Today I visited the Phalanx Wargame Show in NW England UK. I had a great time there and have taken plenty of photographs and offered some observations.

All of this is over on the blog (link below). The post opens with a Fake News posting, if you don't like sort of thing, just scroll straight past it.

One thing, the new Warlord Games Epic Revolution was released today and is in my hands :-)

LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2025/06/phalanx-2025-wargame-show.html

The courier has just delivered this to my door!

This is Volume 9 in the series Great Battles of the American Civil War boardgame by GMT, a series that can be traced back to the late 70's, but it is fair to say has become a complicated system..... or deep and immersive, depending upon your take.

Either way, By Swords & Bayonets sets out to be the module that is friendly to the newcomer as a 'manageable introduction to the core mechanics and rule systems of the series'.

It appears to attempt this in three ways. 1. Smaller Actions on half-sized maps 2. Needing less of the system i.e. no cavalry 3. It includes a new 31-page full colour illustrated body of examples of play - excellent!

Likewise, the rulebook comes in at 41 pages and the scenario book has 30 pages and the latter brings additional specific rules to each scenario, so this is all quite meaty.

For me, I have two things in mind. Firstly I am looking for a really immersive system for the period, one that has some of the aspects that you would find in a figures game such as orders, refused flanks and extended order etc. 

Secondly, the next game in the series is a reprint of the rather large 3 Days at Gettysburg. This has plenty of smaller scenarios, including the opening hours of the Gettysburg battle, which is of particular interest to me and I would like to play that with a more involved system that works hard to get the history right.

I have read somewhere that a 'Simples' style rulebook is being designed for the series and will be released the same time as Gettysburg. I hope so, because I enjoy the 'Simples' type rulebook that I have for the Great Battles of the Ancient World Series. It just gives an alternative so that I can choose the level of complexity that I wantto engage with.

Anyway, the four battles that come with By Swords & Bayonets are;

Big Bethel, Mill Springs, New Bern and 2nd Rappahannock Station.

The game scale is 140 yards per hex, 20 foot height gradations, 1 turn represents an hour and 50 men or 1 cannon i.e. represented by 1 strength point. The counters are regiments.

I will need to give this some dedicated time. The individual rules seem straightforward, it is their volume and the number of exceptions or special cases that brings the complexity.

(Hi Mark) I decided to set up a small situation with the Warlord Games Epic Hannibal figures to give the Ancient Rule Box set by irregular Miniatures a run out. I did play making a lot of detailed notes to show the various interactions of the phases, but it ran in so many directions and was getting complicated to write that I decided a brief overview would be better ….. Phew you say!

The above is not to say there is complication here, there isn’t, but there is nuance aplenty.

For the trial we have 2 x Celt Warband on a hill, with Republican Romans below. There are two units of Hastati in front and two of Principes behind, in the chequered formation that we are familiar with for the period. The rules allow rear support from a unit directly behind, but I thought here, it would best represent the manipular system to allow the diagonal second row to count as support to the first row and also to allow them to step forward in the movement phase, to fill those gaps and create a long phalanx type line, again in keeping with the maniple system. 

I should really also have put some Triarii in the rear to complete the scene, but hey ho, I never thought they might be called upon!

We will count all of these units as ‘battle troops’. They will all be Class ‘C’, so they each run everything off a D8. The Romans will count as Regular and the Celts Irregular. The Romans have a strength of 6 per unit, the Warbands 7 (arbitrary numbers that I gave them).

All units are given ‘at start’ orders. The Celts are ordered to ‘hold the hill’. The Romans are ordered to ‘destroy the Celts’!

The hill will count as rough ground. This not only slows troops, but troops moving over rough ground temporarily lose 1 strength point (or strip depending how you are representing forces and casualties) - they will regain that point in a later movement phase if they don’t move, so it is a sort of cohesion thing.

The units might have to take Panic Tests. To do that they roll their Class dice, in this case D8 for everyone and try to score more than their number of losses to date. If they do they pass, if not they fail - nice and easy.

For combats, a unit generally creates a number of hits. An automatic hit is landed if the number of hits reaches the units class value (all 8 in our scenario). Any remainders or the number of hits if the Auto hit level is not reached is tested against a class dice, so D8 here. The defender has to roll higher than the remainder to prevent the hit getting through.

So 6 hits against any of our units would not give an auto hit, because the units are dealing with 8’s, so that 6 would just be treated like a remainder. Roll higher than 6 with a D8 to prevent the hit being made against your unit.

With all that said; 

Our Romans advance to the foot of the hill. Next turn they moved up the hill. Because it is rough ground the movement penalty means the Romans cannot make contact, so no charge this turn. The Hastati though do suffer 1 hit each (temporary) for moving over the rough ground.

The Romans are now close enough for the Warbands to throw some missiles, which they do and the left hand Hastati takes an extra hit.

In the next turn the Romans want to charge to contact, this is automatic unless the enemy is stronger than you are, then you must take a Panic Test - our Romans need to take the test, they are confident, but roll abysmally and fail ….. Oh Dear!

I decide that this is just too much temptation for the Warbands and they will hurl themselves down hill at the Roman Hastati in a charge.

(Note, if the Romans had been able to charge, they would freeze the charge 10mm in front of the enemy and discharge their pilum in pre-contact missile fire once done the charge would make contact).

The Warbands are stronger than the Hastati, so automatically can charge. They make contact and have a few advantages for modifiers, one is charging downhill and another good one being ‘Irregulars charging who have the Initiative’, though this is only applicable in the 1st round (hand to hand combat can go to three rounds over 3 turns).

Inflicting damage is simultaneous, in each fight, both sides attack and the side taking most hits must take a Panic Test. Both Roman units come off worse and they fail their respective Panic Tests, so they rout. They run 120mm.

The Celts test to see whether they can or must pursue. They roll well and get a choice, but pursuit makes sense because in the pursuit, they will contact the second Roman line - the Principes and that will count as a new charge.

This is done and a new round ‘1’ of hand-to-hand is fought as this is a new combat …… and the Romans stand their ground. In the second round of combat, the Celts loose some 1st round benefit of the charge, while the Romans gain for being regulars.

In this round, the left hand Celt unit is routed. It flees back up onto the hill and then manages to rally, but it has 50% losses.

This allows the freed up Roman unit to support its fellow unit against the remaining Celt unit. It freezes movement at 10mm and discharges the pilum (1 hit) and then charges home.

The second Celt unit also routs and flees up the hill with heavy loss.

The original two Hastati units were unable to rally and they have already fled the field. The two Principes units are holding losses and they are just glad not to have been swept away by the Warband, they have no intention of going back up that hill!

And so it all ends. I thought as a story, than went quite well. The Roman attack uphill faltered, the warbands charge but run out of steam and fall back. If one can imagine similar stuff going on along the whole battle line, then I think these rules would quite nicely manage a whole battle.

It took 7 turns to play through this situation. So I think for my next venture, I will do the battle of Trebia, again with my unpainted Epic figures as that will include several unit types including skirmish, phalanx and elephants and then there is that river crossing of course with its freezing waters - some special rules needed there perhaps.

Anyway a good initial impression for this old school set. I have already had a fivers worth :-)   More to come.