ONUS! Gaming the ancient world without figures - a review and session report

In a bit of a break from the usual, the theme for today’s post is not really anything nostalgic at all, but is related to my main hobby which is the playing of wargames, part of a general fascination/obsession with military history (so there is a historical theme, be it ever so tenuous). I have to apologise to regular readers of the blog (Ho ho! Allow me my conceits please) for its appearance here. I would normally have posted it in my other blog, St Cyr On Wheels, but I find that due to technical difficulties (ta very much, Virgin Media) that blog is now forever out of bounds. So, it has to go somewhere. Anyone without an interest in wargaming may look away now; or maybe not, you may find yourself a fan by the time you’ve reached the end!

Having now lived in Northampton for a couple of years and now that I once again have some time for gaming, I have been reaching out to folks on BoardGameGeek with a view to finding someone reasonably local who might be able to provide a gaming outlet. I have been fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Jim from Derby, who now regularly makes his way over to Carey Towers for a day's gaming and - mirabile dictu - has the sort of wargame collection that can only make one salivate. In the last couple of months we have been able to get to grips with the Hexasim Eagles of France system which I like very much, along with forays into the lighter COIN multipacks, which on the whole I like a little less although they do present some interesting challenges, and an hour or two of W1815, which is basically the Battle of Waterloo on speed.

This week it was the turn of an ancients game system that started life as a Kickstarter project and bears the name ONUS! (with exclamation mark). ONUS! is the brainchild of a couple of Spanish designers, Luis Álvaro Hernández and Alvar Sanz, and the idea is a game that has the feel of a miniatures game without the need for any actual miniatures, their place being taken by cards. The idea is not exactly new; there are other games out there which try to replicate that feel of a rules-light, free-flowing miniatures game, some of which do actually use fairly generic miniatures. As someone who enjoys both board wargames - which is I'm afraid all I really have room for these days in my little bungalow - and miniatures games (entirely over Zoom and mostly as a guest of Jon, the excellent host of the Palouse Wargaming Journal) I was curious to see how ONUS! measured up. Especially as I am a huge fan of the Command & Colors:Napoleonic range which is arguably another of those hybrid board/miniature malarkies, this time using stickered blocks to represent the units and which has an Ancients counterpart.

The release of the ONUS! games has not sought to follow any ancient Chronology. The initial pack covered the Punic Wars, with later expansions for the Persian Wars, before the series seemed to move towards a greater interest in Rome, with individual armies being published for various Roman generals (so the civil wars of the First Triumvirate can be fought) and for enemies of Rome (for example, Vercingetorix). The latest expansions have included armies for Trajan's Dacian Wars and those of Claudius and Vespasian in Britain. The fact that a whole army can be published as a pack of cards immediately signals how easily expandable this game is once one has the basic ruleset. 

As always I planned to read the rules before Jim brought the game over, it seems only courtesy to take the effort to familiarise myself with the basics rather than force my companion to explain them all at my leisure. It was with some dismay therefore that I saw that they were 52 pages long. My days of easily reading 52-page rulesets are now long behind me. My poor ageing brain doesn't retain information the way it used to and I always begin to feel anxious that once the game starts I will end up having to dive into this dense manual every five minutes for something I've forgotten (and still end up getting it wrong!). A ruleset of maybe 20-30 pages with lavish illustrations and extensive examples of play (think the aforementioned Hexasim Eagles of France series) is about the edge of my comfort zone in my dotage.

Happily though I found a 30-minute YouTube video which adequately explained the rules and made slogging through 52 pages unnecessary. Does this mean the rules are a little verbose? Possibly. I did notice that there were points in the game where clarification was needed and the rules didn't really help much despite their length, so perhaps some verbiage could be shed for greater conciseness and less ambiguity. They are translated from Spanish which might not help, I don't know.

