Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[joncleaves]

Be careful Greg. Conventional wisdom says an asian elephant army rolls over
that list you wrote like it wasn't there - all things being equal, which of
course means players of equal ability. I am also concerned when any Knight
player talks about fighting elephants and doesn't mention dismounting...

I'd personally like to see more 'tactics' posts about in-period battles, which
is how we teach new guys here in KC. It seems better to us for them to learn
open-tourney stuff (which has a lot of artificialty) *after* mastering how these
armies really matched up.

Two Quattlos:

I run two types of armies: 1. Byzantine mounted/loose order foot
armies that are all reg, all have bows, and all skirmish. 2. Insane
armies with no tactical ability other than to move straight ahead and
kill or be killed like Normans.

I happen to own a Norman army right now, so I'm playing that option.

My Norman army is built with close order foot as the moving wall. I
have some woods troops now (thanks to Scott for giving me LHI )
which are necessary, and enough LC and LI to keep stupid crap from
holding up progress. The strike is obviously my IrrA tipped HC units
of 2E each. these puppies are as dangerous to me as to the enemy,
because if the enemy LI or whatever gets too close I HAVE to charge,
which is exactly why I lost my third game (report tomorrow). If I
can keep the HC fresh and let the infantry absorb the enemy rath,
then chances are I'll get a chance to send the HC into something en-
mass. For me the key is getting all the HC to attack together. More
chances to roll up and rout something...cascading morale checks are
the goal. This type of army will win or loose big. No ties. I've
never even had a close game with Normans; I either have blown the
enemy away or lost my a** quick.

Byzantine armies I run totally different. I take HC L/B/sh, LHI
B/sh, LI B/sh, LC L/B/sh and J/B/sh. Everyone moves forward to shoot
and skirmish, evade, turn repeat. I do this with two waves of
skirmishing, one evading back beyond the other and visa versa. I
force march 1 or two small LI units to give me board space and I
spend the game exchanging ground for enemy fatigues. Once I get an
enemy unit tired, I'll try to put the HC on them impet (general
attached) and break the enemy line. I rarely win big with this type
of army. It usually takes the entire alloted time and I can get a 4-
2 at best. It is fun to run, however, as it provides hours of
challenge.

I rarely if ever run infantry armies. Maybe I feel sorry for the
guys :)

boyd

[Greg Regets]

I'll take my chances Jon. :-)

I don't think I'm any better a player than anyont else, and I'm damn sure not as
smart as most, but you have no idea how long I have been hearing how wrong
everything I do is, from everyone around this area. Why should the WARRIOR board
be any different.

But still, I will take my chances. .

G


----- Original Message -----
From: JonCleaves@...
To: WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 3:33 PM
Subject: Re: [WarriorRules] Knight Lists/Battle reports


Be careful Greg. Conventional wisdom says an asian elephant army rolls over
that list you wrote like it wasn't there - all things being equal, which of
course means players of equal ability. I am also concerned when any Knight
player talks about fighting elephants and doesn't mention dismounting...

I'd personally like to see more 'tactics' posts about in-period battles, which
is how we teach new guys here in KC. It seems better to us for them to learn
open-tourney stuff (which has a lot of artificialty) *after* mastering how these
armies really matched up.

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[Greg Regets]

Ok ... :-)

Lets start with a few basic assumptions. Again, nobody is saying this is right
or even smart, just that it has been done. lol

1. These games can be won, but don't even think about a big win, that just isn't
going to happen unless your opponent does something silly. Get whatever win you
can and move on to the next game.

2. You are going to be defending, but NOT stalling. When I see players stall
while defending, it just makes me fall over laughing. The whole idea is to
deploy to your advantage, watch the enemy cross over the center line (attack or
probe orders) then MAKE him obey his orders. Not only do you not want to stall,
you want the damn game to go 15 bounds, so his required advances get to be a
pain in the butt to him and make him walk into your game.

