No problem, thought I, to the internet, a quick search for Ancient Skirmish Rules will soon see me straight. Saga, nope too late, Dux Bellorum, ditto, and so on. For the Roman period, there seems to be no skirmish rules, only massed battles (well with the possible exception of some Warhammer thingy, but no).
Since I've always been tempted by the idea of collecting middle ages skirmish figures (choosing between the First Crusade/Outremer, collapse of the Byzantine Empire, Mongol Invasions or Wars of the Roses period being the main stumbling block at this time), and with a "Must only buy terrain this year" Salute coming up, I indulged in a copy of the Lion Rampant rules by Osprey and having read through it occurred to me the rules covered exactly the scale of fighting I was looking for in my Ancients.
The task I've set myself is to convert the rules to be suitable for the mid-late Roman Republic, which involves the following steps:
- Adapting/creating suitable troop types to cover the options available and getting as close as possible to fair "Retinue" points
- Coming up with suitable leader tables for the Gauls, Germans and Romans (and possibly the Gladiators if I intend to play some gladiator revolt battles)
- Suitable renaming of everything to be less medieval
- Tweaking various things like challenge rules etc to better reflect the ancient setting.