The 52 pages of rules boil down to what is in essence a very simple game. Each unit is a card with a value. The players can choose to play a historical scenario or can build their own armies by choosing units up to an arbitrary total value. Obviously the more powerful a unit is, the more it costs, so players have to decide how to balance their army's needs against how many points they have left to spend. Do you want a few very powerful units or a larger number of which a few will likely end up as cannon fodder? Generals are available, and each general can affect the battle in different ways, but they aren't free. A really effective general like Julius Caesar will set you back 30% of your total spending power so you'll have less to spend on units.

Each unit card shows a row of numbers: the unit's cost, its melee combat values, its ranged combat value and range, its defense values, its morale, the number of hit points it can take and its movement allowance. It also shows a row of circles which indicate the unit's capabilities - some units can skirmish, some can form a shield wall, some are so fearless that they will never break but will fight to the last, and so on. There is a list of these capabilities/attributes in the ruleset and, like the armies themselves, one can imagine that they will be expandible in future releases. Note that some of the attributes are not always an advantage. Some units, for example, have the attribute of being 'brash', meaning that, whether activated or not, they will charge at any unit that is within a move's unit allowance, which might not be what their general wants!

A Roman infantry unit in ONUS! The artwork is perhaps slightly cartoonish but there's a lot of essential information concisely presented.

The unit card is also divided into sections. The number of dice rolled in combat depends upon how many of those sections abut the card of the opposing unit, and if the attacking unit's card overlaps the opponent's card then the overlapping sections can envelope them and roll dice for flank or rear attacks.

Each army's turn is made up of seven phases:

• Activation. As with the C&C games, the phasing player activates a number of units using cards from their hand. Any number of cards may be used in combination, but they are not replenished immediately and they are the same cards used in melee and ranged combat so they need to be used with caution.

• Movement. Activated units can move. To capture that miniatures feel movement is based on physical distance, each army has a ruler in its own colour and everything.

• Ranged combat. Units with missiles can throw them at a distance.

• Skirmishing. Units with the skirmishing capability can use any unused movement allowance to move again. This allows hit and run attacks on less mobile units.

• Melee combat. Any units adjacent to an enemy unit will fight a melee.

• Flight. Fleeing units take a morale test and if they fail will continue moving towards their edge of the field and potentially out of the battle.

• End of Turn. Check for victory condition met and draw fresh card(s)

The combat at first feels a little fiddly but once you're familiar with the procedure it quickly becomes intuitive and gives a nice tension to even quite one-sided engagements. For both ranged and melee attack an event card is drawn from the deck which might advantage either, or neither of the combatants. After that, first the attacker and then the defender may lay one additional event card to give them a further advantage. Then the attacker makes two dice rolls. The first determines how many hits are scored against the defender; to score a hit the attacker adds their ranged combat value or their first melee value to the dice and has to exceed the enemy's first defence value. The second roll, rolling only the dice which scored hits, determines how much damage was actually done. This time the attacker's second melee value is added to a roll which must exceed the defender's second value.

This may sound counter-intuitive but it is I think modelling something recognisable. It shouldn't be too difficult for slingsters for example to land hits against a slow moving and heavily armoured legion, but it's a more difficult matter to actually cause any damage. The double-roll system also makes less likely some of the horrendous die-roll results we see in C&C, where I have often had the mortification of seeing a unit of four blocks completely wiped out by a lucky 4-die roll. In ONUS! from my very limited experience it seems to be rare for a unit at or near full strength to be destroyed by a single lucky die roll in a melee round.

The unit suffering the more hits will normally take a morale check and if they fail they are broken. A subsequent morale check failure will have them fleeing for their lives, and the more hits they have taken the more likely it is that they will fail the check. If neither side flees the units are locked in place and will continue to fight, even if not activated, unless one of them is withdrawn by an order. Once a unit suffers damage points equal to the damage point limit showing on the card it is eliminated.

And that is, broadly, that. So, having presented the very briefest summary of the rules let's see how that translated to an actual game and to what extent it made the game 'feel' like the ancient battles described in the sources (not that I'd know!)

