The number of cards you get depends on how good your general is, with Legendary generals such as Alexander the Great getting five and mediocre generals getting two. In the latest deck, Simon has also put numbers on them for people who have difficulty seeing different colours whilst the backs of the cards now match the game mats so as not too look to out of place on the wargames table. A deck comes with the game in which the cards are coloured black, white, green, yellow and red. In essence, in order to move your units you need to have cards to do so. The Command and Control system in MeG is unique as far as I am aware. This is a really clever idea and aims to replicate a part of campaigning that is often ignored in wargames rules.
Once the pre-battle manoeuvres are finished, the key terrain features are placed and other terrain diced for. Armies with good scouting ability and light horse can do well here, forcing opposing armies onto ground of their choosing. The new edition retains the innovative pre-battle system, where the terrain for your wargame is decided by playing out a short game that represents the movement of the opposing armies in the five days prior to battle. Indeed, these rules provide some images of units at the back of the rules for you to print out and stick onto bases, allowing new players to try out the rules even if they do not own any ancient miniatures, which I thought was a great idea. Using the “Pacto” or compact option, players can get started with MeG without needing huge Ancient armies. In the compendium edition, suggestions are included for playing MeG at three different levels: Maximus, with a huge number of bases, through Magna, which has fewer bases in each unit but retains the same number of units, to Pacto, where each unit might be represented by only one or two bases. They are designed for any scale of figures, with the number of bases being the key factor, but most games seem to be played using 15mm miniatures. Each base costs points, dependent on its skill level, with well-armoured veterans costing considerably more than unarmoured militia. There is a much better contents page, making finding rules that much easier, and I thought the rules just flowed better than the original.įor the uninitiated, armies in MeG are made up of “bases.” Each base will have three or four figures on it of the appropriate troop type and a certain number of bases will be combined to make a unit, or Tactical Unit Group (TUG).
It is in full colour and contains excellent artwork depicting various ancient armies as well as numerous photos of wargame armies deployed for battle. What is new is the layout and the presentation of the game.
Simon has made some small changes to flank charges, break offs and several other rules brought about by feedback from MeG players to remove some of the more beardy loopholes that people were exploiting, but if you have played MeG before then there will not be much here that changes your game experience. So what can players expect from the updated “Compendium Edition” of MeG? Well, in terms of rule changes and amendments, not a lot. First edition MeG came in a snazzy ring binder that was very useful for leaving the rules open at a particular page, but also came with numerous quick reference sheets that actually meant you often didn’t need to refer to the ring binder at all.
I believe MeG was his first venture into writing rules “solo” and, although the first edition of these rules is very different from both DBM and FoG, fans of these rules will certainly see similarities. Mortem et Gloriam (MeG) is an increasingly popular set of wargames rules which aims to cover the ancient period from Biblical times through to late medieval.Īuthor, Simon Hall, was a big fan of the various iterations of the DBM rules and was involved in writing their successor, Field of Glory.