Reply To: Wanting to start with historical gaming.

[khusrauParticipant 1169xp 0]

Well, the most important question I guess, is what are your likely opponents playing?

Secondly, it’s worth thinking about scale (figures), number of troops you would like to see on each side, and whether there are any particular game mechanics you hate.

For what it is worth, I am going to assume you won’t be doing massed battles in 15mm – for which Art d’ la Guerre is popular, as well as ‘To the Strongest’ DBMM, ‘Morte et Gloriam’ and a range of others.

If you elect to use 28mm, (at least you will be able to reuse some Bolt Action terrain, like hedges, trees, rivers and hills 🙂 then there are a couple of older sets – such as Warhammer historical, but I think this is now out of print and ‘Hail Caesar’ which seems to be popular. These are larger scale ‘battle games’ with lots of figures on each side.

In skirmish or large scale skirmish, out of left field, for Vikings etc, SAGA was or is quite popular, using specialised dice and ‘battleboards’ – it is very much on the ‘game’ end of the spectrum versus simulation though. Others in this period include Dux Britanniarum, from Too Fat Lardies, but this is specialised for the period of Briton vs Angles and Saxons after the Romans left Britain. Similar territory is covered in Daniel Mersey’s ‘Dux Bellorum’ (Osprey Books)

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/130304/dux-britanniarum

Other worth a look are variants on Lion Rampant (Osprey Books), which does medieval, but can easily be adapted for the ‘Dark Ages’.

Personally, I do ‘big’ historical ancients using 15mm figures and Phil Barker’s DBMM, I play Lion rampant, usually as a club multi-player game, in 28mm, I’ve tried SAGA, but it didn’t feel right to me, and I am now hanging out for the Too Fat Lardies new ancients set ‘Infamy, Infamy’ which does Imperial Romans vs Barbarians.

Really, you are spoiled for choice, so I guess the takeaway is: what do you want from the game?