Brethren
Matthew Sutton-O'Connor's 28mm historical skirmish game for the Ancient and Dark Age eras. Heroes give orders to the troops around them, from shield walls to charges, and the smallest games play in about half an hour. Free Quick Start Guide.
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"My take on this one is coming soon."
What is Brethren
Brethren is a historical skirmish game by Matthew Sutton-O’Connor. The Quick Start Guide calls it “a fast-paced skirmish wargame” built for “a wide range of combat scenarios in the Ancient and Dark Age time periods.” The official site sums it up as “Fast, Fun and Ferocious.”
It’s written for 28mm miniatures, and you bring your own. Every model is one unit, and you pay points for the soldier and for each piece of kit you give him. A Roman hastatus with a pilum, sword and shield costs 26 points. That makes “what you see is what you get” the house rule for army building. The basic profiles in the Quick Start Guide work for any force, historical or fantasy.
Sutton-O’Connor wrote it to fit around a busy life. In his words, “Like many others I struggle to get opponents and games in while juggling everything else in life.” The books first went on sale on 26 April 2024. A Revised Edition followed on 26 April 2026, with a free update document for owners of the original books.
The game is split across a core rulebook and three army books, each with ten factions:
- The Historical Rulebook. The core rules, terrain, missions and siege battles.
- Armies of the Ancients. Barbarian tribes, Greek nations, Rome, Persia and more.
- Armies of the Dark Ages. Anglo-Saxons, Bandits, Byzantines, Crusaders, Irish, Mongols, Moors, Normans, Saracens and Vikings.
- Armies of the Empire’s End. Germanic tribes, Late Romans, Huns, Sassanids and more.
How it plays
- Four phases a turn. Priority, Activation, Combat, then Morale. Each player rolls a D6 for priority, and the high roll goes first.
- Action points. Each unit has AP on its card and spends them on actions like Move, Run, Wait, Prepare, Aim and Loose. Each action can only be used once a turn, and unspent AP is lost.
- Heroes give orders. Units alternate activations one at a time, but activating a Combat Hero lets every friendly unit within 6” go with him. Orders include Group Move, Group Run, Charge and Shield Formation. A shield wall needs at least three shielded infantry in base contact and gets +1 Defence to the front and -1 to the rear.
- Charges are a gamble. Roll a D6 and add it to movement. Units that make contact get an extra attack. Units that fall short lose 1 Defence for the rest of the turn.
- Melee in one roll-off. Both sides roll their pooled attack dice at once. Every die higher than the opponent’s best roll is a hit. Hits then roll to beat the target’s Defence, and a 6 always wounds. A beaten unit falls back 1”, and one with nowhere to go becomes Desperate and fights on with stacking modifiers.
- Morale hits the side that lost more. The winning player picks one of their heroes and an enemy unit near him. Every losing unit within 6” of that unit rolls 2D6 against its Morale, and a failure means it runs. A lost hero counts as two units.
- Chariots and elephants. Chariots lose 6” of movement to turn more than 90 degrees. A panicked war elephant runs up to 6” in a random direction and can trample anything in its path, friend or foe.
- Missions and sieges. The Revised Edition pairs three deployments (Opposing Armies, Ambush, Surrounded) with three objectives (Decimate, Assassinate, Objective Capture), plus a set of siege missions.
How to start
- Read the Quick Start Guide. It’s free on the rules page, in colour and printer-friendly versions. It has the full turn sequence, terrain, and a points list of basic heroes, warriors, weapons and mounts, so you can build a force and play.
- Use the miniatures you have. The rules assume 28mm models on 25mm round bases for infantry, and 25x50mm or 40mm round bases for cavalry. Other bases are fine if both players agree.
- Start small. A 250-point game has one hero and fits on a 2’ × 3’ table. Bigger games add heroes and table space, up to 1,500 points on 7’ × 3’.
- Print the extras. Unit cards and order tokens are free on the free resources page.
- Buy the books. Wargames Atlantic sells the PDFs: The Historical Rulebook and Armies of the Dark Ages are $8.99 each. The PDFs are also on Wargame Vault. Print copies, including The Historical Collection with all four books in one, are on Amazon.
Community & reviews
The official site runs a blog with rules updates and new minor factions, plus a community photos page. Sutton-O’Connor answers questions at brethrenwargame@gmail.com.
Official
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