Contact Me
If you want to help with play-testing, please contact me using this form.
Sorry I've been a bit quiet - life has been busy. Last week was the kids' half-term holiday, which kept me busy, and we all went away, to Center Parcs near Penrith, last weekend. I'm only just catching up now.
While we were away I cleaned up and assembled a unit of Aventine Miniatures' Volscians and two Pyrrhic jumbos. Lovely models as always. I've started painting the jumbos - I'm typing this whilst waiting for the first dry-brushed highlight on the jumbos' skins to dry. By starting on 'Pyrrhics proper' though, I have taken myself a bit by surprise - I haven't worked out a colour scheme for Pyrrhus' army yet. I am completely stuck for a scheme. Red and black seems good, with plenty of white (and of course bronze helmets and armour - where the armour isn't linen that is). But is that really what I want to do - and isn't it a bit too similar to the Romans? All questions I need to get answers to before I get much older.
Last night I sent a copy of AVGVSTVS to AVRELIAN to Rich Clarke at Too Fat Lardies - the intention is for TFL to publish them, once they're finished, so I thought Rich ought to get an early look at them. The 'first draft' is complete - I can't think of anything much to add or change right now, so they are, essentially, ready for play-testing, with just one hold-up - a lack of army guides. I've written and play-tested guides for Early and Middle Imperial Romans, Ancient Britons and Sassanid Persians but, so far, haven't got any further. In order to play the game, one needs each troop type to have a characteristic profile (a bit like in Warhammer), which details the units' characteristics - movement, fighting ability, morale, weapons, armour, special rules, etc. Without those, the rules themselves aren't much use to anyone who doesn't have any of those particular four armies. The profiles aren't hard to 'dream up' - but they are time-consuming, and it takes careful thought (and sometimes a bit of play-testing) to come up with 'realistic' troop types which have the right 'flavour' and don't unbalance the game. Easy to do for familiar armies, much harder for ones you've only seen in the colour plates of an Osprey! But it's all looking pretty good really.
Volunteers to proof-read and play-test needed! I'm happy to have folks who just want to read the rules, find the typos and the inconsistencies, and that sort of thing, but really I want people who'll take the time to read the rules in detail and then actually (try to?) play the game, and provide detailed comments on what works and what doesn't, what's easy to understand and what isn't.
It's a game where, quite deliberately, basing doesn't matter, so long as it's fairly consistent between the two sides, so just about anyone with suitable armies ought to be able to play. You need to be able to differentiate between four different sizes of unit - Tiny, Small, Medium and Large. Figure scale doesn't matter at all - I've played with 28mm figures, and I've played with cardboard counters, and both work well (though, obviously, it's far more fun with proper figures!). The task also requires a degree of discretion - I don't want the results of my labours splurged all over the internet before I've even finished them, let alone had them published! And please don't use this as nothing more than an opportunity to get a set of free rules - if you do apply, and I send you a copy, please do the right thing and actually help!
If you want to help with testing or proof-reading, please feel free to get in touch via the contact form at left. Depending on the number of volunteers, I can't guarantee to involve everyone.
Right, back to dry-brushing jumbos!