Hello and welcome to another ancient warfare magazine podcast.

So we were casting around for a topic for this episode.

We're between issues of the magazine.

Did we want to cover another film, a piece of kit?

And Mary suggested that we try and discuss simulating the ancient battlefield

in war games or computer games or reenactments.

And it potentially is a great topic, though, as Jasper has pointed out, we might go everywhere

and nowhere. So this episode will either be classic or forgettable.

So joining me tonight is Jasper Othage, Mary Dam, Linty Powell, Mark McCaffrey and Mark DeSantis.

When I put these questions of Facebook and our Patreon followers,

most came back with questions around gaming,

and especially the Total War computer games.

But I wonder if we should start with,

does ancient warfare conform to regular patterns

that can be simulated?

So, Mary, it's your topic. You suggested it. Do you want to kick us off?

The old-fashioned view of ancient warfare whereby you have regular ranks of known numbers of soldiers

in formations who move around a battlefield uniformly and predictably allows a certain amount of simulation.

Certainly before battle is joined, you can put soldiers on a battletop or, you know, pieces

on a board, and it can look like a battle did before battle was joined.

And then if you know, if you know the way that ancient formations

moved around battlefields there's everything going for it that you could reenact a battle on a

...