Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Ewan McNay]

Theme H’Con report 2004 – Sassanid (ah, I mean Roman) theme.

That title is a little unfair. There *were* several Romans – mostly
EIR – but none of them made it to the top. I think that the best
Roman performance was that of Tim Brown, but Scott may correct me on
this; of the new rules, I only ever saw fulcum being used (a lot) –
the replacing in combat would have been great in several cases but
either players need a lot more practice or the battleline is short
enough when composed of regular HI, and keeping a second line is a
further handicap. Fulcum allowed the legions not to rout when charged
by SHC, but not to actually win the combat – perhaps as intended. The
effect against EHC should have been greater, but I didn’t see enough
of the other Sassanids’ battles to observe; certainly Frank Gilson,
who had no SHC, seemed to do just fine. In 25mm of 16 (?) players
there were seven Sassanids – I’ve already praised the painting of
Michael Bard on mine and Charles Yaw on his own.

One thing that came up several times was the use of fire arrows. This
was actually, I think, slightly overblown, as I’ll note in a second,
but certainly caused some issues: the rules currently allow for a
player to ‘adjust list for fortifications’ even if their opponent does
not, in fact, *have* any fortifications but is merely allowed such in
his list. In particular, one is allowed to equip troops (very
cheaply) with incendiary arrows, which fire at artillery factors and
cause disorder to any mounted unit taking 1 cpf. You can imagine what
a Midianite so armed would look like! Now, only the new lists have
fortifications detailed – so anyone using a pre-FHE list could not be
faced with fire arrows (and nor could someone like Tim Brown using
Assyrians in the NICT – which seems fair enough, there has to be some
value to taking an early army). This got a little silly. However,
Frank pointed out to me in the theme final that incendiaries only have
a range of 40p, regardless of their base missile type. So it’s not so
heinous as it might have appeared – but it did cause consternation!

Anyway, on to the games. My first was against Lenny (Ludwig) Herman,
also using Sassanids but with no elephants, fewer LC, and a lot of
SHC, EHC and HC, all shielded. [My Sassanid list had two elephant
units – one of 3, all with two extra javelin crew, and the CinC in a
2-El unit without extra crew to accompany elephant-proofed LC – as
well as every regular D LC figure available and 3 units of SHC/EHC
subgenerals.] I chose four hills as my terrain picks, while Lenny
picked open spaces, and we ended up on Map 1 in the uploaded file.
The steep hill in Lenny’s rear zone caused him to split his deployment
into two halves, and I tried with fair success to make that split
permanent by running my LI B backed by elephants and the Paighan
militia down from the central hill. That unit of LI B definitely
needs some medals after leading my army almost every game! To the
right of the central hills, Lenny’s EHC and HC came off worse in a
shooting battle with some LC and SHC, being forced to charge
disordered on bound 2. Nonimpetuous, tired, disordered EHC against
fresh impetuous SHC is not much of a fight; combined with some of
Lenny’s LC being caught by LI in an evade beside the far right hill,
Lenny failed enough wavers to put the army on retreat. Lenny was my
nominee for spportsman over the weekend – just a gentle guy.

Round 2 brought me against Rob Turnbull, an excellent player, using
the only Commagene of the tournament. NOT what my Sassanids wanted to
see – massed pike (4 32-man units). Moreover, I missed my first two
terrain picks, allowing Rob to get both a MWF and a max steep, rocky
hill on which to anchor his line – see the map. A second max steeep
hill filled on flank sector, while I got a gentle hill next to the MWF
– which would actually become important. Rob deployed in the expected
box behind a force-marched line of pikemen covering most of the
frontage between the steep hills and MWF. However, the far right
(from my viewpoint) of his line, next to the MWF, was a force-marched
unit of peltasts, not pikemen. In front of my hill. I wondered
whether I was being led into some kind of trap here, but decided that
even if so, I could not resist the bait – so my subgeneral on that
flank marched his SHC up to 240, while the LMI were pinned by my
force-marched LI; the LMI failed their counter, and so on bound 2 they
were hit by the SHC (passing their waver) followed-up on bound 3 by my
unit of HC, the only time in the whole weekend when that unit found
something useful to do. That routed the LMI and shook the adjacent
pike block as well as some LC, so the pikes got charged on bound 4 and
also went away. Meanwhile, Rob saw this happening and had to push on
his own right flank – so he sent a unit of LC into some of my LI, then
burst through to convert into a 4-man LC unit. They broke-off long
next turn – but Rob again rolled long to catch them in rout, which
shook my militia, and the disordered LI had been trapped by the rear
of the bursting-through LC and unable to evade from the pikes who
charged them. Fighting LI with pike is rarely a good idea, and that
put that command onto retreat. On the plus side, the pike charge
exposed the shieldless flank of the pikeblock to my SHC (thankfully
from a different command), with the 3-elephant unit waiting to hit the
pikes once pushed back. And then… I checked with Rob that the pursuing
LC had not been on Probe orders (when they could not roll long), and
it turned out that they were. So Scott came over and rolled back as
best he could, which gave me the command back in good order, and the
rout of the now-disordered pike block put Rob’s big infantry command,
and hence the army, onto retreat. My massed LC did very little this
game except get in a shooting war with skirmishing peltasts in front
of the steep hill.

