Late Roman Republic Wars: Commander Cards
I've spent the best part of the last two full days researching and generating Commander cards for Hail Caesar wargames. As I have a significant number of late republic Romans and Celts/Galls to fight them I have designed a series of unit cards and Commander cards to make play easier ... so much easier.
They are designed to fit onto A5 card stock which I keep in plastic sleeves in folders. I find these increasingly essential for all my wargames as I have quick, easily identifiable references to hand for each unit type and leader model which contains all the information I need.
If you play Warlord Games rules as I do, I imagine like me, you often overlook special rules and are forever diving back into the rules to remind yourself of this weapon type or that commander attribute. Lists can achieve much of this but my eyes aren't getting any better and the font size in rules has be swapping multi-focals for readers constantly.
I had a lot of fun with this lot even it is has been a bit of work. It's just another facet of this multi-disciplined hobby of ours. I have generated 23 commanders like these - all the Romans I think I will need and five Gallic/Celt leaders. I haven't done the other enemies of Rome for the period as I don't have those armies. Perhaps in time yes?
I determined the overall leadership ratings with reference to Warlord Games supplement Age of Caesar which only took me so far. I turned to the sources and accounts to see how successful each commander was and against whom. If there was specific reference such as Sulla's ability with cavalry, then I looked to how I might replicate that.
Getting images for each commander took some work. When there was a sketch available through Google Images, I poached it. Often, there was a statue which I 'picturized' using Adobe Photoshop. For my Marius and Sulla, I worked from archeological reconstructions from statues of what it is thought they looked like - which I picturized.
A couple of Romans had no image at all but they had minted coins - such as that above from Metellus Scipio. For the Galls/Celts there were two Victorian era statues and nothing else of course, so I formatted drawings/artwork I poached from the internet.
The little coins in the top left of each card indicate either the Marian, Caesarian or Octavian period of the late Roman republic (as I identify them). If you are interested in using these yourself, I have linked this post to the document together with a selection guideline.
Comments
Post a Comment