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Post by Finarvyn on May 31, 2015 9:50:38 GMT -6
Discussion on another thread led me to the notion that we ought to have a thread about SPI’s wonderful PRESTAGS wargame. Back in the day my group played an old SPI wargame system called PRESTAGS (Pre-Seventeenth Century Tactical Game System). It was a 5-game system which ran from the really ancient times to roughly the renaissance. All games used compatible rules, but each had a few era-specific ones. * Chariot (Biblical era) * Spartan (Greek era) * Legion (Roman era) * Viking (Viking era) * Yeoman (with primitive guns) I found that the SPI game Sorcerer was cool in that it had magic and a few mythical monsters and seemed somewhat compatible with PRESTAGS. (Similar attack and defend numbers, and so on.) We fought some battles with Chainmail and others using SPI wargames. I think my dream was always to merge SPI's War of the Ring with SPI's PRESTAGS. Interesting. I'e blended Sorceror with PRESTAGS and Swords and Sorcery with PRESTAGS, but never thought to mix in War of the Ring. We need a seperate PRESTAGS thread.  OH! I am all for that! A lot of us seem to have played or are interested in PRESTAGS. Well, here we go.....  |
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Post by Finarvyn on May 31, 2015 10:06:15 GMT -6
I'll start with some discussion here.  I think there are two things that I like a lot about PRESTAGS: (1) One system for a wide variety of historical eras. (2) Can be run in a simple way, or with complex rules. As far as historical eras go, anything that can spawn from the dawn of time through the Middle Ages has to be awesome. The thing is that weapons and armor were pretty consistent up until the invention of gunpowder, and even then some of the early firearms don't totally disrupt game scale. Of course, once you factor in gatling guns, machine guns, atomic weapons, and so on, the power scale gets totally distorted. As far as rules complexity goes, there is a single rules set for all five games and then five indivitual add-on rules sets so that each era can deal with factors unique to that era. As a totality the rules can be quite extensive, if that's your thing. My game is usually to the other extreme, where units have basic ratings in attack (and defend) and movement, and one simple combat results table to resolve battles, and little else. I like my rules sets streamlined and so I ignore lots of layers of complexity so that my battles are fast and fun. (I do this with Chainmail as well. Heck, most games.) What do you like about PRESTAGS? What do you do with it? |
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Post by Merctime on May 31, 2015 11:10:14 GMT -6
Holy crap!!! Finn, thank you! I'm clueless about many war games. I'm unhappy about that. Is PRESTAGS still available? Where can I learn about it?? I'll offer some true discussion of value to this thread when I can, I promise Until then, fellows... You've earned a lurker!! |
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Post by kesher on May 31, 2015 12:11:13 GMT -6
I second Merctime--I've never heard of this, but I wanna hear more! |
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Post by Otto Harkaman on May 31, 2015 13:22:08 GMT -6
I think the funniest thing for me about PRESTAGS is that is very easy to get started. When I was in college an Army Captain who was a teacher in the ROTC program here at the University of Kentucky introduced me to the game. Within a few minutes he was able to teach me the basics of the game and away we went playing battle after battle. Its much like chess, seemingly simple but once you are matched against the mind of another person you realise there is great complexity.
I've never had a trouble with the sparseness of design. Some people seem to really hate or despise the design of the counters and maps. I love its elegant simplicity, just enough (if you have good imagination, which I would take for granted people have on this forum) to envision the troops of an army of a certain period and the terrain they fought upon.
It should be noted that a lot of this sparseness was because of the technology and cost at the time. Hard to imagine before Adobe Photoshop and layout programs like Adobe Indesign and even earlier Aldus Pagemaker. It would be fun if someone knew how these games were laid out and printed who could enlighten us to the difficulties of game making at this period in the 70s.