So with two 5-point wins, round 3 brought the top table against Tim
Brown and a thrd diifferent opposing army, Early Imperial Roman. Tim
managed to get four large terrain pieces – anyone sense a theme here?
– but thankfully could not place his last woods centrally, leaving an
open centre through which my strike units advanced, while LC swarmed
the right flank. Tim also bought one section of ditch in his forward
zone, and a whole bunch of fire arrows. Bound 2, I though I had an
opening – one of Tim’s LHI bow units failed a waver from massed LC
bowfire – but he skilfully protected the unit for the rest of the
game. Moreover, on the far right, where Tim had one unit of LC
against two of mine, shielding the flank of the lone auxilia unit out
there (his line was LI B behind ditch, LHI, LC to the water) I rolled
–2 on the LC bowfire to avoid forcing Tim’s LC away and getting onto
the LHI flank (as my CinC advanced toward the auxilia). Nothing
doing, and that flank essentially never went anywhere. So we were
left to fight on the left-centre. My LI discovered more LHI bowmen in
the wood, but were able to gang-up on that unit and negate it. Tim’s
Armenian allied LC sent fire arrows into my EHC next to the wood,
preventing it from even thinking about charging (which would have been
nice, as that was my one regular mounted unit and the Sub’s SHC were
going in that bound against some auxilia). Tim had, we later agreed,
erred a little in that his line on the left consisted of two legions
(in fulcum) with a unit of LHI between them. My SHC thought that the
LHI looked tasty; they passed their initial waver, but could never
win, and after failing a couple of wavers for being pushed back
disordered, they eventually routed. A second SHC sub went into an
adjacent legion (furthest from the wood) but Tim managed to pull back
from the advancing elephants and send some allied SHC into my LI B
unit to ensure getting at least some points. When the auxilia routed,
a couple of units shook, but time had run out – the Sassanid cavalry
had had their way with the Roman infantry, and 4-1. That left Frank
Gilson and I both on 14, with no-one else really that close, so we’d
play the final game on Sunday morning.

Sunday I was completely brain-dead (and a little irked) but
nonetheless got in the car for the hour’s drive to Lancaster. I
thought that I was probably ahead on adjusted points, but not by a
lot. So, I expected a fluid, open-field, cavalry swarm battle. Not
exactly. I opted for four hills; Frank, however, decided that his
lack of SHC and fewer LC merited closing down the battlefield, so
chose two unfortified built-over areas, and two pieces of brush. That
produced the completely clogged central table that you can see in the
map – only one-element wide channels of clear terrain at any point
along the entire frontage of the battle. However, having clogged up
the table – much to the amusement of bystanders – we then proceeded to
produce a battle anyway; both of us sent elephants into the brush, for
example. The left flank, over the brushy hills, was essentially a
shooting battle. I won early, as Frank’s medial EHC unit was forced
to charge a unit of LI, hence becoming disordered, and destroyed it to
end up sitting disordered in front of a LC unit. Next turn it got to
10 cpf, and had to charge again – that was 13 cpf, but it charged
short, recalled long, and escaped. Eventually on that far flank,
Frank’s JLS/B/Sh LC and EHC support would win, catching a 4-man LC
unit and shaking the 12-man next to it, on the final turn. Slightly
closer to the middle, the LC who had shot up the EHC were now
outnumbering their opposition, and managed to catch *their* opposing
LC as well as the flank of that 13 cpf EHC – but rolled down to only
do 1 cpf, also on the last turn, and the EHC survived (although the LC
routed). On the middle hill was most of the action. My big LI B unit
was force marched in ambush and on Wait orders, and was discovered by
a 4-man LI B unit who promptly took 14 cpf (!) in prep shooting. I
had a slight traffic jam of LI here, with LI JLS, Sh and some S, Sh
guys all coming forward around/through the edge of the town, and Frank
tried to take advantage of this by charging a 12-man HC unit into the
LI B in the brush, as well as a 4-man LI JLS unit also in the brush.
Both stood, to avoid any possibility of him converting into anything
other than LI, and the big unit was just recoiled, allowing my SHC and
EHC to come down the hill (yes, SHC in the brush also) and rout off
the HC. The LI B unit, though, was hit further by some EHC and a unit
of 3 elephants, and eventually succumbed – but the elephants who
converted into some stationary HC on the hill were now disordered,
tired, and fighting uphill, and failed to make an impression. The HC
rout only shook some LI in the town, but they then routed when
charged, and my LC flank march came on the right flank and destroyed
the camp – my first camp looting! In town A, Frank had some close
order militia defending the edge, but these were flanked and then
rear-charged by LI JLS – sho of course rolled down to avoid killing
the MI. Still, with another dead unit of Frank’s LI (who had come out
of town B to menace my CinC), that was a 5-1, and the win. I’ve
mentioned already the very cool prize of a painted/baed 25mm legion;
I’m told that this was donated by Kelly Wilkinson, who deserves kudos
for providing such an impressive and appropriate laurel! Both Frank
and I qualified for next year’s NICT from this, so we’ll do it all again…

[Kelly Wilkinson]

Thanks Ewan!

I can't think of a better person to win them. Also Scott Holder deserves
much thanks for choosing to use them as the Theme prize as it was his decision
to use them as such.

kelly wilkinson

Ewan McNay <ewan.mcnay@...> wrote:
I’ve
mentioned already the very cool prize of a painted/baed 25mm legion;
I’m told that this was donated by Kelly Wilkinson, who deserves kudos
for providing such an impressive and appropriate laurel! Both Frank
and I qualified for next year’s NICT from this, so we’ll do it all again…







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