Campaign of the Ancients, Part One initial thoughts

I am currently working on a project to upgrade my copy of Conquest of the Empire from Eagle Games. I am in the process of changing out many of the pieces that came with the game, replacing them with 6mm Baccus miniatures. The siege engines, cities and galleys that came with the game are a hard plastic and so were suitable for painting up.

Having lots of time to think whilst painting the aforementioned items, my mind wandered to creating an ancients campaign using the beautiful map board that comes with the game. It is about four feet by three feet, and would make an excellent map for such a campaign.

I have numerous coloured wooden blocks from my copies of Command and Colors Napoleonics and it supplements, They could be pressed into service to represent the different nations, with maybe a letter or number attached to each block, which would represent an army, the makeup of which, would be noted elsewhere. Some other markers could be used to show supply bases, which would need to be established by any army on the march. They would also serve to show lines of communication.

The painted up city tiles, they can be placed with walls around them too, could be utilized in the game.

A full set of siege engines are also ready to go, though important for the board game, would probably not be used in the campaign game, but who knows? maybe they will.

I also have eight galleys for each of the six nations, a total of 48, so transport by sea and of course naval battles could, and probably would, come into play.

I am looking at using 15mm DBA armies to fight the actual battles. Magister Militum do a huge range of DBA armies of which I have tentatively chosen six, the chosen armies are not set in stone and in actual fact will not be ordered until October this year. I wanted early Classical armies and so here is my current list. The pre-packed armies come with all the variations for that particular army as well as their respective MDF bases.

II/11 Gallic DBA

1 x 1 Light chariot
1 x 4 Warband General
1 x 3 Warband General
2 x 3 Cavalry
2 x 1 Light chariot
8 x 3 Warband
1 x 2 Psiloi


II/12 Alexandrian Macedonian DBA

1 x 3 Knights General
1 x 3 Cavalry
1 x 2 Light Horse
6 x 4 Pike
1 x 4 Spear
2 x 4 Auxillia
2 x 2 Psiloi
1 x 1 Artillery


I/22 New Kingdom Egypt DBA

1 x 1 Light chariot General
3 x 1 Light chariot
3 x 4 Blade
3 x 3 Blade
4 x 4 Bow
1 x 2 Psiloi
1 x 3 Warband


I/61 Early Carthaginian DBA

1 x 1 Heavy chariot General
1 x 3 Cavalry General
1 x 1 Heavy chariot
1 x 3 Cavalry
1 x 2 Light horse
6 x 4 Spear
1 x 4 Warband
2 x 3 Auxillia
2 x 2 Psiloi


I/60 Early Achaemid Persian

1 x 3 Cavalry General
1 x 3 Cavalry
1 x 2 Light horse
2 x 4 Bow
2 x 8 Bow
1 x 3 Bow
3 x 3 Auxillia
2 x 2 Psiloi
1 x 7 Horde
2 x 4 Auxillia


II/64 Middle Imperial Roman

1 x 3 Cavalry General
1 x 4 Knight
1 x 3 Cavalry
2 x 2 Light horse
3 x 4 Blade
4 x 4 Auxillia
1 x 4 Bow
1 x 3 Blade
1 x 2 Psiloi
1 x 1 Artillery


I have never played DBA before, and may well move onto L'Art de la Guerre or Mortem et Gloriam for larger scale engagements when I have added more figures to the basic DBA armies. Though I do want to keep the battles to a small size table 2 x 2 or 3 x 3 feet.

So that is my initial thoughts, lots of planning and other things to work out yet of course, but that is all part of the fun when creating something like this.