10mm For Gaming Ancients & Medievals - A New Start

When I first started gaming ancients & medievals, I used 15mm because that's what the group of guys that introduced me to DBx were using.  I later migrated fully to 28mm as I became fully involved in Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB); this included getting rid of my 15mm armies to fund 28mm.  When Warhammer Historical was shut down I really felt it as a punch to the gut; not only would it become next to impossible to get new players into WAB, but all of the time I had spent working on (play testing, proof reading, etc.) the 100YW supplement, the Successors supplement, and others was lost...time I would never have back for wonderfully written books that will never see the light of day because of how the company that "owns" the material operates. My 28mm armies just sat unused.  I tried to get interested in other rules, but interest seemed to die off locally as well.  Eventually I sold and traded my 28's off for 15mm again.

Last year though I started to shift my perspective on gaming and heed the words of a friend..."do what makes you happy...", so here I am starting over again when it comes to mass battles for ancients & medievals.  I am keeping 28mm for skirmish games like SAGA, but for big battles I am moving to 10mm.  My first test is in the pictures below.  I bought a painted army based for Warmaster Ancients off of ebay and realized that this will give me an opportunity to have units be a single base instead of multiple bases like in many games.  I fiddled with frontages and depths before arriving at 100mm by 50mm for infantry and 100mm by 60mm for cavalry, warbands and pike phalanxes.  I think this gives a nice massed look, allows the units to be handled by the bases instead of the figures (something that always drove me crazy with the Warmaster basing and most 15mm basing conventions), allows for for more diorama style basing (like adding some casualties or skirmishers in front of a unit of heavy infantry), and will still allow me to play a wide variety of games since most rules really just depend on similar basing for units.  Now, I did think of basing skirmishers and horse archers, etc. on narrower frontages in order to fit as "small" units for Hail Caesar, but decided against it in the long run.  Since this is a solo project where I intend to build matching armies and host games for my friends which they won't have to contribute anything except for their time, I will simply have unit rosters noting the unit size when/if needed...no big deal to me.

So, here I am...doing something that I have thought about for a long time...finally...and enjoying it.  The pictures don't due these units justice as I didn't feel like setting up the photo box today.  More to come as I get painting on this project...