Since releasing my game Bronze Shield, Silver Coin, I've received several questions on where to get fitting miniatures to represent your mercenary warband, including your Captain and Second-in-Command.

Bronze Shield, Silver Coin is an Ancient Greek mercenary skirmish wargame playable with between 8-12 figures a side. It is miniatures agnostic and the rules are flexible enough to accommodate almost any Ancients figures you'd like, including those from other parts of the Mediterranean and beyond. All the basic weapon types are represented, including hand weapons (swords and axes), two handed clubs and falx, and the ubiquitous spear.

A serious consideration when equipping your troops is whether to equip them with light or heavy shields. In ancient combat, a soldier's role was defined by the type of shield they carried so I placed great emphasis on shields in the rules. Light shields (such as animal skin or wicker shields) were used by low status skirmishers. These troops are cheaper to hire to your warband but the shield only gives them an edge when defending against missile weapons. On the other hand, the famous bronze-plated hoplon (the round shield that gave hoplites their name) provides great protection both from missile as well as melee attacks, at an extra cost.

Bringing a Captain or a Second to a fight with no shield is an option (you will see an example from my Phoenician warband in the pic above) but you'll need to carefully allocate the special abilities of the character to make it work. In this case I've given the Second the bodyguard ability to protect the shield-less captain. Good for role-playing a leader who is less of a front line fighter but bringing a shield is always the more optimal choice.

With shields out of the way, let's talk manufacturers. There are a ton of figure companies that have lines for ancient Greece (and surrounding regions). I'm just going to talk about companies that I have used for my own collection.

For your money, Victrix multipart plastic kits are absolutely the best way to fill out your mercenary warband. These kits are great value and there are a variety of kits to build every kind of soldier you can hire in Bronze Shield, Silver Coin. Victrix has been producing kits for many years so they have some different options.

Now for the purpose of a warband-sized game like Bronze Shield, Silver Coin, Victrix kits are huge! The kits I'm talking about here contain between 48 and 56 figures which is enough to build at least four warbands! There is an alternative to buying the full kits though, and I'll talk about that after I go through some options.

Victrix's latest Greek kit, their updated hoplites, seems tailor made for skirmish games. They are dynamic and full of character. If I had to recommend just one kit to get into Bronze Shield, Silver Coin, this would be a good one. You could put together four full teams, although your weapon choices would be limited to swords and spears.

 Victrix has a variety of older hoplite boxes (Theban, mercenary, Spartan, Athenian) and these kits are a little less dynamic in the poses but still great. I mix them (and their bits) with the newer kit with no issue. Each of these kits have basically the same weapon and armor options, but there are different helmets and some special command bits (like the Spartans get some cloaks). So there's no reason to go crazy buying a bunch of different sprues from this series just for Bronze Shield.

The unarmoured hoplites sprue (or full kit) on the other hand is a great option for getting some variety in your warbands. I decided not to distinguish between levels of armor in the Bronze Shield rules but it's fun to mix and match armored and unarmored hoplites for a more "rag-tag" appearance. If you buy the full kit, you also get archers which makes this a pretty good "one box" Bronze Shield, Silver Coin option.

I could go on about Victrix options forever but I'll limit myself to just one more kit, the peltasts, javelin men, and slingers. This opens up your warband options to peltasts, whose javelins allow them to move and then immediately shoot. Peltasts can also be flexibly equipped with either light or heavy shields which further increases their flexibility. Speaking of light shields, this kit is a great source that you can use on either peltasts or to create lightly-armored spearmen or swordsmen.

If you're just starting out with ancient Greek miniatures and not sure you'll be doing army-size games in the future, buying individual sprues can be a great way to save money (and space in your "pile of opportunity"). It also lets you better understand what's in each kit before you order a big bag of 56 models!

I've bought individual sprues from the US-based SprueDude in the past and been impressed with the customer service. His inventory sells out sometimes but he stocks all the kits I've mentioned so check back often.
https://spruedude.com/collections/victrix

WGA's Persians box is a great buy for building a Persian warband. You get a huge variety of weapons (spears, swords, bows, and warpicks). There are light and heavy armors and light and heavy shields to mix and match.

Footsore do an amazing range of Greek characters to go with their Mortal Gods game. They make excellent Captains and Seconds with their commanding poses and interesting weapon loadouts. These are metal miniatures so might take some getting used to if you're used to plastic. The only reservation  I have about these minis is that they have separate hands. I'm not a fan of multi-part metal models and I've already had hands pop off during games.

