Rick Priestley Talks Combat for Hail Caesar!

Warlord Game's Ancient Armies logo

I'm encouraged by the latest Hail Caesar! update by Rick Priestley on the Warlord Games website. This time he goes over combat in great detail.

The update is worth your time even if you only read half of it. Combat (and associated factors for units) is divided into Clash, Sustained, Short, and Long. Long is the only truly ranged combat. Short is used for supporting units and for ranged weaponry in melee. Clash and Sustained are mechanics for differentiating between charges/impetus, etc. Priestley provides some examples of combat using Roman legionary and British warband templates that do a lot to show off the system. 

Like Black Powder, units become shaken after taking so many casualties, but it take more losses to shake a unit for the most part. This allows the melee-heavy game to have some brawls. 

One thing I really liked about the example is that the Roman unit did not walk over the British in the long run. Both legionaries and barbarians have some options on how to attack and/or defend that allows for some command decisions that could tip a combat one way or the other. 

With the kind of balance one sees in the examples, this might lead to something rarely seen on the game tables: fairly even numbers between Romans and barbarians. If you suspect that the Roman authors were sometimes exaggerating a little bit about the hordes their armies defeated, this might appeal to your sense of historical gaming. Not sure if this is the take the rules will actually go with, but I'd like to see it. Actually, this is a subject I've been meaning to review for some time now, and I'll bring it up again later. 

Hail Caesar! (Update from Warlord Games)

Warlord Games' Ancient Armies logo

I recently saw another Rick Priestley update on the Warlord Games website concerning the new ancients-themed wargame, Hail Caesar. 

I like what I am reading, so far. In short it appears the same kind of command mechanism found in Black Powder will be used in the game - command rolls are required to get your units moving and you cannot necessarily depend on how well they can do it. This kind of rule forces players to decide if they want to play it timid or take some chances on coordinating the maneuvers of the whole army. 

The game does not rely as much on shooting (which seems right), and keeps movements shorter and is geared more towards melee combat. That said, it kind of seemed to me that the missile fights may be sharp little affairs in the right context. I think as long as missile power is not, er, overpowering, the game is on the right track.

While I don't know or recall if Hail Caesar will have army lists, I hope it goes the way of Black Powder and provides a small host of unit qualities/abilities (tweaks) and scenario-based templates for putting stats to Roman legionaries, Celtic warriors, etc. 

Well, don't trust my memory or interpretation of what I read, you can check out the update on the Warlord site here.

Warlord Games to Release Ancients Ruleset

So it seems that Warlord Games is going to publish a ruleset for Ancients with Rick Priestley. Follow the link to check out some very cool pics of Middle Imperial Romans battling Sassanid Persians, painted by Dr. Phil Hendry. 

I don't know if the ruleset will use core mechanics from Black Powder, but I could see some ideas making the fit. I've already thought about how Black Powder (see right) might be a good way to wargame the Warring States of Japan, a period that normally fits in with medieval rules. A game system that focuses a bit more on melee that offers the kind of template-tweaks found in Black Powder might be a good way to approach the 'millennial system' (ie. Biblical to early Medieval) Warlord has planned.


While I cannot say that rules that cover everything from the age of chariots to the Hundred Years War are ideal, realistic, etc., I don't necessarily assume they are bad or not fun. I think there's a number of things that make a particular period or army distinct from others, and some of them probably get a glossing over. I review this kind of thing fairly often in Wargames Illustrated, and sometimes you just have to pick the game that best translates historical evidence (or even literary evidence) to your taste and understanding. Anyway, I'm curious what Warlord will come up with.