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Post by Otto Harkaman on May 31, 2015 13:38:03 GMT -6
There is a lot of information about PRESTAGS on Boardgame Geek, here a are few starter links  PRESTAGS Master-Pack (1976)PRESTAGS was actually a version 2 of some earlier games produced by SPI like Dark Ages  Dark Ages (1971)No the games are no longer in print and demand really high prices when available. Rules can be found and there are some virtual game board programs available to play online, there is a good sized cult following of the games. But I believe Decision Games holds the rights to these games and they want you to buy their new games and so they aren't very encouraging of this  |
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Post by Merctime on May 31, 2015 13:41:12 GMT -6
Dernit! Dernit I say! I miss out on ALL the cool stuff!
Thanks, though, bro... I'll have a look at those links.
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Post by Otto Harkaman on May 31, 2015 14:14:10 GMT -6
That is a really fun idea Finarvyn of using PRESTAGS in combo with rules from Sorcerer. I am going to have to look into that. I had a copy of the game when I was really young but was totally baffled by it. Shame my mom got me lots of stuff when I was young but a divorce and moving caused the loss of many great artifacts.   Sorcerer (1975) |
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Post by derv on May 31, 2015 20:21:00 GMT -6
This sounds like a fun and flexible hex and counter game. I was reading somewhere that the counters are drawn to scale- wasn't exactly sure what they meant? It did make me curious though. And Noble Knights has the Master Pack for a reasonable $445 too  I guess I'll have to stay curious |
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 1, 2015 4:37:56 GMT -6
I was reading somewhere that the counters are drawn to scale- wasn't exactly sure what they meant? It did make me curious though. This sounds more like TSR's old Napolionics rules set. (System 7? Something like that.) PRESTAGS counters are all one uniform size. |
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Jun 1, 2015 5:12:44 GMT -6
Finarvyn, I'd like to hear about the S&S PRESTAGS variant. Not much to tell, actually. When I ran campaigns back in the 1970's, I had a group which was interested in kingdom-scale battles and world domination, so I used Chainmail for some battles and PRESTAGS for other battles. Chainmail already had a Fantasy Supplement, but no such thing exists for PRESTAGS so I would use counters from Sorceror and from Swords and Sorcery to supplement the historical counters already there. Elves could simply be bowmen or horsebowmen from PRESTAGS, Dwarves could be axemen, orcs often were swordmen or spearmen, but PRESTAGS has nothing equivalent to trolls and dragons and that kind of thing. That's where the other games came in, to add in fantasy element units. Sorceror has rules for spellcasters in battle, so that helped as well. I don't think I created anything really sophistocated or anything like that. It was simple and fun and allowed me to fight out large battles with cardboard counters instead of miniatures. There are two tactical battle games included in SPI's War of the Ring with Orcs and Trolls, Sauron and Gondor. These games seem to be similar to PRESTAGS but I've never studied them closely to know the similarities or differences. SPI Sauron 1977SPI Gondor 1977I believe someone made a scenario and counters for the siege of Helms Deep using these rules. Siege of Minas Tirith  |
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 2, 2015 4:30:21 GMT -6
I think my dream was always to merge SPI's War of the Ring with SPI's PRESTAGS. Interesting. I'e blended Sorceror with PRESTAGS and Swords and Sorcery with PRESTAGS, but never thought to mix in War of the Ring. So I was exchanging e-mails with my friend who taught me wargaming in the 1970's and he said: So I went back to my PRESTAGS counters (which I keep in a drawered shelf for screws and nails) and sure enough -- there are War of the Ring counters mixed in with my PRESTAGS ones. If I didn't know better, I'd think someone is playing a prank on me. (Pauses to look around for hidden camera.)  Either way, it's a brilliant idea. |
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Jun 2, 2015 6:36:06 GMT -6
^LOL I have all the PRESTAG rules which I've acquired in sort of a quest like fashion but I realized yesterday I didn't have the tables that are printed on the maps. I made a request to a person who had posted PRESTAG map pictures on BoardGameGeek but they said the games were long sold. The map images posted are so pixelated from high jpeg compression the writing is illegible. In desperation I went to an external hard drive I had and found the old HPS Aide de Camp software. Which was one of the first successful virtual table top programs for playing old boardgames on the computer. Got it running nicely and lo and behold in a module made to play PRESTAGS I found the tables. Someone at one time had posted a vassal module to play PRESTAGS and the screenshots look pretty nice, but as I stated Decision Games has made a Disney effort to stamp out any unsanctioned third party programs to play the game. So the module was deleted quite some time ago from the Vassalengine website and it can't be found anywhere on the internet. Going to take a bit of retraining to figure out how to use Aide de Camp again but I am dying to set up the Battle of Crecy and move some counters around |
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 2, 2015 8:25:23 GMT -6
Basic PRESTAGS Counters.pdf (106.08 KB) I'd have to go back to the maps to look, but I think that most of what you need is the basic CRT (Combat Results Table) and not much else unless you get into the really complex rules. As I mentioned before, I tend to simplify things a lot. I'm curious about the "games being sold" comment, however. Clearly they must not be talking about the original SPI boardgame but instead must refer to something more modern.