Bronze Age Miniatures is a one-man operation from the US who produces characterful metal miniatures perfect for Captains and Seconds in Bronze Shield, Silver Coin. He even has a selection of women characters in his "Amazons" line! They are 32mm so some of them are tall, but hey--they are heroes!

There are more options than these when it comes to 28mm ancient Mediterranean warriors. One of my goals with Bronze Shield, Silver Coin was for each player to find their own unique place in ancient history, so be creative, go forth, and build your warband!

Buy Bronze Shield, Silver Coin on Wargame Vault

I'm happy to announce my first published wargame, Bronze Shield, Silver Coin, is now available for purchase on Wargame Vault in PDF or Paperback.

Bronze Shield, Silver Coin was started in 2023 when I was searching for an Ancients skirmish game to scratch a certain itch and couldn't find it. There aren't many games set in Ancient times that only utilize a couple sprues of models (most in fact are large army games) and I was also looking for a game that would let me use my imagination, let me carve out space for a couple characters and a warband that could adventure in the Ancient Mediterranean.

My main influences were the video game Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (still the most fleshed-out Ancient Greek video game experience ever made) and tabletop games like Frostgrave and Pulp Alley,  where the focus is on customizable characters.

I read a number of history books to gather information, the most impressive being the excellent Ghost on the Throne by James Romm, which covers the details of Alexander the Great's death and the start of the Successor period. This is one of my favorite periods in history for the rich characters, sudden betrayals, and shaky alliances. Historical persons like the Illyrian warrior woman Cynane and the ruthless bounty hunter Archias only confirmed that I wanted to make a game that focused not on the huge battles, but on the small campaigns and dirty deeds of the mercenary forces during the period.

The more I learned about the period, it was the frequent betrayals (such as when an entire army changed sides due to loyalty to Alexander's mother Olympias) that inspired the Intrigue system, which uses a deck of cards to represent bribery, shaken troops, and the fickle nature of the gods. This quickly became the "killer feature" of the game, setting it apart from other warband level skirmish games. The combination of the Intrigue system and the deep focus on maneuvering let me know that I was headed in the right direction. Games of Bronze Shield, Silver Coin are short, 6 turns, and each turn becomes a rich puzzle that both players are trying to solve. Should I bid for initiative? Which of the opponent's characters can I attempt to corrupt with the Intrigue cards? Where do I consolidate my power? When do I go for the objective?

I hope you will check out Bronze Shield, Silver Coin and enjoy it. The historical "fog" that separates us from the Ancient world gives us a great excuse to create characters and stories to inhabit it. I certainly already have ideas for places to take Bronze Shield next. A solo campaign based on Xenophon's Anabasis was pulled from the rulebook to continue development. I also have ideas for geographical expansions (such as 4th century BC Italy) or new eras (Trojan War anybody?).

Lt. Col. Dr. Mike Snook (who is a badass in his own right) was commissioned by Perry Miniatures to write an introduction to the 1883-85 Mahdist War in the Egyptian-owned Sudan. His book is primarily focused on the battles but also gives a fairly good overview of the context of the war. If you're totally new to the period (like I was several months ago) I'd recommend a couple of the videos by The History Chap for a 10,000 foot introduction.

Snook's book is aimed at wargamers and for this purpose it is indispensable. It contains maps, orders of battle, and the author's photographs of the battlefields. It also collects numerous sketches from eyewitness reporters such as Melton Prior. In fact this is the best collection of war correspondent sketches from this conflict that I've found. Michael Perry also contributes around 40 detailed color illustrations of various soldiers in uniform.

The author's descriptions of the battles are vivid and there are tales of heroics and blunders sure to inspire hobbyists. Numerous first hand accounts from participants are quoted and used to provide a comprehensive view of the events. The author gives justice not only to the British and their allies but also the Mahdist forces, who fought fiercely for a variety of reasons.

For those interested in the details of the Gordon Relief Expedition, I also highly recommend Beyond the Reach of Empire by the same author, which is a voluminous tome that dives deep into the Nile expedition. It not only provides an in depth look at the strategy and logistics of the expedition, but zooms in to events of courage, incompetence, and ferocity both along the way to Khartoum and at the battles of Abu Klea and Abu Kru. The book also provides a deeper understanding of Wolseley's failure to rescue General Gordon.

As I work on my Ancient Greek mercenary skirmish game, Bronze Shield Silver Coin, I knew that cypress trees would be necessary to make an immersive Greek table to play on! I didn't find any tutorials that I loved so I set about experimenting. To my surprise I found a way to make great looking trees with no flock needed, and pennies worth of supplies.

