In this page I have set out the house rules adopted during our campaign battles that added to or altered the standard rules of MeG, ADLG or TtS! additional to the ones laid out in the campaign rules.
ADLG
No house rules have been added.
MeG
Manlii v Julii campaign
1. As we played though a video link we each drew from our own pack of Command Cards. This shouldn't normally make any difference to the probability of any particular general drawing any particular cards except when players retain cards for the future turns. In this case, as each player has his own set of cards, one player cannot influence the cards likely to be drawn by their opponent as is the case when only one pack is used. The rationale for being able to retain cards is not explained in the MeG rules except for flank marches so it is difficult to see why an opponent's card draw should be affected in the first place by their opponent.
2. Gordon commented in several of our early campaign games using MeG that there appeared to be a certain inevitability of a unit winning a fight when it had even a mere one combat claim advantage over its opponent when locked into a melee combat. Whilst I didn't find it to be quite so cut and dried I agreed that there was an issue, compounded by the deployment procedure and the relative speed that units are able to close to combat, which sometimes can give limited scope to rectify a bad matchup.
The issue is compounded
in MeG Maximus where each unit may have three or four files in combat the
averaging effect of so many rolls means that, even if the side with the worst
colour die betters its opponent in one or two rolls, over the space of several
turns our experience is it is generally only a matter of time before the unit rolling the worst die
is destroyed.
Looking at Death Die overall lethality, taking a Skull as 2 hits and a Wound as 1, they are
graded as follows:
Lethality
Increase
Black 1 - -
White 2 1 100%
Green 4 2 100%
Yellow 5 1 25%
Red 7 2 40%
The above chart demonstrates the problem – a green Death Die is twice as lethal as a white, so the match up moves straight from one where the lethality is equal (green v green) to one where if one side has only a one claim advantage it is twice as likely to be as lethal as the other (green v white) - an increase of 100%. The problem is compounded by the fact that the chance of obtaining a Shatter or Shove result on a green Death Die is also twice that of a white one.
Also, rather counter-intuitively, the ‘increase in lethality’
actually drops substantially (from 100% to 25%) when moving from a green to a yellow Death Die, picking up again
when moving from yellow to red, but in percentage terms only to 40%.
An obvious
alteration, to smooth out the curve, is to reduce the green Death Die lethality to 3, this can be
simply done by removing one Wound result so that the lethality becomes as follows:
Lethality Increase
Black 1 - -
White 2 1 100%
Green 3 1 50%
Yellow 5 2 67%
Red 7 2 40%
This makes
the trend in the lethality increase more logical as there is no step down in the increase in lethality rate from the
green to yellow Death Die. The increase in lethality from the yellow to red Death Die remains at 40%, a reduction from the 67% of the green to yellow but without starting to adjust further rolls this will need to remain.
There are
several issues that appear to have a bearing here:
a. Some units are far better in the charge phase
than in the fighting phase and will therefore on average do more damage to their
opponent in that phase and vice versa for melee specialists.
b. The majority of combats, whether in the charge
or fighting phases, are situations where one side is at most one up i.e. a green Death Die is rolled versus the opponent’s white Death Die in a large proportion of combats. Reducing
the lethality of the green Death Die will inevitably make games longer.
In order that
the issue in (a) is taken into account the proposal, therefore, is to reduce
the lethality of the green Death Die in both the charge and fighting phases as
per the above by rolling a second normal d6 when rolling a green Death Die. If
that die rolls a 1-3 any Wound result on the green Death Die is treated as a blank, on a
4-6 it stands.
The issue in
(b) above, whilst being important for competition game organisers who are under
pressure to get games finished in set time limits, is not so important for our
campaign. In addition, if there is an army that a player believes will be more
adversely affected by this change than its opponent it can be taken into account
in the bidding process.
NB this modifier will only apply to combat rolls i.e. melee combat in both the charge and fighting phases plus shooting rolls. It will not be applied to any KaB tests involving a green Death Die.
This revision
will be tested from Game eleven of the campaign and assessed following those games.
Assessment post game 11
The change undoubtedly had an impact, it approximately downgraded the results of the green Death die in 5-6 of my throws and double that for Gordon. Without that change the game may well have been fought to a conclusion in the time we had but not only did it lead to a feeling that the combats weren't one sided but several of them were going against the odds.
We will continue the assessment going forward where we are using MeG Magna.
Assessment post game 12
Gordon rolled several green Death dice when shooting with his skilled bowmen and was affected a couple of times by the house rule, it definitely made me more confident at advancing towards his unit of skilled shooters. I am coming to like the rule, skilled shooters seem a touch overpowered under the standard rules so this tones down their effectiveness a bit, they are still 50% more effective than experienced shooters but are not ridiculously devastating.
Assessment post game 19
This game was over quite quickly with few green Death dice rolled, Gordon's charging lancers were rolling yellows or better in the charge phase. Neither side particularly benefitted from the change.
Assessment post game 22
Another quick game with only a half a dozen green dice rolled by me. Of the three wounds that I rolled all were confirmed so I got lucky, but in themselves not a game winner.
Calpurnii v Flaminii
No house rules have been added but we have adopted the 2026 Competition Amendments published in the forum.
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