Rules Review - Mark's Game Room's CANDID Take on Osprey's Men of Bronze 

Ouch! 😭 Well, I would be happy to chat about my thinking behind the game. It sounds like you guys know where you can find me if you are interested.

I have played ‘Wars of the Republic’ which is Eric’s ‘follow on’ set of rules about a dozen times. They feel like a version 2 set with a number of improvements and refinements over ‘Men of Bronze’. My friend and I are working through many of the battles from the Punic Wars with 28mm figures in multi figure bases and we feel it delivers a fun game with enough depth for players to work through strategy without being too bogged down by complex movement and combat mechanisms. Good video btw.

This is a problem with much of Ospreys rules. It is clear they have not been play tested enough. I need more than the developer to play test their game. Of course there were gems, Lion Rampant and others but you would think Osprey would care more about their brand.

A pretty fair and balanced review, nothing in this video that I would be worried about. Perhaps take up the author on his offer of a chat if you have time?

Anything that tries to model pike, or units that rely on mass and shock, are difficult to impossible to model well in Skirmish scale. The Renaissance is particularly challenging for this type of ruleset too. Long stabby things in a group of 5 -10 people are not that effective, or more importantly for a game, evocative. "Jason and the Argonauts" or "The Adventures of Sinbad" (stop motion films) even Troy themes may have been a better title and work-around for these rules. Alexander lightened up his hypaspists and ditched the pike on raids/expeditions and armed the soldiers more like peltasts/hill infantry, this would work for this ruleset -Chaeronea or Cannae not so much.

Thanks for the video. I generally like Rules Reviews, even as in this case it's not for a period I play. After watching your reviews and Little Wars reviews, the one thing I would like to see if you recommend a rules set is what things would you change to make it a better game. What are your "house rules".

Great review, what ancients rule set do you like for unit sized battles

What minis did you guys use at the start for the filming

Scale agnostic doesn’t mean based individually or movement trays. It means use any scale. The game seems to be designed to be played with models individually based at any model scale you want.

Has any kind individual taken up the task of re-writing the rules so that they are easy to follow? What ruleset would you recommend?

Best rules are HOPLOMACHIA by The Perfect Captain.

Sounds like Greek heroic style a few men/units of few men whould work fine. Espcially with the "action points".

15:56 "Apposed" ?? 😉 I appreciate your honest evaluations. I see the author has commented so it would be interesting to hear a followup.

Thanks!

A ancient skirmish game I could recommend is Mortal Gods by footsore miniatures. Would love to hear your thoughts on that if you ever got round to reviewing it