Circus Maximus

Faustus Furius, the fast and furious tongue in cheek table-top racing game based very loosely around the chariot races of the ancient world and adaptable to any racing situation.  Or so it says on the back of the book.

Designed for 2-8 participants, it allows players to pit chariots from any culture or period against one another in a no-holds-barred race to fame and glory.

Well doesn’t that just sound like a simple fun game?

Could be just the ticket for casual games that anyone can join in at short notice.  Perfect for a club open day perhaps?

So, flicking through the book, let’s see what we need to play.

• A few Chariots.  (4-8 should be sufficient)
• A counter for each chariot to act as a crash marker.
• Four D6.  2 of one colour and 2 of another.
• Three fixed length measuring sticks.
  • 6mm Models need 50mm, 80mm and 120mm sticks.
  • 10-20mm Models need 75mm, 120mm and 180mm sticks
  • Larger scale models need 100mm, 160mm and 240mm sticks.
• A flat surface.
  • 6mm Models minimum track size 60cm x 30cm
  • 10-20mm Models minimum track size 90cm x 45cm
  • Larger scale models minimum track size 120cm x 60cm
• A marker to act as a turning point.  A flag, rock counter etc will be sufficient.

The track.  At the most basic, ancient racetracks included a starting line and a turning point.  The earliest written account of a chariot race occurs in Homers Iliad where the charioteers at the funeral games of Patroklos had to complete a single lap of a course that ran from the starting line and back around the stump of a dead tree.

Well that all seems very doable.

And there you have it.  A fully finished project!

Of course, I’m kidding.

Although this really is all you need to play this game, I am pretty sure I can completely overdo it to some ludicrous scale way above what it needs to be.

There is nothing wrong with this game with 6mm or 15mm chariots, especially if you want to play it on a kitchen table or something similar.

However, I just feel like the chariot races would have been an epic spectacle.  The roaring crowds, the thunder of hooves, the cracking of whips, and I’m just not feeling that with these smaller scales.

I want this to have more of a WOW factor.  I also want this to feel more like Roman chariot racing, think Ben-Hur and you’ll know where I’m going with this.

With this in mind, I am inbigulating everything.

Here we have a regular Gripping Beast 28mm Dark-Age figure next to One of my oversized Charioteers.  This is how big we are going.

Once established in Rome, chariot racing became highly factionalised with charioteers racing for one of four coloured teams: the Reds, Blues, Greens and Whites.

A four-chariot race was called a certamina singularum, an eight-chariot race was called a certamina binarum, and a twelve-chariot race was called a certamina ternarum.  Each faction was represented in each race with either one, two or three teams.

Chariots were four-horse vehicles with a single driver.

I think I will stick to a maximum of eight chariots, or at least to start with as I plan to build both chariots and wrecked chariots for each model.

With the first chariot printed, it was time to get some paint down.  Being very conscious of the fact that this is potentially a huge build I want to limit my time spent painting the models.

Running some quick numbers, using my previous Colosseum build as a guide I think I will probably need around 400 or so figures just to represent the crowd.  I plan to make the crowd a little more spread out for this and also plan to add a few more varieties of models.  I will need to modify some of the supporters to show which of the four coloured teams they support.

First up was a three-stage undercoat ranging from black through grey to finally a white zenithal spray.

For the most part, I used a combination of contrast paints and washes with a very light dry brush.  The metal parts were picked out in a very dark metallic paint.  To help differentiate the teams within one coloured faction I plan to use different coloured horses.  For example, a red chariot with white horses, a red chariot with black horses etc.   To add a little more variety, I will also use different charioteers where I can, although that is less of a necessity.

I have gone with 10cm x 10cm laser-cut wooden bases.  I will keep that as a standard size for all the chariots and their crashed alternatives.

I have plans to do some unruly supporters that can be used for inevitable ‘Pitch Invasions’ which during the actual game become rather irritating obstacles that need to be navigated around.

A Quadriga is a chariot drawn by four horses abreast and favoured for chariot racing in Classical Antiquity.

The word derives from the Latin quadrigae, a contraction of quadriiugae, from quadri (four) and iugum (yoke) In Latin the word quadrigae is almost always used in the plural and usually refers to the team of four horses rather than the chariot they pull.

So, with the exception of the basing, I am going to call team red done, or at least the working chariots.  I still have two crashed chariots to do but I figured I could come back to those later.

I am hoping that the different coloured horses and slightly different charioteers should help the two chariots stand out from each other.

Gosh, it wasn’t until I started to really look at this closely that I realised just how many plebeians I would need to create a convincing crowd.  The thing is that whilst these serve absolutely no purpose in the game, I can’t imagine not having them as a backdrop.

Because I need so many, hundreds, in fact.   I am going to keep the painting on these really simple.  Contrast paints all the way and I am only really going to paint what you will be able to see.  Not like the Colosseum where I went to the effort of painting all their little sandals, that you can’t even see.

I wasn’t lying when I said simple paint jobs on the crowd.  The first batch is done.  Plenty more to do.

I think I have around 380 printed out so far.

Looking at the recommended playing area,

• 6mm Models minimum track size 60 cm x 30 cm
• 10-20mm Models minimum track size 90 cm x 45 cm
• Larger scale models minimum track size 120 cm x 60 cm

I needed to give some thought to how big the playing surface would actually be.

I had two main considerations to think about.

1. The playing surface needs to accommodate at least 12 chariots with enough room to move, plus the occasional hazard (Crowd invasion) that may occur.
2. The playing surface and backdrop need to look right.  By that I mean the length and the width need to look in proportion to each other as close as possible.  (The height will have to be kept low enough so you can actually reach inside though)

The figures I am using stand roughly 38-40mm tall from foot to eye.  So, the obvious way to go would be to simply double the playing area for 15-20mm scale figures.  This would give me an area of 180 cm x 90 cm.  So just over 5 1/2 Feet x 2 1/2 feet.

2 1/2 feet wide just doesn’t seem big enough.  With each chariot taking up roughly 4″ X 4″ and knowing that the width is essentially divided by two as they will race up one side, around a turning point and back down the other it really only gives maybe 18″ maximum on each side.  Probably less as any feature to race around will also eat into that space.

With this realisation, it was time to go big or go home.  Time to double the already doubled measurements.

This now gives me a table area of 11 (ish) feet by 5 (ish) feet with the internal size of the track being roughly 9 foot by 4 1/2 foot.

It’s really going to be a big project.

Thankfully I had pretty much already come to the conclusion that this was going to be huge and had set all my printers to the task in hand.

At the moment all the components are loose, I will need to work out a way of turning them into sub-assemblies for storage and to make set-up quicker.  It will also allow me to build smaller playing areas for games with fewer chariots.