Acceptable Casualties Launches Sons Of Mars Gladiator Combat Game
July 26, 2018 by brennon
The Acceptable Casualties has launched the pre-orders for their gladiatorial combat game, Sons Of Mars.
The game is currently up for pre-order on North Star's webstore HERE where you can get your hands on the rulebook and a selection of Gladiators as well from Crusader Miniatures.
The game features seventeen detailed gladiator classes, ten different beasts, over thirty unique skills, and forty-plus pieces of weapons and equipment as well as options for playing one-off games, full campaigns and solo experiences as well.
Acceptable Casualties also mentions that the game is meant to be tweaked to fit YOU as a player. So, there is an emphasis on the main rules being easy to play with you bolting on additional facets to your gaming experience as you find them useful.
You can check out How To Build A Gladiator...
...and Combat In The Arena videos here so you can get your head around the game before you jump in.
I like the idea of using this game alongside something like Gangs Of Rome so that you can play out some of the arena games that your gangs might have helped set up alongside the street violence.
Will you be checking this out?
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Great game! I was lucky enough to have a preview of the game by the author and its a very complete product. Made us get the old gladiators out after a long spell in the Drawers of Doom…
@piers States it has a campaign game, is this along the lines of levelling a single Gladiator, or more along the lines of running a Gladiator School?
phaidknott, I wrote this tomb so I can answer any of the questions you might have. The campaign can be played in a group or solo and you run a ludus from top to bottom. So you manage and level up an entire stable of gladiators as well as upgrade your ludus and hire specialists to help run it more efficiently.
Sounds interesting, last time I played a Gladiator minis game was “Gladiator” by Avalon Hill back in the 80s. With the launch of Gang of Rome there might be a few figures there (for the slave “mob” vs skilled Gladiator fights they used to put on).
On running the school, any rules for the “Spectacles” that used to be laid on, and rules for animals (as in running them in a “school”, not levelling up, just the economics of the campaign).
There are rules for 4 Major Roman Festivals and some of them have special “Spectacle” matches. There are also rules for Gladiators vs Criminals and Man vs Beast. You could really recreate any ideas you had pretty easily within the rules themselves. Nothing is really binding you to any format, you can create any type of themed event that you like for your campaigns.
You can have beasts as part of your ludus but they don’t level up, they can just make you a good amount of coin if they win their matches.
Well that’s pretty much a sale from me then, sounds like you’ve covered almost everything 🙂
Thats great to hear. If you pick up the rules be sure to send over some feedback or any ideas you’d like to see. I’m planning on putting out free content every few months based off what the community wants to be added to the rule set.
Strange thing is there’s never really been a line of Gladiators around in mini form (other than Gripping Beat, Crusader, and Foundry) that’s been done lately (the current releases do look a bit dated by modern standards). Strange how the one game were the modularity of plastics and multipart construction lends itself perfectly to is the Gladiator genre. Best current selection is probably Gripping Beast but they a redonkulus expensive for what they are 🙁
Hopefully we might see some more come from the Gangs of Rome range (they do have one released at the moment).
I was thinking that about the plastic options you could have with gladiators. I just wish I had the start up to dive into that part of the hobby but I’m a one man show 🙂 Maybe if this does well enough I’ll expand into starting a model line.
Gangs of Rome has a few nice options that you could use in Sons of Mars. I’d expect to see even more new stuff from War Banner since they are doing so well with GoR solid release.
Just discovered this after seeing it profiled on the OTT Historicon coverage.
Needless to say, I ordered a copy as quick as my fingers could type!
Gladiator’s ready oops wrong game the figure’s look good.