Recently, Armchair General caught up with the Slitherine game Legion Arena for a quick review. After playing it for a while, many questions cropped up which we felt needed answering. So, we sent a communiqué to Iain McNeil –development director at Slitherine– for some answers. The dispatch rider returned with the following scribbled notes;

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Armchair General: Thanks Iain for taking the time to speak to the Armchair General community. Would you mind taking a second to explain some of the basics of Legion Arena for those unfamiliar with the game? Since we have an audience with a fair number of military historians, can you flesh out some of the game’s historical component?

Iain McNeil: Legion Arena is a blend of real time tactics and RPG gameplay. In a series of battles you take your novice recruits and train them into an elite fighting force. You allocate new skills, equipment, names, uniforms, replacements, and generally manage the army. The battles take you through Roman history from the early Republic up until the Empire is established. Initially you’ll be expanding the Republic’s influence in Italy, fighting the Samnites, Sabines, and many more, while also fending off incursions by the Gauls. Later on you’ll fight the Carthaginians under the mighty Hannibal and finally march with Caesar himself to oppose Pompey.

You’ll have varying objectives that reflect the historical situation such as a simple win, don’t take too many casualties, inflict a number of casualties, survive for a period of time, win within a time limit, kill the enemy leader and protect your own. These can also be combined into more complex missions.

ACG: Along those lines, one can’t help but notice the excellent Osprey Publishing material spread throughout the game and website. Would you mind sharing how that partnership came about and what it meant for the game?

Iain McNeil: We’ve been talking to Osprey for some time about how we could work together. Our products are complimentary and there is no competition between us so the synergy was obvious. It just took some time to work out how we could make best use of this. We are working even more closely together now. I can’t say too much about that for now, but there are some interesting projects on the way!

The essence of Legion Arena – A good solid fight!

ACG: After having made it through the entire game, I have to admit I was surprised I didn’t see any heavy weapons such as chariots, ballistae, or any sort of siege craft [a sharp observer may note British chariots are featured on the game's CD]. While this game is clearly focused on open engagements where such weapons would have been less important, they do seem conspicuous by their absence. Will we see such weapons down the road?

Iain McNeil: We are planning to allow for larger units in the future, but there are significant technical and gameplay issues that we need to resolve first. We wanted to make sure we released a polished game that worked well without any crash bugs and this is what we did. Now we have the engine up and running we’ll work on adding new features such as larger units.

ACG: Where do you see the boundaries of the Legion Arena engine in historical terms? It seems natural to imagine many ancient battles working well with this system because it draws out the differences between unit type/quality/function but have you looked into more modern times as well? Would it work for medieval battles? Napoloenic battles?

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