As I travel the internet, I am very excited to see all the different ways people are playing and adapting Men of Bronze and Wars of the Republic. I figured it would be a good idea to share some of my favorite mods and adaptions so others can see and decide if it would be a modification they would like to try out.
You may recall that Page 5 of both rulebooks encourages you to use your own house rules. After all, you own the rules now so I encouraged you to use them as you wish. Below are some House Rules I saw in use. Feel free to adopt these as you wish.
Reduced Arete/Commander's Gaze Tokens
Some folks felt like they were getting too many Commander's Gaze tokens to use to bid for initiative, declare charges, or trigger other special rules. Normally, you get 1 token per unit and 2 for your Commander's unit. Therefore, an army with 7 units, would have 8 Arete Points.
In this variant, instead of 1 token per unit you get one for every two units. You essentially add up your normal total and divide by 2 and round up. For example, if you have 6 units and a Commander, you would normally have 7 Arete Points. Using the variant, you would have 4 instead.
(# of Units + 1 for the Commander)/2 = Command Tokens
This would give you a good formula for determining your Command Tokens.
Reduced Charge Ranges
This one relates more to Men of Bronze. Currently, charge ranges are double the normal movement rates. However, this means a Hoplite unit can charge 12 MU, which can be a large part of a 48 MU board!
Wars of the Republic uses a Movement and a half charge range, rounding up. This could easily be adapted to Men of Bronze as well. Therefore, a Hoplite unit with 6 MU would have a charge range of 9 MU instead. That allows more space on the table to maneuver, and gives a boost to the Evade/Pursue special rules. 
Remove/Add the Melee Phase
With this option, you either remove the Melee phase from Wars of the Republic or add the Melee Phase to Men of Bronze. In Men of Bronze, combat occurs as it happens, while in Wars of the Republic combat occurs after movement has been resolved so it can happen all at once. The advantage of the Men of Bronze option is that the order you engage becomes a tactical decision and can influence your interrupt strategy. However, in Wars of the Republic, who is supporting who and determining combat bonus is much easier and cleaner.
Therefore, I could see a group of players either adding or removing this element from either game. Both methods have an inherent advantage to their process.
Make Legion the Inverse of Phalanx
Currently, a Phalanx allows +2 Fight Dice, and +1 Armor bonus. Legion units add +2 Armor but no Fight bonus. This option would make the Legion the opposite of Phalanx by giving them a +2 Armor AND +1 Fight.
Legion- The Legion formation provides a +2 Armor and +1 Fight
This was not initially put in, as the +2 Armor bonus makes Legions very tough to crack open. Therefore, I wanted to make their fighting style much more "grind" focused so that a Legion unit could be tied up meaningfully in combat, even if it could not be killed off. This seemed to suit the Roman combat style based on my reading.
Unit Size
Both sets of these rules are designed to be scale and model agnostic. The rules recommend using 10 28mm scale models in groups of 10. That included archers, peltasts, light infantry, skirmishers, cavalry etc. Of course, these are guidelines only, and the game really deals in unit vs unit footprints. As long as both sides are organized the same, the unit size does not matter.
Online, I have seen various unit sizes being used. One of my favorites was Happy Wanderer on the Grabbag of Games blog using Phalanx units of 40 models each! Those are some big units! I have also seen that smaller units are popular as well, including cavalry units of 5-6 models each, and light infantry units being 6 or so models each.
Since this is a base and mode agnostic game, as long as both sides are using the same conventions then it will have no impact on game play. Change and use any unit size you wish!
Measurement Units and Base Widths
Men of Bronze uses a base width, while Wars of the Republic uses Measurement Units. Despite the naming conventions, the idea is that both of these measurements are whatever your table or unit size needs. Therefore, it was intentionally kept vague. For 28mm on a 4 x 6 foot table, I tend to use 1 MU = 1 inch.
However, here is a good "rule of thumb" for determining the proper size of a BW/MU based solely on your table size.
MU= (Width of table/8=X)/6= 1 MU
Of course, the scale of your models such as 20mm, 15mm, 54mm, etc may also lead you to adjusting your MU scale.
Final Thoughts
It is so exciting to see people using and adapting these games for their own tables. They were always intended as a place to start, and a tool box. After all, what works for my table does not necessarily work for your groups preferences, your gaming table size, your terrain collection, your figure collection, etc. The variables are endless. Therefore, it is only logical to players to adapt! Page 5 encourages these House Rules to make them work for you.
Above, I highlighted some of the more common flavors I have seen online. I would love to hear about the mods and House Rules you use. Feel free to leave them in comments, on the Message Board, or contact me at the Blood and Spectacles website, or become a Patron for ultimate access to future
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