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Jun 2, 2015 9:18:07 GMT -6
Yes Decision Games owns Hexwar which is an online tool to play some of the old SPI games. I tried it out for a little while, it was a lot of fun and there are lots of opponents, more Napoleonic and WW2 though. I don't see any of the PRESTAG games. I think they have also developed some games for the iPad and iPhone, maybe one or two for Android. I guess they are just holding their cards close to the chest incase they want to do something with it sometime in the future.
Its not games being sold, they just don't want any free third party virtual game boards of their games being distributed. They sell some vassal modules of their current games as does GMT games, most of these are really well done. I had bought Aide de Camp long long ago before this was an issue.
A current game which some had mentioned in the other thread is a game by GMT Games called "Men of Iron" similar to PRESTAGS. This was designed by the same game designer as War of the Ring, Richard Berg. It has a beautiful vassal module available on the GMT games website.
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Jun 2, 2015 9:26:34 GMT -6
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Post by Merctime on Jun 2, 2015 9:30:43 GMT -6
Looks sweet!! Now to buy it, and learn how to house-rule fantasy magic and monsters in it  |
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Aug 18, 2015 19:22:14 GMT -6
Looking over the old SPI PRESTAGS rules and listening to the soundtrack of Conan the Barbarian as I modify Deponti Ezio's Cyberboard gamebox with new counters. Thanks to John Cooper and Paul with his Remembering PRESTAGS for making the SPI symbols available on their websites. Forces for the Spartan scenario Mantinea, Sparta vs Thebes, no the counters are not in their proper starting places and are not turned to show facing. Cyberboard really degrades the graphics of the counters when they are turned so this is a promo picture only. I might have to figure out VASSAL so my graphics stay nice when the counters are turned   |
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Aug 19, 2015 5:29:28 GMT -6
Battle of Mantinea (362 BC) Thinking my setup for the Battle of Mantinea (362 BC). Thebeans have to deploy within three hexes of D, Spartans have to deploy within three hexes of Q. The lake in the middle of the battlefield is ignored in this scenario.  |
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Post by stevemitchell on Dec 24, 2015 17:05:37 GMT -6
Plus one for Men of Iron. This is a nice mid-level series, with colorful components and lots of bashing around, but without going to the complexity level of the Great Battle of History series. GMT has followed up Men of Iron with Infidel (battles form the Crusades) and Blood and Roses (battles from the Wars of the Roses; title ripped off from a vampire movie). A new title is in development: Arquebusier, featuring war in the Renaissance, and thus adding early gunpowder weapons.