We chose to fight a fictional battle between Romans and Gauls and allowed ourselves 2,000 points each to build our armies. Victory was to go to the first who inflicted 50% of damage on the other side, i.e. eliminating 1,000 points worth of units. I chose to be the Roman player. We both selected top leaders, Vercingetorix and Caesar, which reduced our spending power to 1,400 points each. I couldn't help but notice that the Roman missile troops, while very powerful, were also very expensive and I couldn't afford more than a handful of them. I therefore decided that my army would be infantry-heavy and selected just two missile units, three cavalry units and seven infantry units, of which one was veteran. My deployment was basically infantry in the centre, missile troops to left and right of them and cavalry on the flanks. My strategy, such as it was, was that the missile troops would briefly pepper the enemy front line with arrows and javelins, after which the infantry would just go through like a steamroller and not stop until they had broken through the enemy line. The cavalry would try to push back the enemy flanks and then complete the demolition of their centre. Caesar would go with the veterans in the middle of the line. There was to be little finesse.

We deployed the unit cards in turn face down and then revealed them. I was dismayed to see that the Gauls had about three times as many missile troops as I did, although a lot less powerful, and they formed a front line in front of the Gallic infantry. It was clear that their idea was to grind my front line down with missiles from a distance before the infantry came through to finish me off, and the battle might become a test of how much damage my legions could take before they were able to come to blows with the enemy.

Initial deployment from the Roman side.

Caesar is looking good.

The Romans played first and, not really knowing how to start the action, I played a very cautious opening card allowing me to move a couple of my infantry units forward. The army was to start its slow advance but no unit was to be pushed so far forward that it was out of supporting range. The Gauls were having none of it. All of a sudden their missile troops were moving forward to left and right, unleashing their missiles and then falling back out of reach. My infantry was strong and well armoured but damage was being taken. My own missile units were brought up and, with longer range than their Gallic counterparts, soon started inflicting damage of their own. The opening phase of the battle was therefore an ongoing exchange of missiles in the centre, with the Roman legionaries unable to do much but form a shield wall to minimise their damage, which slowed them down still further.

A cautious first move by the Romans...

...quickly opens a bloody exchange of missiles that will last all day.

To break the deadlock the Roman consular cavalry on the right began its advance, only to be attacked by the Gallic cavalry while showered with missiles by the slingsters to their left. Before long there was a fierce cavalry melee in progress on the Roman right. Both sides brought in their reserve cavalry but it was not going to end well for the Romans. The consular cavalry, fighting desperately against the Gallic horse to their front, were charged to their left and rear by the berserker Gallic noblemen and, despite giving a good account of themselves, were cut down to the last man. The Germanic riders, finding themselves outfought by the second Gallic cavalry unit, turned tail and fled the field. The Roman right had effectively ceased to exist.

Cavalry melee on the Roman right. The Germanic light cavalry move up in support but it will end badly for them.

While the Roman right is engaged in melee, the exchange of missiles in the centre has become general but as yet nobody is closing with the enemy.

It really isn't looking good for the Roman cavalry. They should have stayed in bed.

The Romans were able to stabilise the situation on the right. By charging the consular cavalry the Gallic nobles had presented their right flank to the Cantabrian mercenaries, who took full advantage by attacking into it and destroying them. Meanwhile Legio XIII Gemina cooly wheeled to its right to present a wall of shields to the triumphant Gallic cavalry, who were soon sent fleeing themselves, and failed to rally before they were many miles from the field. The Roman right and Gallic left had fought themselves to exhaustion and there was no further action on this side of the field.

On the Roman left the surviving cavalry unit advanced to within a couple of hundred yards of the Gauls and proceded to subject them to missile fire to which they could make no reply and which eventually left one of their units in tatters. This was pretty much the only action on that side of the field.

With some desultory cavalry missile attacks on the Roman left, most of the action will now move to the centre...

...where the climax of the day is approaching.

With the sun starting to set, neither side had any clear advantage. Each side had lost four or five units destroyed or driven from the field with few undamaged units remaining. The Romans paused for breath, an interruption occasioned by my running out of activation cards and having to replenish my hand. At this point the Gallic infantry, realising that it was only a matter of time before the advancing Romans broke through the screen of missile throwers, launched an attack of their own and a couple of vicious melee combats began in the centre. The missile troops were able to add their fire to the hand-to-hand mayhem and a vicious and bloody fight ensued, the Romans having - slightly - the better of it.