I started by hot gluing some 1/4" dowels onto 3mm "sintra" board bases (it's a pvc product commonly used in sign making, can be cut with a craft knife and doesn't warp!).
I then used some miliput to further reinforce the dowel.

Working in strips, I took aluminum foil and, after crumpling it, hot glued it piece by piece onto the "trunk", shaping it as I went.
I did my normal basing techniques of PVA glue, small rocks, and sand.

Next I primed the trees with rattle-can, brown for the bases and a dark green for the leaves. You may need multiple coats from different angles to hit all the exposed shiny foil.

I slapped on some brown and khaki colors on the bases, working up to a light drybrush of cream.

Then did a drybrush of a yellow-green on the leaves.
And that's it! Very quick and easy cypress trees that can be used in any Mediterranean environment.

A big part of my day job is making sure that I run designs past people before releasing anything. I almost inevitably learn a ton from just a few sessions (the UX industry standard is 5 testers).

An important part of my design strategy is to get builds into people's hands early and often. So far I've tapped some friends for feedback and this example shows how that feedback translates into design iterations.

I sent a couple friends a link to a test build and jumped on separate Discord calls to get their reactions. I had them share their screens and encouraged them to speak out loud about their experience and specifically whether the guards were behaving in accordance with their expectations.

Observing my friends play and getting their feedback, a persistent theme was the guard's searching behavior was not working the way the players expected. Rather than a systematic search, guards just kind of ran about randomly, as in the clip above. In fact, they were programmed to do just that: run around systematically.

I was unsure how exactly to create a search behavior that would be scalable and work in different environments and levels so I looked into some other stealth games for inspiration.

In this (rather funny) example of enemy search AI in Metal Gear Solid 2, the guards have particular places they search for the player in a way that seems believable (except for the hilarious bug at the end). They check behind objects and in containers where the player can hide. This system most likely relies on designers manually setting up each room to tell the AI where the door is, what objects to search behind, and what lockers to open. I decided to set up a test using similar, manually placed points of interest.

In the above example, the green rectangle is the Search Area and the green circles are the search waypoints. When a guard is alerted near the Search Area, he goes to the closest waypoint then begins a search at each of the waypoints until his awareness level drops to 0, at which point he returns to his patrol. Here's a clip of the guard following this behavior after spotting a dead body.

Many gamers, myself included, use a variety of controls to play PC games. The two control devices I decided to support right from the beginning are the keyboard and mouse as well as the Xbox controller, which Steam data reports as the most popular gaming controller by a large margin.

Thankfully Unity makes it easy to support multiple control setups simultaneously, but I wanted the user interface of Sneak 'Em Up (working title) to also adapt in real time to the user. To do so I created a script which detected input from either the keyboard or an Xbox controller. This script then sets a global variable which other objects in the game reference. This global variable acts as a signal telling the rest of the game whether the last input made by the player was made on a keyboard or an Xbox controller.

Button prompts show up several places in Sneak 'Em Up's levels. Most obviously, they appear on the HUD UI, reminding the player which button is responsible for using equipped weapons and items.

Prompts also appear above the character's head when they are close to an interactable object such as a body or a switch. And finally, button prompts can exist in the game level itself as a "sign" during the tutorial. In the future, button prompts may also be seen in dialogs, when characters help explain how to play in the early tutorial levels.

Putting this all together, the control manager script described above sends information on the player's last input to all these systems, giving the player real time contextual prompts that make playing intuitive.

Awareness is a key feature of enemy AI in Sneak 'Em Up (working title). Once a player is detected (see the last post), the guard's awareness "meter" fills (there's no visual meter for each guard's awareness but this is something I plan on testing eventually). Awareness starts at 0 and goes to 100.

Both the detection system and awareness system are designed to be target-agnostic--in other words, the AI does not solely respond to the player. This is to allow for emergent or systemic gameplay, in which the player manipulates the game world indirectly. The AI for each character is seeking out, not just the player, but anything that is suspicious, alerting, or on a different "team." The player will be able to use this to their advantage by arranging for opposing factions to fight it out, luring wild animals near enemies, or perhaps mind controlling enemy guards to cause mayhem.

The rate at which awareness raises is based on several variables. Visibility (formerly called Size) is a variable on every character or notable item in Sneak 'Em Up. Highly visible objects, like the standing player character, raise awareness faster than small objects such as a pack of cigarettes tossed to lure enemies. To mimic human sight, the target's speed is a major factor in awareness as well. Finally, distance to the target raises the awareness rate exponentially. This way, if the player runs up on a guard standing around the corner, the AI will go to 100% awareness almost instantly, but a distant player will cause a slow creeping awareness.

