Mortem et Gloriam is one of the best competition sets created as it’s tight and there at every few things to argue about. I would add though that Mortem et Gloriam is mainly designed to be as good a recreation of a historical battle as I could come up with. And then optimised for such events based on me being a comp player for 25 years now and me being lead DBM umpire for ages. So I try to perfect it for comp play with tight rules and being available to clarify intent for the umpire team. Something is early tries to get in the DBM era from Phil with no success.
Where it has a lot of players is at club and social level. I can tell that from the sales data and the many messages I get. I would say only around 15% of regular Mortem et Gloriam players attend comps at all. From messages I get it is most liked for being a really good refight set. So what is really important is to remain the friendly events group which encourages people to come along when they wouldn't normally got to a 'comp'. You can also see that from the 2700 followers we have online. Vastly more than any event and about the same as AdlG in total. And we haven't really got going in the USA until last year at Historiscon (see below).
As for complexity, if we can simplify it and still get the subtlety of the game and the variety of troop types I am all for it. My Mantra always has been Einstein's quote
"Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler". So where there is some 'complexity' hopefully it is because simpler makes the game worse as a representation.
Always open to suggestion for simplification that can be stored for the eventual version 2. FWIW I have deliberately given everyone more movement options than I believe is truly historical as it makes for a better game. But I have a different Prompted Action Tables for refights which is on the website IIRC.
In terms of growing the community the evidence I have from most places is that:
- It is Pacto promotion and demos that gain most players, mainly from 40k, Saga communities who like the 28mm figures. They are willing to paint a Pacto force. In South Africa we had 28 players and 16 of them came to us in 28mm via that. Non of them had ever played ancient wargaming before. We found that at Warfare last year as well and gained players there, and at Historicon where RJC sold a lot of copies of the rules after running demoes.
Next up is Magna demos which tend to attract old WRG 4/5/6th edition, WAB and Hail Caesar players. Again we had that at Warfare and Historical. I plan to do a 1 day 28mm Magna event. There was a great article by John Lambshead in one of the magazines about how Mortem et Gloriam and Hail Caesar were the only two rulesets that did refights well - but for very different reasons.
Maximus 15mm is targeting the FoG, AdlG etc. which once you have taken a big chunk is then pretty sticky and held together by certain big clubs that are owned by a set due to a leading person - so RWG is always the home of FoG as Terry and I were there during in its development, and AdlG is held strong by Central London and Tim, and Wychbold Warriors would never do anything but Mortem et Gloriam, even if I wasn't there anymore. Demos at other clubs tend to do rather well - as we found in Derby, Guildford, Warrington. So if anything go and find a club not too far away and pay it a few visits to demo games. We are going to October Club in Birmigham and Shrewsbury later this year.
Total War Rome is my main focus for gaining players longer term as it introduces the Mortem et Gloriam dice to 10,000s of players. A full 4000 people will have them int heir hands in October. In one go that is more than the total Mortem et Gloriam sets sold since 2016. If you check out the BattlePlay expansion it is one stop from Pacto.
I also have a few surprises up my sleeve for later this spring as promotion of the game. I am holding back because PSC messed up and ran out of the dice!
so I have had to do an emergency order and air ship them from China at a cost of 1000 quid!! Once we have those in stock in March and Richard B has the CCC store and partners set up well, we can then spend some money to give it a push. USA, Germany, Italy and Spain all open for a proper push with the right availability to physical goods (which has been an issue all through the PSC era). The challenge has never been the rules but the need for the dice and cards, and getting hold of them.
Onwards and upwards
Si
