Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[joncleaves]

Historicon report by Jon Cleaves

Thursday:
Warrior Mini –1200 pts, but standard table sizes as an experiment,
which I saw generally well-received. I umped this tourney as Scott H
was on vacation, and I must say that the whole crew was very well-
behaved. I even got over an hour in the dealer area in the middle of
round two without being missed – a long way from my tourney
experience in other game systems, where the idea of the ump being
away from the tables one second is unheard of. Congrats to all for
setting the standard in rules knowledge (or at least in looking the
rule up first before calling on the ump….lol) and sportsmanship.
15mm Mini-Todd Kaeser, Aztec
25mm Mini-Tim Brown, Carthaginians

Friday:
Warrior 1600 point Biblical Theme. My army: Bedouin Tribes
(Midianite).
Round 1: Played a younger and newer player who I believe was
introduced to the system by Todd Kaeser. He had Early Hebrew, but as
I remember, he did not have any of the high-morale foot. Robert
played well, but without missile-armed foot or a lot of the right
kind of chariots, I was not really in any danger unless I made a
mistake. I am not into using a tourney game as a total `teaching
game' but I will point out big blunders to a newer player before he
makes them (where I would not with a veteran) and I do not remember
him making any major gaffes. When the decisive clash came, his mid-
grade morale troops let him down as expected. The only thing I would
say is that you can skirmish or you can shock, but you can't shock
with average troops and do so reliably over time (exception-Chris
Damour). Robert was also the recipient of a double flank march where
both sides entered simultaneously in the forward zones on bound 4. I
won 5-1.

Round 2: Played Alex Vaeth who had Neo Hittites. Alex and I are old
competitors. He is a great friend and an extremely capable player
who I taught to play ancients 10 years ago and who has won several
tourneys since. This was to be the original no-holds-barred slam
fest between master and student somewhat akin to an emperor-Vader
lightsaber duel. His plan to use 3-element deep chariot units in a
big group to split fire and break a midianite camel block worked, but
he had to devote too much of his effort to it and I made things
happen everywhere else I wanted to, including a large infantry unit
that challenged my will by not breaking until the fourth bound of
combat against it. I avenged my last tourney loss to him (in a
finals in Denver 3 years ago) by winning 5-2.

Round 3: The two 5's left me in the finals game with Robert
Turnbull – the other double 5 player after two rounds. Robert's list
was MADE for midianites with 6E LMI archer units and 4E Elamite 3B
HCh units. Against a solid player with exactly the wrong army for
mine to fight, I needed a break and did not get it. His
characterization of the situation as "away he (Jon) went…" in his
report is somewhat impolitic, but winners do get to write the
histories….. he played very well and had a well-thought-out army. I
would disagree with his emphasis on the dice in this or any of his
games. He won a deserved 5-2.

Rob won the 15mm theme.
The 25mm theme went to a final on Sunday between Tim Brown and Dave
Markowitz' excellent looking 25mm (!!) Bedouin Tribes. Someone else
will know how that came out.

Saturday
25mm NICT. My army: Han Chinese

Round 1: Kevin Santos' much-feared Hsiung Nu. A great start – Kevin
is a great guy to play – always an enjoyable game – and with an
historical Han opponent to boot! My biggest mistake was in my camp
placement. I somehow thought that at start my left would be a
skirmish flank and the center and right would be where we fought, but
after he deployed (I deployed first due to his 130+ scouting points!)
it became clear that was not the case and I paid for it. He rushed
my left and hit it hard carrying off back to my camp. I broke his
center, but the 150 point camp made a 5-1 game into a 3-2. Kevin is
a great player, but Hsiung Nu is tough on an 8x5 versus a shooter-
foot army. Many have already pointed out the irony of me losing a
camp, so the rest of you (esp. Scott Holder) can skip doing that if
you like…lol

Round 2: Rich Kroupa's Late Imperial Romans represent one of the
worst matchups for Han – their foot fights better and shoots just as
hard. Luckily, I have had some experience lately (despite the amount
of Fantasy Warrior I am playing due to the playtest…) with Late
Romans both with and against. I focused all my effort on his two
auxilia units while doing my best to avoid direct combat with the
legions until the auxilia broke. The gamble paid off and I won 5-2
and another enjoyable game with a great player.

Round 3: My last NICT game with Dick Hurchanik's Sung Chinese brought
about a situation I have been anticipating for most of my time in the
ancients hobby. He placed his army in a corner behind large foot
blocks, two gullies and wagon laagers. I have always said it was
unfair to make it the other player's `responsibility' to attack such
a well-constructed fortress. I had 8 points at that time and it was
at least possible that Chris and Rob's game would end 2-2, so it was
not like I was mathematically out of it, but I refused to make it my
job to charge at a higher target behind an obstacle. I gave my
entire army wait orders. After 7 bounds of staring at each other,
Dick began to move his army towards mine and I changed over to probe
and attack orders and began to march to him. We spent a lot of time
maneuvering to get our armies moving from a standstill (order
changes, prompts to march) and in the struggle for advantage, time
ran out with us each having killed exactly 253 points for a 2-2.
Dick played a great game and knew exactly what he was doing, but
there was no soft spot in either of our deployments for a decisive
kill with the game time left after we got on the move. I did learn a
LOT in that one and I took note of his excellent gully terrain and
the Chinese buildings he uses for atmosphere around the table. Next
time, Dick!

The NICT was won by Chris Damour's Patrician Romans against Rob
Turnbull's Seleucids. I understand Franks had something to do with
the outcome. ;)

I did not see any of the Open, played in 15mm in the same time slot
as the NICT. I understand Jamie Gentry won with Sarmatians, but I
might have the army wrong. The one I remember had some interesting
6E HC units….

Rules Stuff

A couple of questions came up that need clarification. The question
will be whether they go in the clarification document or in our
upcoming umpire's guide. The discriminator is if the rule is just
the way I want it to read, but in 1% of cases it plays out weird, it
will go in the umpire's guide.
I can tell you for sure I am working on language for evades
in `strange directions', recalls when you have your back to the enemy
and overlaps and support shooting in subsequent bounds. Stand by.

Warrior Stuff

If you want to see any of the following, you will have to get
involved and actually do something (recruit new players, talk to a
hobby store/dealer/distributor directly or both). We can't just make
these things happen without sales of and clear customer interest in
Warrior. We at FHE plan to work harder on marketing and recruiting
over the next year, but ultimately you the customer has to weigh in
and vote.

-Fast Warrior Army Packs. Retailer/distributors won't make `em
unless they believe they will sell; ask yours for them.
-A Warrior rules reprint. Hey, I want this too, but not til we sell
the ones we have. Every new recruit brings you closer to having a
new, more sturdy and more typo-free rulebook.
-Different tourney structure at cons. Ultimately NASAMW decides –
tell them what you want.

Dealer Area

Dealer area at Cold Wars/Historicon is always awesome. Some folks
have a high opinion of the paint jobs on the figures they sell, but
hey, if someone will pay that….
We ought to see more dealers putting multiple copies of the figure
code number indexes hanging all over their displays. Always pisses
me off to have to wait to get my hands on one to figure out in what
box I will find the pack I need - and with NASAMW tourneys all being
all damn day long, I don't have time to paw through them….lol

Hope this helped at least one of you. See you there next year.
Jon

Jon,

You were right. I was using the Iazyges variant of the Sarmation list. 6
elements of 18 HC/L/B, 3 elements of 16 LC/B and 1 element 8 LC/B.

Jamie
Phantom Raider 6