Ahistorical Battles

[Lagartija Mike]

Weaned as I was on WRG, with my family’s dining room table the scene of such familiar staples of military history as Ghaznavids versus Aztecs, it never occurred to me that some actually meticulously matched armies in correct time frame. I’m assuming these are the same people who enjoy rules that reliably reproduce the results of battles ( itself an enigma to me).

How closely do your armies need to match up historically to their opponents?

[Norm S]

100% unless I was doing Sci-Fi or fantasy setting and even those have recognised boundaries and background story lines.

[Lagartija Mike]

There’s never a bad time to deploy a Wirblewind.

[irishserb]

Pretty much always used historical foes with the exception of some post WWII hypotheticals, but even there nothing too extreme. No Canadian invasion of South Africa or anything like that.

[Alvin Molethrottler]

I prefer the armies to match up, otherwise you are playing a fantasy battle. Which is something so called historical/ancients gamers often seem not to understand.

[Shaun Travers]

I started ancients with WRG Ancients 5th edition.  One thing I did not like was the ahistorical matchups that always occurred.  So i jumped out and returned for DBM and played historical matchups only.  Another hiatus for Ancients and restarted about 5 years go with only historical matchups, and especially historical battles.  Like Alvin, I find playing ahistorical matchups is just a fantasy I am not really interested in.  But I also realise that even if it is a historical matchup, it is fantasy on army composition and the battle itself.  But I can handle that as it is at least possible something like what I am doing occurred with historical matchups.  For my ww2 games it has always been historical matchups, and often scenarios based on actual events.  To anser the original question, opponents have to match historically for my games.

[A Lot of Gaul]

I have been wargaming ancients for more than 30 years using at least 20 different rulesets that I can recall, and I have always fielded historically-matched opponents. I tend to favor refighting historical battles, but I also enjoy campaign-based historically plausible match-ups.

Cheers,
Scott

"Ventosa viri restabit." ~ Harry Field

[Piyan Glupak]

Alvin Molethrottler wrote:

I prefer the armies to match up, otherwise you are playing a fantasy battle. 

Pretty much the same for me, except when I do play fantasy I prefer the armies to be from the same fantasy setting.

[OldNick]

Always collected both sides of a historical era.  American and British for AWI/ Russian and British (and now French) for Crimean.  Never saw the purpose of non historical match ups.

“the regular troops, who had the keen edge of sensibility rubbed off by strict discipline and hard service, saw the confusion with but little emotion.” 

[Spurious]

I don’t think that I have ever played a match-the-order-of-battle-and-terrain historical game in my entire time playing. And given the restrictions on time, building armies and so on it’d be a pain in the backside to even try these days. Though I do like trying to stick to appropriate organisations (hence my recent fun of trying to track down modern Russian platoon structure), but that’s about as close to ‘historical’ as I’m going to manage and I am ok with that.

[McLaddie]

Old Nick:

What’s the source of your quote?: “the regular troops, who had the keen edge of sensibility rubbed off by strict discipline and hard service, saw the confusion with but little emotion.”

I’ve always played historical opponents. Aztecs versus Spartans  etc. ever held any interest for me.

[Cerdic]

My armies are based on actual OOBs where they are available. Where this is not viable, such as Dark Age armies, they at least have suitably historical opponents…

http://28mmreview.blogspot.co.uk

[Sane Max]

McLaddie wrote:

What’s the source of your quote?: “the regular troops, who had the keen edge of sensibility rubbed off by strict discipline and hard service, saw the confusion with but little emotion.”

I Believe it’s from ‘Google is your friend’ by ‘B. Obvious.’

[McLaddie]

I Believe it’s from ‘Google is your friend’ by ‘B. Obvious.’

I do wish that Google was that friendly to Obvious.  It hasn’t always been my experience.  In this case, thanks for the ‘hint.’

[Sane Max]

McLaddie wrote:

I Believe it’s from ‘Google is your friend’ by ‘B. Obvious.’

I do wish that Google was that friendly to Obvious. It hasn’t always been my experience. In this case, thanks for the ‘hint.’

it would have been more friendly to provide a link, but I was being lazy. It IS a good quote though.

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