3. Buy lots of small units, and at least three or four generals, and learn to be
a bit creative in the little bit of marching you are going to do in close
quarters. He is a larger army and by the time he gets close (just over 480p or
so, but in approach), he will be in a solid line and will not have time to
change things up. You on the other hand, if you have put the practice time in,
will be able to execute a last second march maneuver that will get you better
matchups. The 16's in column and the 8's, if layed out properly, can execute
crossover moves in one march bound that can help you quite a bit to get positive
matchups. Use the LC and some LI to pin but keep some of your LI back and in
column, so that you have something that if all else fails, can go out and deploy
in front of elephants. This is not wonderful, but works better than the obvious
alternative. The key to all this of course is to have enough generals so as to
make prompting this last second march not an issue. I mostly play with three or
four. Its expensive, but you are already so small an army, who cares. All that
means is you will cover just a bit less of the table you are already not
covering all of. :-)

4. I used to roll for major water, but even if I get it, I still can't cover the
table, so I stopped. I now roll primarily woods and steep-rocky hills. What I
usually try to do is get one in each flank sector and one (obviously a wood) in
my own rear zone about mid-table. This is optimum as the enemy will not know
which side you are going to be on. The point is, you are going to be setting up
between two woods, one on the flank and one in your center deployment area. Even
if he is rolling clear, you can usually manage to get something in a flank and
something in your own rear sector. This is a key though. You don't want the
thing to be too wide (side to side). This would force you to use too many troops
to hold it. All you want to do is have enough to hold it, with a nice long side
to attack out of. I usually force march a few units showing and move, so as to
pin, and have quite a few units behind in ambush. Do not be afraid to do
something screwy like ambush with a knight unit or two. Consider this. The enemy
may think you are flank marching and keep elephants back. Even if he doesn't,
when he moves past the front of the terrain, he will have to face it with
something, and it damn sure will not be elephants. More likely you will see
LMI/LHI and that is perfect stuff for your knights, even if they are disordered.

5. The LTS guys are perfect for your side edge (back on your side) of the
terrain on the flank. He will want to come get them, and in doing so, he will be
putting things on his flank. Even if he sniffs this out (and any even average
player will) at some point orders will become an issue. Don't be too paranoid
about a nutty deployment with these guys, as long as it is not too far forward.
Again, you have lots of prompting and can make a nice last second move if you
have to.

6. The LTS and LHI JLS guys match up quite well against elephants. He can't
break (and rarely recoils) the LTS in one bound if it is in column, and this
keeps the JLS guys from testing waver before they fight. One good die roll is
all you need after that, and you have two units to get it with.

7. Now, lets look at the armies you mentioned.

Rajput - Ok, with that much expensive cav, how many elephants and/or terrain
troops is he going to have anyway? He is either going to have lots of elephants,
which will give you the advantage in terrain, or lots of terrain troops which
will mean not so many elephants to deal with. His EHC want nothing to do with
your crossbows, and yet if he intends to use either the elephants or them
against your LTS, they will need attack orders to do it, so this is a perfect
army to let orders mess him up. If he chooses to use his pretty good infantry
against your LTS, well, thats what knights are for. True, he can make a nice
line of cavalry and charge home, but remember those little LI units we are
keeping back in column, and all those prompting points to march the way we want
to after we pin? I would consider using the other list against this guy and
attacking him on about half the table. Risky but probably reasonable.

Khmer - All the same principles apply, but this is a more dangerous army. He
will match you in terrain, so don't make it too wide or you will have to put too
much stuff into it to hold it. You have to leave at least two of your 8-figure
JLS guys to put with your LTS guys against enemy elephants. You will use
creative marching to get this matchup. Ewan is right, not many will oblige you
by bringing up loose order in range of your knights, but he has orders and at
some point it will become problematic. SHK against his JLS is better for him
now, as he gets half the back, but it is still your fight. Hit him with Marines
first. This will kill his prep against knights and take all the punch out of his
support shot when the knights charge. The Marines do fine for one bound, even
thought they have that crappy halbard. Don't worry about the -1 for disorder
from elephants. He has it, your gonna eat it, and there is no sense worrying
about the air when there is nothing else to breath. Again, I would consider the
other list and a strong attack.

