons out scouted their opponents and launched a pre-emptive attack while there were still two TUGs of the raiders crossing the causeway from Northey Island to the mainland. 

The attacks stalled badly however as against the odds the Vikings first held firm against the Anglo Saxon Thane's swine head charges, lead by the legendary Byrhtnoth, then hacked them to pieces wounding Byrhtnoth in the process. 

The Anglo Saxons re-grouped, steadied their line and mounted a more successful attack to try to cut the Vikings off from the causeway but it was too little too late and Tryggvason won the day and killed Eorl Byrhtnoth on the last turn of the game just as the Anglo Saxon army broke. 15-6 the final score.

We tried tracking the break points of the respective armies using pools of black and white marbles for the Vikings and Anglo Saxons respectively.  It suits a multi player game and seemed to work well with players remembering to claim one of their opponents marbles when they broke one of their TUGs.  An army breaks when the player loses all his marbles.  Quite apt really.

In the other games there were a surprising number of Anglo Saxon victories.

It was a grand day out.

I've attached the PDFs of the scenario details and the two lists we used.

Sounds like a good candidate for an army characteristic like they have in ReG.  It's the way we play it when we run scenario based games i.e. if the army can use it then we count it for any troop types that it's applicable for.

Quote from: daveparish on May 21, 2024, 10:36:01 AM
Hmm looking at the quote in the first post I think I might have been doing this wrong. I interpreted "Slowing effect only" as being that a Wound has a casualty and a slowing effect - and that if your dice was sub-Black then the wound would not do the casualty effect but would still do the slowing.

So to be clear if your shooting has two subtractions (so it starts at White then is reduced to Black and then to "sub-Black") does this mean:-

a) you have two chances out of six to get a slowing effect (the S and the Wound which only counts as a S)

b) you have one chance out of six to get a slowing effect (the S and the Wound counts for nothing)

We play your option a.  We could be equally wrong however.

It's 12 bases in the whole army.
i.e. two TUGs of 6 bases or three TUGs of 4 bases.

A minimum of zero just means that the army is not forced to have any UGs of that troop type.

In the Pacto QRS under the "Die colour for shooting" section is states "Below BLACK = roll BLACK dice with slowing effects only."

As l mentioned on Saturday, I'm definitely up for this.

Last few places available for the Mortem et Gloriam Campaign Weekend at Battlefield Hobbies in Daventry.
Cut off for entries is 15th March to allow the venue time to order in  the packed lunches.
A reminder that all figures, scenery and rules will be provided and there are free prize draws on both days where players can win their own army plus rules and dice etc.
It promises to be a fun weekend.

Last few places available for the Mortem et Gloriam Campaign Weekend at Battlefield Hobbies in Daventry.
Cut off for entries is 15th March to allow the venue time to order in  the packed lunches.
A reminder that all figures, scenery and rules will be provided and there are free prize draws on both days where players can win their own army plus rules and dice etc.
It promises to be a fun weekend.

Quick update.  We've 4 spaces remaining on the first two campaigns (Condottiere Italian Wars and Classical Greek).  Once those are full we'll look to open up spaces on a third campaign. 

On both days new players names will be put into a draw that day with a chance to win a full unpainted 15mm metal lurkio figurines pacto army, the MeG pacto printed rules, laminated quick reference sheets, command coloured playing cards, punch card tokens for wounds etc and a set of skull dice.   That's everything a newcomer needs to get playing with the rules.

Simon Hall will be there playing in one or other of the campaigns.  It's your chance to quiz him on the thinking behind the rules and get the lowdown on the forthcoming Rome Total War boardgame.

Hope to see you there.

I've used this list previously and have a third different reading of what the note means i.e. you can mix any or all of the three types in the same TUG so Huscarls+Select Fyrd, Huscarls+Great Fyrd, Select Fyrd+Great Fyrd or Huscarls+Select Fyrd+Great Fyrd.

If there's anything that can be lifted from the PDF attached here for the historical notes for list 32 please do.
https://mortem-et-gloriam.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=2877.0

https://mortem-et-gloriam.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3201.msg22103#msg22103

Posting this here as the news section doesn't accept replies.

In general I think most of what Richard has proposed will work. There's a couple of things I would change however.

Firstly I would have units comprising one or two bases.  Single base for skirmishers, chariots, elephants and cavalry.  Two bases in one file for infantry TUGs.  This way you can keep wounds per base the same as they are in Pacto so players don't need to unlearn something when they move to another format of the game.  SUGs therefore break on one wound, chariots/elephants/cavalry on two, infantry on three.

Shooting remains effective when shooter is only in a single rank. So skirmishers are effective but fragile which will make for quick games.

Simplify skirmish charge response to avoid having to measure it i.e. still roll 1D6 and requiring 3+ to successfully evade the charge but add 1 to the roll if cavalry evading infantry and deduct 1 from the roll if infantry evading cavalry.  If successful skirmishers remain 1HBW away from the charging unit.

Any limitations on how many generals could be mounted on elephants or do you just assume that all generals in a qualifying army are on eles?