Field of Glory review by Rich Jones at Wargames Journal

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Well I think I can safely say our normally sedate little wargames world had never been subjected to such fervour before as it has recently with the arrival of Field of Glory (FoG). This rule book actually made it onto the Amazon top sellers list and the pre-orders apparently (so those wonderful rumours would have us believe) actually outstripped the original print run, which in turn created more hype and demand. Whatever the reality, FoG has actually caused a bit of a stir!

People were pre-ordering the army list books before actually getting to play a game. Everyone it seemed couldn’t wait for the rules and boxes of ancient figures were being dusted off and got down from the loft. People who hadn’t played since WRG fourth edition and Shock of Impact (which were out when I was still at school and playing!) were getting revved up to play a new set of rules.

The forums (especially TMP) were buzzing with posts predicting that FoG would do for ancients what FoW had done for WWII gaming. You know, drag back the youngsters from the dark side of fantasy and sci-fi gaming! The tantalising teasers from the publishers seemed to support this... an excellent hard backed book written in a Games Workshop/Flames of War style of presentation - lots of pictures, diagrams, examples and hobby support information was to be on offer.

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Also, the reality of just what ‘quick play’ rules seemed to set in. Quick play in regard to most other ‘popular’ ancient battle rules didn’t necessarily mean 1-2 hours per game, as some would have hoped, but more like 3-4 hours, which I guess for some is an improvement over 5-6 hours! One thing was agreed on though: FoG isn’t just a remake of DBx as some had feared/hoped. Instead punters were complaining it was an amalgamation of other popular rule mechanics, such as Armati and Warmaster Ancients, set against a backdrop of WRG 6th Edition.

So were does that all leave us … well in my opinion it leaves us with a set of rules which are going to take the ancient wargame world by the scruff of the neck and give it a good damn good shake but are they enough to lure the younger player back into the historical fold? The simple answer has to be; unlikely.

Before I go on to discuss the actual mechanics a comment about the layout and production. These are without doubt the highest quality set of ancient rules I have ever seen. The production and presentation of the rules is a major draw card. The 170 odd pages packed with rules, examples, terrain and painting guides as well as a section on tactics for the ‘newbie’ are packaged inside a very nice hard cover. Inside the combination of Osprey’s expertise in publishing and Slitherine’s in all things computer has produced a heady mix of computer generated diagrams and pictures and hand drawn ‘Osprey’ prints.

[...] the rules have clearly been designed to oust all those niggly little measurement mechanics which always seem to cause so many ‘debates’, especially in competitions. They have achieved this really well, once you have your head around the movement system everything is straight forward, you can ‘shift’ up to a base width on a ‘simple’ forward move which gets rid of the oblique measurement, series of tiny wheels etc. Moves are classified (by troop) as simple or complex and a complex move needs a simple test, fail and you have to stay still or make a normal full move advance.

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28mm games look superb on a table this big. Using FoG for this type of game would be huge fun!

to make a BIG impression in the impact stage and having your commander fighting along side can make all the difference.

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Rich Jones at Wargames Journal