Preparing for a new arena

"As mentioned to my previous report a new era of Gladitorial combat is upon us. Caesar is keen to increase his popularity and the tried and tested ways of doing this are either lavish orgies in palaces or orgies of violence across the Empire. The later is cheaper for the Empirial coffers, so the Promoter Barrius Hearnius has been brought in to revamp the setup. After examination of his new guidelines, I have decided to sell up my current gladiators and start from scratch again. All my gladiators had healed within a month, so after selling all the School stock my purse sits at an improved 5800 aurei. Heading in the right direction at least."

[Note: Gladiator and equipment costs in the new version of Red Sand, Blue Sky are calculated completely differently from before]

 With my purse discretely hidden about my person, I headed down to the slave market to re-stock my school. The following was available for purchase:

Description	Savvy	Strength	Speed	Attribute Total	Base Cost	Real Cost
Dimachaerus (Germania)	3	4	3	10	36	38
Murmillo (Germania)	3	3	3	9	27	32
Retiarius (Galatia)	4	3	3	10	36	41
Secutor (Hispania)	3	3	3	9	27	29
Slave (Gallia)	2	2	2	6	8	9
Slave (Cyrenaica)	2	3	2	7	12	17
Slave (Thrace)	2	2	2	6	8	10
Slave (Dacia)	2	4	2	8	16	20

Beware of ordinary looking Gauls.

I thought that 4 gladiators would be a good start to the new school. The new regulations allow for new combatants to be purchased at the end of each month if desired. 2 trained gladiators and 2 untrained slaves would seem to make an interesting starting roster. The profits from the quickly improving (assuming they stay alive) untrained slaves would be worth investigating, where as you need to have some trained for success. In the gladiator pool I have picked the Secutor, who is of average ability but cheapest, and every Ludus needs a Retiarius, so he was bought. As for the slaves, a Dacien one stood out as a big strong lad, so I paid the extra for him. A run of the mill slave was also on the list. The cheapest, though, was a Gaul. I've already run foul of having Gauls in my school, especially ordinary looking ones, so I avoided him and paid the extra aurei for the Thracien (and peace of mind!).

Onto Equipment. Obviously I needed Secutor and Retiarus gear. The slave from Thraca would hopefully have some instinct for the Thraex style of combat, maybe even basically taught before being plucked from his homeland, and you can't go wrong with having a Murmillo in the Stable. In all cases, especially with my winnings from the first 3 months, I bought the heavier armour to help protect my investments. Signatures (individual quirks) were also rolled for here, but the results all came up with "no signature".

So costs come to:

• Acacius (Galatia) - Retiarius : 56
• Balbus (Hispania) - Secutor  : 44
• Caecus (Thrace) - ex-Slave Thraex : 28
• Dagwalus (Dacia) - ex-Slave Murmillo : 36
• Total Investment : 164 aurei

[ You can maybe see why I sold up and started again. In the old system the gladiator and armour pricing was much more expensive. even taking into account the smaller number of Gladiators and the cheap ex-slaves the costs are 164 against 2540 aurei. Gladiators will also increase in value as their attributes go up, as opposed to when their entire Rep went up in the old system (ignoring the 100pt Fame bonus) so the chance to make more money more quickly will hopefully see me make my way towards Rome.]