Chariot races were more popular than Gladiator games in ancient Roman world. There is a ancient TSR boardgame that seems to be fun.

Here some useful links:
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244/circus-maximus
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/843/circus-minimus
https://ravenscraftcybernetics.com/circusmaximus/

Here another game with similar intentions:
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2224/circus-imperium

Luca is back from London for a holiday and we organized a game session at my home, headquarters of Legio Palatina. A dinner with pizza at a restaurant, but a slow service shifted the start for our game at 22.30… I was falling asleep because usually I wake up at 6 in the morning for work and these day I’m feeling bad too. Well, for this night we had choose Song of Drums and Shakos, the Napoleonic game from Ganesha Games and our friend Sergio Laliscia. A big game was set, Russian advance against French defence. Some savage French horsemen decided the result. Not a defence but an assault! A happy night among friends!

I would like to put here a image gallery, but plug-ins for WordPress doesn’t install on this webspace!!!

I had got the gladiators, now I needed the rules, my rules. After some months I founded the name and the game: Ludus Magnus. I was thinking about a system driven by cards, without dices, to obtain more strategical decisions. You had some cards in your hand and you could secretly choose a defensive or an aggressive action. At close combat you played the cards and saw the result. You could play a bluff or hit hard! A set of special event cards randomised the events. A track for each fighter signed the fatigue caused by the suffered hits and gave different possibility to the piece.

A lot of efforts were made to give a curate aspect to the game. I made a lot of photos of my miniatures for the cards, I bought protective envelopes, I printed them in colours, I created a logo. Wrong move. You cannot give all this to a prototype! After two different test sessions with three friends, I founded the sad true: a lame game, without movement, without balancing, without fun.
I had to do something. I thought, thought and thought. And I discovered the Ganesha Game system, but that is another story…

My secutors and a scissor. Beautiful minis from Crusader! I changed the shields with a typology without upper angles, so the net cannot stick itself on them. A historical fact…

All starts here. A day I was surfing the web and I found these little things from Crusade Miniatures. What superb sculptures! I liked the poses, the historically accurateness, the mass of the pieces. The style of Mark Sims is superb, his soldiers are stocky, heavy, with a gravity. You can think: hey mate, these are too plump. But I dislike slim soldiers or those with real human proportions: I don’t want little men, I want something who fit well on the table. Real humans are too dry, legs are long and without a real interest. I want to see armours, helms, shields and not male photo models. In the 1/72 format you have more slim pieces. It is the technique of the manufacturing of the pieces. Lead for me is better!
Well, the story is simple: I liked the pieces, I bought the pieces. But I had to obtain a cause for my impulsive purchase. What could I do with them? I have heard about rules for gladiators. Could I buy them? Oh, no, I wanted something very historical, I’m Roman and I have a degree in History, I had to do something by myself, for my new gladiator pieces. So I started to think about a rule system for gladiators. I’ll speak about this in a new post.
At the moment I want to suggest these pieces. You have a lot of good fighters, some historical and some fantasy from the (in)famous film “Gladiator”. Sims made the historical pieces first, and various months after he sculpted the others. You can found some pieces for the arena feeling: two referees, Charon, Mercurius, wounded and some spectators. The address is this: https://www.crusaderminiatures.com/list.php?cat=1&sub=27&page=1