In the Beginning

It's been a good few years since I started blogging on about my hobby.

I paint and then play wargames with toy soldiers. Truth be told, I do paint a lot more than I play, but that seems to suit me well enough overall. Now, for the most part my hobby has revolved mostly about the Seven Years' War, the French and Indian War, the various indignities inflicted upon the brown peoples of the world by the pink ones for their own good, but I have always harboured a desire to "do" ancients.

I suppose my first exposure to ancient wargaming came through my local library where I discovered Phil Barkers Airfix Guide to Ancient War Gaming (also known these days as the Purple Primer) and Charles Grant's The Ancient War Game. I read them somewhat incomprehendingly at the time (perhaps somewhat stumped by the idiosyncratic approach each took to the English language - who is to say?), but something must have happened in my little head. Years later and not long after had I joined the Old School Wargaming Yahoo group, I was out and tracking these two down through bookfinder.

I read the books and shelved them. WRG? Heard nothing good about those rules. Oh well. No, I wanted Old School. I wanted simple, elegant mechanisms. I wanted... oh I didn't know what I wanted really. WAB? Maybe. I was there just in time for it to curl up it's official toes.

What did I really want?

Doing ancients has always meant to me something along the lines of the Graeco-Persian Wars, the Peloppenesian War and possibly Alexanders' rampages through the ancient world. I've also always had a fascination with the Sumerian civilisation, that of Minoan Crete and of course of the Trojan Wars.

Then, about a year ago, I stumbled across these quite splendid blogs:

http://gatheringofhosts.blogspot.com.au/
http://parumpugna.blogspot.com.au/
Both are sadly not being updated at the moment, but I do live in hope. Both Ross and Harry have their own delightful rule-sets which they have published through their blogs. Harry's was also published in Battle Games #1. This being said, I lean very much toward Ross's own set and am building armies to play games based around them. Greeks and Persians first. The Greeks can morph into Athenians and Spartans later on and the Persians can mix it up with my part-done Macedonians later on. I aim to buy myself some of the charming Eureka Myceneans for a stab at some part of the Trojan Wars some time.

My next few posts will show off what's been done to date and I do intend a small game to get my head around the rules over the next weekend or two.

That'll be Dahae