Legion 1997

Legion is a development on Phalanx, the previous Society of Ancients game by the same designer. It is essentially a boardgame, as the game comes with counters and mapboard, but also is designed to be played with miniatures. The miniatures option also requires a hex grid to be played.

The core of Legion is the main historical ruleset which simulates any of 36 different Greek and Roman battles ranging from Marathon to Munda (basically the same battles as in Phalanx). The ruleset, while still fairly simple, if compared to miniature rules sets, models all the historically important variables such as troop quality, fatigue, surprise, ability of generals, weather, etc.

The game also contains a "simple" version of the rules + scenario that is well suited to introductory wargames (it was in fact used as the Society's "Participation" game at shows) as well as a "mix-and-match" tournament style system whereby the different armies are randomly matched against each other. This essentially provides a huge amount of random scenarios to supplement the 36 "canned" scenarios on which the rules are based.