Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

> What I would like other interested parties to do is to let me and
Scott know - either here or offline if that makes you more
comfortable - what your thoughts are on this. I'll collect them
while he's in Italy and we'll take them into account when we discuss
it upon his return.
>
> Thanks for bearing with us.
>
> Jon

Hi all. I've been watching this thread (kinda forced to, since it
pretty much has dominated the board for the last couple of days) and
finally decided to put in a thought or two. WARNING - lots of
talking below, feel free to skip this article at your leisure.

-------

1.) Umpiring and Rules Intent: Hey Ewan? I'm sorry, but I have to
disagree with you in part.

While the Umpire is there to provide impartial rulings, his
FIRST and FOREMOST duty is to help get the rules RIGHT. He doesn't
have to be infallible, but he has to at least TRY.

Going back to your baseball analogy, yes, Umpires can call pitches
that appear "ball" as strikes. However, such judgements that are
found to be wrong are often picked up on video - the Umpire is trying
to judge a 90-100mph fastball and think "Was it an inch or two too
low?".

These "heat of the moment" judgement calls are NOT RELEVANT to a
game tournament OR to your argument.

If such an umpire were to call balls lobbed 20 feet over the
batter's head to the catcher as "strikes", he'd do so ONCE, and then
get yanked by the rules committee person who is ALWAYS present at
such games.

I would say, if someone is present at a tournament who can supply
answers on what a proper ruling should be, then such a resource
SHOULD and MUST be used.

Getting a win because of a rules technicality? That's like a
convicted killer who gave a murder scene confession getting off in
court because it was found that the cop MIS-SPOKE his Miranda
rights! It's makes one's guts churn and leaves a bad taste in the
mouth.

Speaking for MYSELF, I wouldn't want to see someone walk away
with a trophy for having that happen, ESPECIALLY if I spent scads of
money and free time just to get to the tourney.

"Try harder next time", is the ultimate refuge of rules lawyers and
uber-competitive weasels, EXACTLY the kind of people that populate GW
tourneys and who I was looking to escape from when I tried Warrior a
few months ago.

To say "Well, MY reading of the rulebook doesn't jive with your
ruling" doesn't fly with me.

I've seen instances where 3 different people read a rule and get 3
DIFFERENT interpretations on how the particulars work in a given
situation.

In my opinion on this subset of the issue, IF you can get the
ruling RIGHT, then you SHOULD.

-----------------

2.) Having Authors playing games: Hey Jon? Sorry, but I'm going
having to disagree with you in part now.

An Umpire has a job to do. In my mind, he SHOULD ask the author
what a rules intent should be if that resource is available.

HOWEVER, in a particular situation where said author is actually
PART of a rules dispute, you can't really use him.

Impartiality is all well and good, but there are also APPEARANCES
that have to be maintained.

The Umpire MUST appear to make a ruling that is INDEPENDENT of
whatever may benefit or harm that rules author. It is HIS reading of
the rules, and HIS alone, in such a situation.

Because while we may ALL agree that Jon Cleaves is an upright and
honest man, it is all too easy to let that gremlin of "questionable
decision" out of the bag, especially with such personalities that are
getting hot and bothered, ONLINE, several DAYS after the fact. I can
only imagine how tense things got at the table, right at the moment.

Clearly written rules, faqs, and clarifications are CRITICAL for
every Umpire to have, because it is RARE that there will be an author
or other resource on hand to handle such things.

My friend from Canada, Mr. Cole, has it right when he says that
intentions are all well and good, but it is the PRINTED WORD that we
who judge and umpire tournaments have to live with. We don't get to
ring up Jervis Johnson, Rick Priestly, Jon Cleaves, or Phil Barker,
and go "Hey mate, I'm having a tournament here and one of the players
is having a bit of a go at me over this rule on charge arcs. Could
you help me straighten it out?"

All an Umpire can do is go with how HE understands the rules to
be - since he is not playing, he has no perceived bias, and thus
players can (more) easily accept a ruling from him.

If you play in a tourney Jon, I'm afraid you'll have to accept the
occasional ruling against you.

Is it FAIR?

No.

But life is not fair. Of course, this does not preclude you from
arguing with the umpire, the same perogative as any other player has.

Heck, I've had players yell and nag at me even after their game was
OVER about a ruling I made during their game. You are fully free to
point out that in 3 different sections of the book, it states that
mounted and Close order troops get disordered, and NO WHERE does
it "specifically state" that loose order troops get disordered.

And THEN if the Ump rules against you? Oh well, you tried, so be
it.

The only REAL defense against such a thing is to make sure the
Umpire is up to date on his rulings and has studied his rulebook
RECENTLY (yeah, I know, hard to tell a grown man, a Lt. Col, and a co-
owner of the same company, that he has to STUDY. Besides not being
fair, life ain't easy either.) It's very easy for experienced
players and umps to not "put the time in" to prepare for a tourney
because they are such old hands at it.

I've noticed this problem with my older gaming friends - they've
played SO MANY systems that they starting getting them confused with
one another and just assume that they know the rules cold.

Making sure the rulebook is as CLEAR and as COMPREHENSIVE as
possible goes hand in hand with the above statement.

Will this cover everything? NO. Players (especially American
ones) are horribly inventive at reading rules and finding some new
and creative way to do something that NEVER crossed the author's
mind. It's probably our independent streak - we all have a bit of
the born rebel in us. <lol>

-----------------------

Okay, that's enough rambling for me. Hope no one got bored to
tears or horribly pissed off.

Regards,
Asif Chaudhry
(the newbie Warrior player who will still go to at least one more big
tourney before making any final judgements on the game....)