The slightly overdue revision of Civitates Bellantes is now complete and the rules are available as a free download in the rules section of my site.

Civitates Bellantes sets out to simulate warfare in Europe, the near East and the Mediterranean from about 500 BC to 200 AD. The scope of the fully revised rules includes the wars of Greece and Persia, the Macedonian conquests and the successor Hellenistic states, and also those of Rome from the republic to early empire.

I took this photo of Simon Miller's late republican legionaries during a game at his place last year using an earlier version of Civitates. It is one of my favourite pics due to the soft focus and apparent morning mist on the battlefield. I would like to claim I managed this all through my skill as a photographer but actually it was pure fluke.

Civitates Bellantes is the result of a collaboration between myself and Caoimhín Boru and is based on the mechanisms that I developed for Comitatus. This gives players the opportunity to use familiar systems across a much wider time span, while still retaining the special characteristics of each period.

We have spent a great deal of time and effort on getting the right balance between legions and phalanx as well as ensuring that the actual tactics of the ancients will really work on the games table. Therfore unlike virtually any other ancients rules you can actually field a legion as a single unit in its 3 line formation and use the lines to support and releive each other.

Why not give it a go?