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Apr 23, 2020 18:53:41 GMT -6
Wow I can't believe this was five years ago.  Like I am reading someone else when I read my old posts. |
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Apr 24, 2020 4:29:43 GMT -6
This is what I love about ZunTzu, was able to put all the elements of SPI Dark Ages together in a gamebox and ready to play. Unfortunately the second counter sheet when printing was slightly off. I might fiddle with it later.  sites.google.com/view/spi-dark-ages/home(You can see how the program punches out the counters from a counter sheet using xml) |
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Apr 24, 2020 20:10:55 GMT -6
Looking over the first scenario in Dark Ages, the Battle of Tours 732 A.D. the Franks vs the Umayyads.  Reading more about the battle, I would modify the hill top and slopes as wooded giving a [4] fire protection strength. Also a camp placed in the Umayyad rear, that if taken would cause some bad effect on the Arab forces. |
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Post by owlorbs on Apr 25, 2020 13:08:59 GMT -6
It is true that the maps for Dark Ages and Viking could use a little better personalization.
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Apr 26, 2020 21:50:59 GMT -6
It is true that the maps for Dark Ages and Viking could use a little better personalization. I glanced through the maps I had for the WW2 and Modern tactical games, Desert War, Tank!, Panzer 44 etc. but they don't seem to fit. I can have multiple maps in ZunTzu but the Dark Ages map doesn't align to itself well. I guess I could cut out pieces and see if that would look acceptable, might have to experiment.  It would be really tedious but you could copy each hex, since it would be square pic you would have to use a mask to cut out the hexagon shape and put them together to form new terrain. I've seen some nice cyberboard gameboxes done that way.  Oh your differences document between Dark Ages and Viking is awesome, I've been reference it. |
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Apr 27, 2020 14:34:15 GMT -6
I guess just being able to rotate the map and finding some terrain suitable for a scenario is most true to the game. If I start fudging graphics its just a whole other thing.
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Mogadeet
Level 1 Medium
Retired, parasite on society and Lovin' it.
Posts: 14
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Post by Mogadeet on Apr 28, 2020 11:59:09 GMT -6
I have worked long and hard at building a campaign game around Prestags. Here is the link to my efforts. It's still a work in progress, but quite functional for all that. The only changes, not yet incorporated, are coming out due to some errata I discovered. They are: 1. Ff units can enter streams except for AE, AL, HA, LA, and BL units. No Ff unit can use Fire Combat. 2. If a unit is In Contact through one of its 3 rear hex sides, and no enemy unit is in contact with it through one of its 3 forward hex sides (we use 16.0 Facing), then the unit can change facing to put its tormentor in one of its 3 forward hexes, thus enabling Melee combat. The Link: boardgamegeek.com/filepage/178132/crimson-med-schizophrenic-game-prestags-master-pacIt's free for the taking. Thanks Mogadeet |
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Mogadeet
Level 1 Medium
Retired, parasite on society and Lovin' it.
Posts: 14
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Post by Mogadeet on May 19, 2020 14:10:49 GMT -6
I also have access to a Vassal Module for Prestags. It has its quirks, but it works. A good computer guy could probably polish it up.
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Post by Otto Harkaman on May 20, 2020 10:41:36 GMT -6
I also have access to a Vassal Module for Prestags. It has its quirks, but it works. A good computer guy could probably polish it up. That is interesting, so you must have downloaded that awhile ago? I know vassalengine.com doesn't post SPI games, I had seen rumors of a PRESTAG mod existing. I need to get back to my SPI Dark Ages project, I confess I have been playing way too much on the playstation |
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Mogadeet
Level 1 Medium
Retired, parasite on society and Lovin' it.
Posts: 14
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Post by Mogadeet on May 20, 2020 11:15:51 GMT -6
Actually, I downloaded it just a couple of months ago. I've used it for 3 Prestags games at this point, and it looks like we're firing up a 4th. As long as no one sells it or posts it for general download on the Web, there's little chance that the Orcs employed to protect SPI copyrights will attack.
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Back in the day my group played an old SPI wargame system called PRESTAGS (Pre-Seventeenth Century Tactical Game System). It was a 5-game system which ran from the really ancient times to roughly the renaissance. All games used compatible rules, but each had a few era-specific ones.
I think my dream was always to merge SPI's War of the Ring with SPI's PRESTAGS.
