Variations On A Theme In 'Blood Sweat and Cheers'

One of the things Victor and I set out to do when we developed our gladiator rules  'Munera Sine Missione' was to create a system where it was relatively easy to stat up any figure you had in your collection. Most gladiator rules work with fixed types, assuming standard armour and wepons for those types and unusual figures don't always fit in as well. To be fair it does appear that there was a degree of standardisation for a lot of gladiators, but it's also clear tht the Romans loved a bit of variety in their entertainments, so variations would have been possible and likely. 

Anyway, my gladiator collection (of over 75 figures, and still expanding) contains a few non-standard members. And 'Blood, Sweat and Cheers' is one of those sets of rules with fixed types. So what do I do with my non-standard gladiators?

Basically I found that it's relatively easy to tweak the existing types a little, without breaking them. Just keep the three stats (Speed, Attack and Defence) totalling up to 9, make sure that they still tie in OK with the special GLORY abilities and you're good to go.

Here's the first case - Melanippe (left) is a dimacherius, but has no protection at all. So for her I use the dimacherius card, drop her Defence from 2 to 1, but increase her Speed to 4. And the dimacheius special abilities, which consist of an enhanced parry and an enhanced strike, work just as well for one big sword as they do for two ordinary one. That means that Vocorix (right) works the same as Melanippe - a reduced Defence and an enhanced Speed.

The one good sword = two ordinary swords approach actually works OK for these two as well, Caturo (left) and Andromache (right). They can operate using the dimacherius card as written, and this is certainly the simplest approach. A bolder move is to run them as a murmillo, with a +1 Speed and -1 Defence. This is a trickier step, as the murmillo's GLORY ability is based around the Defence value, so could leave that undervalued. But this may be offset by the extra options the higher Speed offers in normal play.

Telamonius has a ton of armour, a sword and a cone. The figure was advertised as a contra-retiarius, and also gets called a scissor. With two weapons he works very nicely as a dimacherius. But the dimacherius as written has a low Defence value - Telamonius needs to do better than that. So for him I take the extreme step of running him closer to a crupellarius in stats (although not quite) - Speed 1, Attack 3 and Defence 5 - but using the dimacherius GLORY abilities.

I gave the equally well-armoured Scylax a shield at one point, but it didn't fit the figure very well, neither does the pose suit a second weapon. I may model a cone for him and make him a scissor at some stage, but for now I run him as a slightly faster crupellarius by giving him +1 Speed and -1 Defence.

Mordax is also a scissor type, with a curious double-bladed sword. He is relatively easy to adapt - he is mostly equipped like a murmillo, so I use the stats for that type, but bolt on the dimacherius GLORY abilities instead. This allows the weird sword to be used for special parry moves and unexpected attacks.

The game includes a card for the cestus, the boxers of the arena, and obviously pitting two of those against each other would be fun. But I'm not aware that the cestus fought other gladiator types, so it's kind of a wasted type for most games. However the stats in isolation are for a fast gladiator with little or no protection, a fast strike GLORY attack and a special GLORY + GLORY one that leaves the opponent knocked down. So it works very nicely for Rodan, with his whip and sword.

And, finally, another easy adjustment - Sylvania is a laquearius, and the retiarius stats work just fine for them. She's unarmoured, so I run her with -1 Defence but give her +1 Speed. This makes her dangerous if she gets her GLORY + GLORY lasso attack in, since it's based on Speed, but that Defence of 1 can come back to bite her on the bum if she has a bad run of cards.

Where I just play a basic type with changes to stats, I use small counters with numbers on as a reminder. They're also useful in campaigns when you have an experienced gladiator who has increased a stat by one.