Is Hail Caesar dying?

We are working on improving the community site. There is more planned for Hail Caesar!

I’m not sure if Hail Ceasar is dying but I find the new forum to be a bit tricky; I stopped trying to post pics of projects and AAR’s as either the photos wouldn’t show or the post got flagged as spam. When  the old system got binned a lot of people did not return; I saw that with another of my favourite forums. Having said that, the Bolt Action sub-forum is still relatively healthy but it is a much more popular system.

The rules are just one side, the problem for the Forum  are the miniatures. The Warlord ancients are good but there are other companies with very good ancients. In old Forum that was no problem. We could show them too.

Last week I had a bigger battle setting on my table.  But  Punic wars – so not Warlord.  And my EIR are metal, pre Warlord era good quality ones.  Just a few Warlord additions.

Yes, I think it might be partly due to the fact that Warlord don’t rule the ancients’ wargaming world.  Might change as they bring out more figures? I am so late to the party that I would’ve expected more presence here, on what must surely be the main forum for the game?

I think the strength of the openness of the Hail Caesar rules (and Black Powder) might also be its weakness, since the rules are aggravatingly vague or dispersed on occasion . This doesn’t bode well in competitive environments (even friendly ones, where we need to know we are singing from the same hymn sheet). Most of my questions on this forum are an attempt to pin down precise details since I am used to absolute precision of DBx or board games like ASL  And it amazes me how basic some of the questions I have needed to ask are. (Admittedly some were my failings of reading the books carefully enough).

There is also another aspect that is harder to explain. Traditional rules such as DBx, WRG, and all the rest of it, have built in certain expectations of how an ancient battle plays out  (I know that is ridiculous and umbrella), but that is how it is. You can read criticisms of how HC or BA is just a “game” and “not a simulation”—  as if any other rules fair much better (!). How could they, since no rules could possibly simulate thousands of years  of conflict in all manner of places and situations.  I think Mr Priestly has mentioned he designed it more as a game between friends which is fine.  But might that alienate the traditionalists?  But personally, so far, I have found the games we’ve played to well resemble, in general, ancient battle reports.

When it comes to the WW2 stuff there isn’t much competition out there, not at skirmish level anyway, unless you like wildly random card/dice-driven games with comical events effectively hugely influencing battle outcomes (I’m sure you know the one I mean, and I am sure I will upset someone who will be tempted to explain how all games are random and how the fog of war pervades all. Yes, yes, yes…Just how much fog do you want?).

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by SteveT.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by SteveT.

Well before Covid struck, our little group regularly played lots of Hail Caeser,  between us we have lots of Ancient armies and Dark Aged armies , we got together every week , and at least three out of Four weeks was a Hail caeser game.