Gladiators

"The General Nov-Dec 1981)

The purpose of this blog is two-fold, firstly to record my new project "Gladiators" (in case you hadn't guessed by the name) and secondly so as not to interfere with my othe Blog's main purpose of recording my Zombie Project. (Zabadka's ZombieWorld).

I don't see this blog as long term, as this project has a much less "open-ended" nature than one where you're trying to make a whole world.

This proect has its roots in the early 1980s when my gaming group of friends regularly played board-games and "Avalon Hill" games in particular (normally within a couple of months of the games  coming out too).
 "Gladiator" was readily accepted and greatly appreciated, it was fun, quick and relatively easy to "pick up and play" and though I never actually purchased the game (my contribution being "Circus Maximus" some time later), I was hooked and got the second rules copy for my personal use.

Many, many years later my boardgaming and wargaming habits moved on and any thoughts of having a Gladiator project were filed away.

I now come to the present day situation where Gladiatoral combat seems once more to be in vogue with many fine figures and rules sets readily available far more than the two or three options available in the 1980s !

There were also bloggers recounting their own ventures into Gladiator combat "Carmen's Fun painty Time" is truly inspiring for those considering this.

So the seed was sown and I began by looking at what I already had, which wasn't much, the original Avalon Hill set of rules, some old logsheet of gladiators we had in our "schools" (mine seem to mostly say "dead") and other Gladiator rule sets. "Gladiator Skirmish Rules", then by Gladiaotor Games (now "Morituri te Salutant" and still available in their third incarnation), but my copies of "Rudis" are sadly still unfound.
The totality of my available research was a couple of Books on uniforms that featured brief mentions of Gladiators (I rarely game in any period that don't include gunpowder) and a more "scholarly" work
"Those about to die" by Daniel P. Mannix.



The next problem of course was funding this project, but that was fairly easily solved by my penny jar that was almost full and as I hadn't bought any substantial amount of figures in over three years I never felt the least bit guilty !
About a third of the available cash would be for figures (there are only so many that you need) another third would be for reasearch, books, rules, games, CDs etc. and the final third being for all those extras that are always going to be needed.

With the preliminary planning in place, I am now in a postion to say the project has started and I'm actually several weeks into it. A lot of this blog has already been pre-written too, whilst I've beenbeavering away on this project.

In my next blog post I'll be looking at the 'all important' figures available, my choices and their reasons.