Each enemy type has a "Suspicion Threshold" and an "Alerted Threshold", which define at what Awareness level a character will go check out a suspicious sight, and what level they will become alarmed and search the area. An alerting sight that the enemy identifies as a character from another team will be met with hostility.

One way to test and tweak my AI was to build a "playground" level where I could test enemy detection and awareness at different distances and with the player character in different states such as prone or hiding in tall grass. Initially enemies had a detection area that was circular in shape (see the enemies on the left in the above screenshot). However, through playtesting my own levels and watching users try the game out, I realized that the enemy was often able to see the player before the enemy was even on the screen, causing frustration for players.

In the illustration above, the grey rectangle represents the aspect ratio for the vast majority of PC game players' monitors: 16:9. With a circular detection radius, guards who are to the left and right of the player work as expected, meaning they can't see you from off screen. However guards above or below your position can see and attack the player from off screen, which feels frustrating. The solution, after much tweaking, was to make the detection shape a capsule shape:

Even though a player's expectation is that guards see in an even circle around them, this caused a lot of frustration and instead, a capsule shaped vision area feels more fair to the player.

The core system in any stealth game is the guard AI, specifically visual acquisition and detection of the player.

In Sneak 'Em Up (working title), the guards start in a patrol or standing state, while constantly scanning objects that enter a circular trigger around them.

Once an item enters the green circle, it goes through a gauntlet of questions to filter out only the items the guard should respond to:

• Is the object a character, item, or the player?
• Is it within the field of view in front of where the guard is facing?
• Is the object large enough to be seen from its distance from the guard?
  
• Are there any objects blocking the visibility of the object from the guard's position?
  
• Is the object tagged as either "suspicious" or "alerting"?
• If the object is on a team, is it a different team from the guard's?

If the object passes these requirements, a variable called "Awareness" starts to fill. The rate at which Awareness fills is based on the object's size multiplied by the distance to the object and the object's speed.

In this way, fast-moving objects that are close to the guard fill his Awareness exponentially faster than stationary targets that are far away.

The visual acquisition system is designed to not be specific to just the player, to allow guards to react appropriately to characters from different factions or wild animals, as well as objects like distractions or dead bodies. Systems like these will provide more chances for the player to use the world itself as a tool of chaos and destruction.

As awareness builds, the guard moves into first the Suspicious state, then the Alerted state. Taking--ahem--inspiration from the Metal Gear Solid series, the player receives visual feedback as to which state the guard is in. The Awareness system will be covered in more detail in the next Devlog.

This post will introduce my latest game project - a top-down third person stealth action game tentatively titled Sneak 'Em Up. Currently it's a one-man-project, with me trying to tackle all aspects of game design and development.

2D stealth games are rare, and top-down stealth games even more so, and those that are top down are likely to be squad combat or turn-based. Sneak 'Em Up, on the other hand, is a top-down action game with strong stealth mechanics. The most well known games of the same style, and the major inspiration for Sneak 'Em Up, are the original 2D Metal Gear games of the late 80s and early-mid 90s. In the early Metal Gear games, you control your character from above, distracting guards and finding hiding places. Since the advent of the 3D stealth genre in 1998, 2D top-down stealth action games have been rare.

Sneak 'Em Up is built in Unity utilizing the Bolt visual scripting plugin. Bolt offers me several advantages:

• I don't have to worry about getting C# syntax right. I can spend more time designing and less time chasing missing semicolons.
• Bolt makes it easy for visual or systems thinkers to organize their work. As someone who is not a developer by trade, basic dev protocols like assigning all variables at the beginning of the script are non-intuitive and make it confusing to figure out complex code. In Bolt, I can visually organize related variables, functions, and systems to more intuitively find and understand my work.
• Bolt provides real time feedback by animating the various functions "shooting" out data like integers, vectors, and strings. This makes it incredibly easy to troubleshoot and tweak variables in real time to see the results.
  

Throughout design and development, I'll be using the "find the fun" strategy of game design--that is, iterate on the basics of gameplay to find what mechanics "work" and are enjoyable for the player, then worry about the overall game story, theme, pacing, as well as details like art style, animations, lighting, etc.

My plan is to use very basic assets to prototype mechanics and interactions and iterate/tweak those to find what type of gameplay is satisfying. Once the core gameplay loop is established, I'll then design the rest of the game around that loop, providing the player with a story arch, a possible leveling system, varied tools and weapons, and special sections that twist and vary the core gameplay loop.

High fidelity art will also wait until after the core gameplay loop has been discovered. I will be creating some sprites in the meantime to practice my pixel art skills. I'm particularly proud of this guard, my second pixel art character ever!