Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

Martin wrote:

An interesting discussion. This love of missile fire among top
players certainly doesnt seem to be the case here in OZ. It is my
impression most of the top players here favour infantry heavy combat
armies (hellenistic and punic types along with a good range of others)
When knight armies are used (as in our only 15mm comp at canberra)
they tend to be the ones that feature good infantry combat support
(we see spanish of various sorts to get the moogs)WE do have a
midianite player and a regular hundred years war player as well as
the occaisional mexican or burmese of some sort but they perform
inconsistently in general. I personally feel the simple solution to
the threat of firepower is numbers. It is very difficult to shoot
close order foot in sufficient numbers to a halt when they dont have
a missile weapon of their own. It can be even more difficult to halt
the LMI as it will (at least sometimes) approach the enemy in
skirmish. It is also virtually impossible to get a shot on the
vulnerable cavalry types present in these armies when they sit in the
gaps behind a wall of pike or longspear. I realise there are obvious
counter arguments to all of this but in my experience as
generalisations go they hold fairly true. I can personally say i'm
usually quite happy to find myself in competition and fighting an
army that relies chiefly on firepower (or firepower and charging
cavalry) In the last few comps i've used Pre-feudal Scot, Alexandrian
Imperial, and Holy Roman Imperial. Black out the sun for all i care!

I too have been watching this debate with interest. I have several armies.
None of these you would catagorise as primarily shooters. They are mainly
fighting infantry types. This is more to do with my playing style than
anything else.
With a biblical warrior comp next month, I have started using New kingdow
Egyptian which I use as mainly shooters. Having used the army several
times, I am still trying to come to terms with the dynamic of a shooting
army. Perhaps I am just struggling because the army is crap. (But this is
another discussion for another day).
I wonder if the current cycle of shooters isnt to do with the previous
cycle of Lance armies?

[Mark Stone]

Quoting "WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com" <WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com>:

> Message: 11
> Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 13:56:46 -0600 (CST)
> From: hrisikos@...
> Subject: cold wars (missile armies)
>
>
> Now, for the inevitable question, which I will have the temerity
> to ask. From a game design standpoint, WHY do our games that are
> supposed to accurately simulate ancient and medieval warfare so
> obviously place a premium on a group of weapons that seldom decided
> battles? No one ever shot Alexander, Caesar, or the Swiss to pieces, and
> it seldom happened to knight armies or dark age armies either. Shooting
> was usually no more than a harrying affair, at most designed to disorder
> melee formations that then decided battles in hand to hand combat. That
> is NOT what we're playing on the table, as witnessed by the fact that the
> tactics of people like Chris D'Amour are considered unorthodox (although
> not wholly ineffective because of his skill as a player) by any who
> seriously wish to win in tournament play.
>

Several comments here:

(1) Jon is right, that winning missile armies are not one-dimensional. All of
the top finishers at Cold Wars demonstrated effective use of combined arms
tactics. Yes, Bill and I had 80 loose order bowmen, but 32 of those also had
JLS, and we had 8 units of lance-armed cav including 3 units that were Irr A SHK
in the front. Bowmen may set the table, but we full expected somebody else to
clean the plate.

(2) Length of games certainly gives disproportionate power to missile armed
troops. You have to think about not just how to win decisively, but how to have
the best chance of getting to a decisive outcome, win or lose, in 4 hours. Our
last game against the Russ was a perfect example of this. On Bound 2, two units
of HC Bulgars from the Russ army charged two loose order bowmen of ours in the
open. Since each bow unit was only 8 figures, this was a pretty good bet for the
Rus. However, we passed both waver tests and things went down hill quickly for
the Rus from there. We could easily have failed one or both (steady C's, 1/3
chance of failure) and the outcome would have be different. The point is, we
were going to have a decisive outcome one way or another.

(3) Missile power was dominant in significant periods of our game. My area of
expertise is the Middle Ages. Here's an "off the top of my head" list of major
battles decided by missile fire:
- Crecy
- Poitiers
- Agincourt
- Najera
- Nicopolis
- Varna

There are doubtless many others.

(4) Yes, missile power is probably too powerful in Warrior. No game gets
everything perfectly right. I think there are a couple of changes that could be
made that would make Warrior much more realistic in this regard, but as Jon has
pointed out changes that drastically alter the balance between armies -- and
thus alter the value of lead people own -- aren't going to happen, and probably
shouldn't happen.


-Mark Stone