Great Captains of War

Oh I meant to say…I think this is a cool idea and look forward to the others.

Two thumbs up!! I would like to see more. (Genghis Khan is a personal favorite.)

You might mix in some Not-so-great Captains of War, and/or the Captains that faced one another, such as:

Publius Quinctilius Varus vs Arminius

And I would like to see Richard the Lion Hearted :slight_smile:

Here's a list of some ancient and medieval great captains. Personal inclination and knowledge leads me towards antiquity primarily:

Great Captains:
Attila
Belisarius
Genghis Khan
Hannibal Barca
Julius Caesar
Marius
Richard the Lion-Hearted
Saladin
Sulla

Runners Up: Agrippa, Leonidas, Pompey, Pyrrhus, Sargon, Spartacus, Thutmose

Other sugestions?

I would be interested in Cyrus the Great.

I would also be interested in seeing at least a few women on that list. While there are no world-conquering women in antiquity that I am familiar with (Fu Hao, maybe? That was mostly to retain an existing empire, though . . .), not everyone on the list above were, either.

Sadly, I’m not knowledgeable enough about history to make very many suggestions: most of what I know is from very casual reading to establish flavor for this or that campaign setting ;-).

There were a few good female leaders mentioned in Civilization V: Theodora of the Byzantine Empire and Boudica of the Celts. Of course, I don’t know enough about history to know much about them.

There have been some strong female leaders in history (Elizabeth I, for example), but most  have not generally been "great captains" in the sense of battlefield commanders. Theodora, a formidable woman by any measure, was Emperor Justinian's wife, and Justinian himself retained Belisarius as his battlefield commander. 

Perhaps Joan of Arc.

 

 

I think that if Joan is the main one you feel you have enough information to provide canon stats for (which is understandable and perfectly reasonable), that it would be better to leave the women out entirely.

I can use the examples you provide as a baseline for comparison, and there won’t be any Amelia Earhart* issues with my players.

And sorry: I didn’t mean to start a discussion down this path, and I’m bailing out now ;-).

Man, Boudicca would make a wicked bladedancer…

Welp. There’s my new campaign idea.

(I second Genghis, Boudicca)

Yeah... There were competent female battlefield commanders from time to time, but none have become as famous as, e.g., Hannibal, Julius Caesar, or Genghis. Joan of Arc is quite famous, but mostly for her religious zealotry and sad death. I doubt many people could even say what war she fought in or name a battle she won! The only others that immediately come to mind are: Boudica, Margaret of Anjou, and Zenobia of Palmyra. 

I personally am fascinated by the confrontation of Aurelian and Zenobia, but neither of them is well known outside of narrow circles. Boudica might actually be the best choice as I think she's someone who I could say an ACKS player rolling up.

 

 

 

It seems as though the odds are stacked against women in history. We’re looking specifically at warrior-captains, for which many of these eras would be actively discouraging female participation, and even those women who could gain a little infamy would have had to contend with male history writers. Unfortunately I’m not enough of a history buff to list off any possible candidates.

wikipedia seems to offer a few examples that haven’t been named yet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_warrior Nusaybah, Artemisia, Rani Lakshmibai all sound neat.

King David.

Boudica definitely. That’d be awesome.

Ooh, give us Zenobia!

Another one… Ramesses the Great… or another famous Egyptian Pharaoh.

I have a soft spot for Tomyris myself. Not sure if she fought personally, but leading an army against Cyrus and winning’s nothing to scoff at.

I`ll second that request on Zenobia.

On the importance of good stats I have to say:
We were playing with my new level 1 party today when they met some 6 goblins. One round later 3 gobbos and the party fighter were dead so Dolm the level 0 torchbearer took his strength of 5 and the polearm they had given him and went on to slaughter the other three goblins including their champion, one per round while the party stood there being generally useless and not hitting anything.

So of course its one thing to do this once and another to do it from Greece to India but skills will only get you so far without luck. I guess what Im saying here is that in my opinion 2 - 3 18`s would have been enough but 4 is fine too.

I`m more interested in the choice of proficiencies anyway and those look right on to me. :slight_smile:

I second King David (Fighter or Explorer - most likely the latter) and Spartacus (Fighter). Maybe also Gideon (Fighter or Explorer).

King David actually followed the Adventurer, Conqueror, King paradigm quite well, starting out as a shepherd and later guerilla fighter against the Philistines, gaining henchmen and followers (his Mighty Men), then conquering Jebus and other cities,eventually replacing Saul as king and founding a dynasty.

It is really hard to gauge the comparative abilities of historic figures for a number of reasons. First of all, you have propaganda (sometimes from the supporters, sometimes from enemies). You never hear that a dude was a pretty good warrior who got some lucky breaks and had friends, no, it’s he’s always an unparalleled god of war! Furthermore, you tend to hear more about the great successes (potentially aided by a stroke of luck) than the more mundane actions. If a million men try the impossible, you will hear more about the one successful man than all the 999,999 failures combined.

Pompey doesn’t deserve to be on there, a man with great propaganda who often stole other men’s achievements, and barring two occasions didn’t face credible opposition.

Lucius Licinius Lucullus does - one such man who’s achievements (in the East) were stolen by Pompey.

Quintus Sertorius does too - the one capable general before Caesar that Pompey faced in his time.

You could argue that many of Alexander’s warlords deserve to be on there, and some of their descendants too. Ptolemy, Antigonous One-Eye, Seleucus amongst others.