Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Lynn’s Book Blog Sitrep Hex and Violence Desperation Morale Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Let’s GURPS The Collaborative GamerTom Holland’s third book on the history of Rome picks up with the end of Nero’s reign (65 CE). This is the start of four chapters labeled “War”. Now, there’s various problems, certainly including Nero himself, but there’s no war.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The third of Nick Holmes’ books on the end of the Roman Empire covers from the sacking of Rome in 410 through the death of Attila in 453, and then the end of Western Roman administration in 476. The good[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Holmes’ second book covers from the recovery of the Roman Empire from the Crisis of the Third Century to the sacking of Rome in 410. Well, mostly. While the second book in a series, it is meant to be a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Nick Holmes is doing a very good job writing a clear beginning-level series on Roman history. This also has the advantage of being recent (2022), and so has access recent findings. There is one short chapter two-thirds of the way[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I haven’t read Tom Holland’s Rubicon, but I also know the civil wars period better than the Julio-Claudians (I have to admit that the BBC production of I, Claudius is still the bedrock of my knowledge of the period). This[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
After my too-close win in Hatten, Patch and I went to our between-games round of Commands & Colors: Ancients. Up this time was the Battle of Picenum from Expansion #2. There’s a line of hills down the center, and the[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I started listening to podcasts at just the right time: There was a minor explosion of good historical subjects going on. This was largely due to Mike Duncan, and his History of Rome podcast. Not that you can tell by[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Julian the Apostate is known for his disastrous defeat by the Sassanids in 363. d’Amato and Frediani go back six years to show Julian’s very successful campaign in Gaul. This is a typical Osprey Campaign book with its conventional format,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Gillian Bradshaw is one of my favorite historical authors, and this one does not disappoint. She admits up front to distorting the timeline slightly in the interests of the plot, which spans about seven critical years in the Fourth Century.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The second volume of Osprey’s survey of Roman Centurions is a bit better than the first. Most likely, there’s just more source material to draw from. There is less of the individual career profiles, so if you thought that was[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…