The sun was now setting and both armies were exhausted. The Romans still had a couple of fresh units including Caesar's fearsome veterans which had seen no action save feeling the Gallic arrows bouncing off their shield wall. The Romans had eliminated 550 Gallic points, the Gauls had scored 480. If fighting had continued the Romans seemed - again, slightly - the more likely to win, but as the game had to be called due to time running out, a draw seemed an appropriate result. Both armies withdrew to lick their wounds.

The battle ends in the golden glow of an autumnal sunset. Both armies are still fighting but badly damaged.

On the evidence of that one game I have to say that if the ancient period was my preferred one I would feel a serious temptation to invest in ONUS! You get a lot of game for your buck and it's very portable - instead of carrying around cases of figures you have a box containing a rolled up mat or two, some counters and a couple of packs of cards. And you don't even need a mat of course. The base pack comes with two mats and they make the battlefield look a bit nicer but you can just deploy your units on any flat surface, a table or the floor. You could easily play a skirmish across a pub table over a beer. As mentioned the combat system feels right and is satisfyingly tense, with units able to inflict damage even when they are facing destruction themselves. It is also almost infinitely expandable and one presumes that future expansions will bring in all of the fun of the later empire, Goths and Vandals and Huns and all that malarkey - and perhaps medieval armies beyond that. The ranged attack/skirmish/melee attack model that makes Romans vs Gauls feel realistic doesn't feel a million miles away from Byzantines vs Pechenegs, Crusaders vs Saracens or Scots vs English on the moors of Northumberland. Any enthusiast who knows their stuff would be able to come up with cards of their own for any armies that failed to make it into an expansion deck. And the fact that units can have a range of special attributes and capabilities makes them more interesting and varied than their C&C:Ancients counterparts. A further expansion has provided terrain and fortifications, transparent cards that sit on top of the units, to provide more varied battlefields.

The game does suffer from the same problem as C&C, which is the difficulty sometimes in activating units. In C&C you often get the situation where all your cards are attack on the left and all your units are in the centre or right, so it often feels like you are fighting the cards as much as the enemy. Similarly in ONUS! you can find yourself with no cards in your hand that activate any units. To draw more than one card at the end of a turn you have to have issued no orders that turn which means surrendering the initiative for a turn to the enemy; you can also discard and replace cards but again, this is only possible if no orders are issued.

In a game set in the ancient world it seems forgiveable that there might be times when it's not possible to get any of your units to do what you want them to. In ONUS! the difficulty is as much about poor hand management as poor luck. As the Romans I made the mistake of playing too many activation and battle event cards early on, so I saw my hand dwindle to nothing while my opponent kept more of his and so had more options. It's one of the skills of the game and again it can be said to model something recognisable, the husbanding of resources until they can be used against a tiring enemy. And in ONUS!, unlike C&C, any units engaged in a melee will continue to fight in the melee phase whether they have been activated or not, so we don't get the unrealistic situation where a unit grappling with an enemy suddenly becomes inactive.

Another nice touch to the game is that there can be unexpected outcomes to successful combat - a unit might emerge from the fight as veterans or a hero might emerge from among their ranks, inspiring them to greater things in subsequent melee fights. This kind of thing lends the game a nice, rich sense of narrative, which to me is at the heart of wargaming as a hobby. When we wargame we are writing stories.

That's in no way to diss Command & Colors. The Napoleonic series, with a tweak or two, gives my Napoleonic itch a firm scratch in a way none other quite manages. But the ONUS! game, on the basis of one play, provides a deeper and more satisfying experience than the C&C:Ancients edition and a similarly satisfying scratch to the ancient miniatures itch that I wasn't even aware I had. The plan is to bring it back to the table in a couple of weeks to play one of the larger historical scenarios and I look forward to it very much.