Roman Army Drill

[M. Demetrius]

One time, in frustration while trying to settle some argument over some drill command, I remember saying "Well, we have eleven commands that we can use, then, because no others exist from the -th Century. We have a command for "draw swords", but none for "sheath swords". So if ever we have the troops draw them, they have to carry them in their hands for the rest of their lives until we find a command cited somewhere, right?"

But seriously, it would be a good idea to look at the extensive footnoting beforehand. We used sources that very likely many of the readers of this meager post have never heard of. Some of the sources are not easily obtainable, some were from books that are available only to a few. One of our members has access to the Library of Congress, and was able to find books to reference that are very rare. It's not a perfect work, it's not intended to be a mandate to anyone, it's just a pretty well researched command set that can be backed up by ancient sources spanning six centuries or so. Anyone or any group who wants to use some other list is perfectly free to do so.

If you come to an event that uses the Tactica as its command set, however, you'll find that the one calling drill will probably pronounce things according to our limited pronunciation guidelines, and uses commands taken from this list, not some other. If anyone goes to an event that is governed by another list, (s)he should make it a point to get their list and study it to be ready to do what's asked with as little confusion as possible. Easy enough, right?