Blast from the past

Found some old photos of games from around 1985/86 on my first permanent table in first marital home. Aahh good old nostalgia it warms the cockles.................................


6mm King Tiger (old GHQ) and H&R Infantry. Bellona vacum form house & bridge

6mm Panthers (either GHQ or CinC) with metal Irregular Minis houses and Resin Farm by a Belgian firm whose name I forget (Mainly Military ?)

Various 6mm Russian vehicles back when I used 1:1 scale rules with micro-armour. Think it would have been Combined Arms by TTG ? 

Bellona hills and walls. Still using these buildings and the trees !!

Floodlit (!?) Panther & Tiger (old GHQ) with Davco T34/85 sneaking up behind

GHQ (newer) Tigers

WRG 15mm 7th Edition Ancients with my (still going strong) Avars vs Arab Imperial

Maurikian Byzantines (right) vs Arabs. Hun nobles in wedge emerging from wood, those were the days ! 

Ancients Rules test
Ancients rumminations.............
Played DBM 3.1 Ancients game with SB using Polybian Romans vs his Carthaginians. Close fought game which I eventually lost. DBM3.1 is my preferred version of Dbm but still unsatisfying in several respects.
So during past week I have tried out a number of Ancients rulesets with similar oppossing forces (ie Polybian/Republican Romans and Gauls/Celts) in 15mm using a 6' x 4' table with unchanging terrain and solo play.
1st set tried was Warmaster Ancients which gave a good quick game but felt tad unsatisfying (possibly larger forces needed). Lots of die rolling and large moves/ranges. Easy to understand rules and concepts. Romans trunced Gauls but lots of dead on both sides.
2nd test was with Armati II. VERY restrictive set-ups and manoeuvre, more historical/accurate no doubt but not much of a game in the end as essentially 2 straights line clashed and became a pure dice rolling battle (Romans annihilated Gauls for virtually no loss). The unit stats/combat system is fine and quick play but the lack of movement is too restrictive for my liking.
3rd test with WRG 7th edition (a blast from past) Most complex set but surprisingly playable (possibly due to my long ago useage ?). Slow overall with lots of charts etc and felt more like a skirmish than a large battle.
Still to try out Might Of Arms (altough I know I like these) and PK Archon II.