Campaigning through the Ancient and Medieval Worlds

Watching the weekender this weekend made me sit and think of how many times I sit and come up with an idea, think it is the best thing since slice bread, go away research it, buy a load of stuff, it arrives, go ‘oh cool I’ll look at it shortly’, place it in my stash and never look at it again, or only briefly, and the fruition of my original plan never happens. That is exactly what happened when I looked on the Gripping Beast website at the Saga and Swordpoint rulebooks.  Sucked in by the many different campaign and supplement books, I had visions of Alexander at Gaugamela, Hannibal crossing the Alps, Alfred the Great beating back the Vikings, all the way through to the War of the Roses.  That is the great thing about a ruleset that covers both the ancient and medieval period, the amount of options are vast, and I think that is what drew me in was the fact that there was so many supplements for the two games, that almost any historical setting was possible.  I was well and truly going down the rabbit hole, but then another thought made the burrow go even deeper underground.  Could I take Swordpoint, as a rank and file game, and Saga as a skirmish game, add them together and create historical campaigns, with different size of battles and incorporate them into one to play put history, but also to have a slight variation from true history, to give an element of the victors of the individual battles effecting the overall result of the campaign.  Not only this but using the two games, to create more accurate lists for historical battles, what would you need to play them out, in terms of model counts to make them accurate historically, and could it be possible gaming wise.  Also, I must give credit to The Baron’s War kickstarter for some of the inspiration towards these ideas also.

I think the Spring Clean Challenge is the perfect time to dust of the books, have a look through the lists, do some research, and see if I can come up with some historic lists regarding different battles.  I’m a mature history student too (currently writing a dissertation on the print press coverage of Welsh Volunteers, in the Spanish Civil War, wrong period I know!) so I will also sprinkle the project with some posts about the battles, and individuals who fought in them as I carry out the research involved.  Oh, and models, there will be models too, I bought the Viking and Anglo-Saxon plastic four-point starter sets for Saga too, which currently have also been gathering dust, so they too need a Spring clean.

I may branch out into other games as I look to see how I can maybe incorporate a campaign system into my games, as I continue to look for other inspiration, and to see how other games have brought campaign systems into themselves, but in essence, it will be initially looking at trying to create historical army lists, whilst building my two armies for Saga, and learning the rules for the game, hoping that I finally get the kickstart I need after everything sitting on the shelf for a while.