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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bluenose" data-source="post: 5325806" data-attributes="member: 49017">Well, if you'll take a little advice, with Late Republican Romans be Caesar, not Crassus <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> I don't think I've ever seen a late Ptolemaic army - the earlier one with pikes lined up from one table edge to the other, or so it felt like, is another matter. What I like in a medieval set is a lot of emphasis on who is in command. FoG lacks personality rules, and that's fine for a lot of periods. I don't think it works quite for medieval armies. The FoG ones are just a touch too reliable for my tastes. To be fair, I don't think you could do a set of rules to cover such a long period and over the whole world, without either abstracting a lot of things or doing a lot of work in 'army books' describing the particular peculiarities of Army-X compared to Army-Y. You can do the latter for some periods, it's one reason I like Flames of War, but that's with twenty or so nationalities over a six year period. Ancients is far too large for that treatment.Most of my medievals are earlier 11th-12th century armies, assorted El Cid Spanish, de Hauteville south Italian Norman, north African/Spanish/Sicilian Muslims, I use Shattered Lances. It was written specifically for that period, and seems to me to do a really good job of it. The clash between the different military systems involved is perhaps the 'theme' of the rules. It can go into the detail of different ways a formation of horse archers will attack, and have rules for the successive shock effect of staggered charges by bodies of knights. Sassanids and Palmyrans are in Legions Triumphant, yes. I have to admit I wouldn't fancy the Carthaginians chances in that match up, particularly if the terrain was open. The Palmyrans are great at handling armies based around light/medium infantry, around skirmishing cavalry, or indeed most cavalry armies. Armoured shock troops, with something to keep the cataphracts off their flanks, usually leaves a lot of dead Palmyrans. They're also pretty bad in rough terrain, if they can't clear it with archery.</blockquote>

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