Burmese - The problem I have here is that our only Burmese player is long gone
and was not very good. I have nothing useful to add to any of the above comments
other than to say all of his foot blows.

8. Want to know your real demons in my opinion? Its not any of the above armies,
or Seleucids, or anything like that. LTS and JLS can handle elephants and pikes
can be killed with dismounted Irreg SHI. The real killer for you is armies like
Carthaginians that have elephants and LTS, and at the same time have those damn
Regular Spanish HTW that can definately kick you out of the terrain. I'm happy
in the terrain even against things like Celtiberians as you can let him hit one
unit in column and attack with a bunch more the next bound and at least hold
your own, but those darn Spanish that are regular can hurt you and hurt you bad.
As soon as that terrain is not controllable, you are screwed with any of the
tactics mentioned above.

9. You are 100% right, dismounting is viable against any of this, but I do not
agree that you MUST dismount. The -1 disorder is bad, but its only -1 and you
will not be fighting elephants with your knights anyway, unless your silly.

10. Seleucids are dangerous to be sure. You have a bit of a pozer here as you
dont' want to sit and defend with those scythed-chariots out there. The good
part is that if you roll the right terrain, he only has one unit to play
(Thracians) and you can usually take care of that. What I have done in my two
games against Seleucids (one against John Green a pretty good player) was throw
out all my lights and draw the chariots back to the crossbows that shoot them
quite well. My poor huddled masses of army stayed really close to the terrain I
knew he couldn't mess with. As the chariots became non-entities I took the
attitude that I was already up 96 points and he would want to make things
happen. We fought a small scale battle with two LTS JLS matchups on elephants,
two SHK on one Peltast, and one IRR SHI on pikes. This sounds a little
chicken-#$%&, but I just didn't give him any other targets as I popped back into
the terrain with everything but the LI and LC. As I recall I killed the
Thracians by hitting him with four eight figure Oarsmen units, killed one 32 fig
pike, two elephants, one peltast and four chariots, and he killed all my LI and
ran my LC off the table. It was a good enough win to have John buy drinks at the
institute of breastly culture later that night.

10. All the above is made possible because you are not spending 800+ points on
knights that are of limited value against elephant armies. Since they are of
limited value, buy them in limited numbers, right? Instead you are buying things
that can match a bit better, like the LTS that everyone hates. Sure LIR, Franks
and such will kill the LTS .... so use your other list. ~wink~

Anyway, please don't think any of this is preachy or anything like that. You
asked, I answered and this is in my opinion the best way for everyone to get
better. No matter who a player is, they will usually be better tomorrow than
they were today, right?

Take care and congrats on playing a "Real Man's" army!

Greg


---- Original Message -----
From: JonCleaves@...
To: WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 5:01 PM
Subject: Re: [WarriorRules] Knight Lists/Battle reports


In a message dated 6/25/2002 16:35:46 Central Daylight Time, gar@...
writes:


> I don't think I'm any better a player than anyont else, and I'm damn sure
> not as smart as most, but you have no idea how long I have been hearing how
> wrong everything I do is, from everyone around this area. Why should the
> WARRIOR board be any different.
>

Oh, you mistake me sir. I said nothing about you doing anything wrong. I
have KSJ in both scales... Just looking for insight into how you defeat
Rajputs and Khmer and Burmese, oh my...


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Kelly Wilkinson]

James,
I've seen cavalry that is played very well kick a
lot of but. An excellent example is how jon cleaves
uses his shieldless Han Chinese Hc Lancers[no jon, I
don't want anything!]! You have to know how to
protect them and this comes sometimes from watching
great players in action. Too bad you can't get out to
the big tournaments. I learn from watching the really
great players and have had the honor to get whooped up
on by them! You learn quite a bit that way!


Kelly Wilkinson

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Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
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[scott holder]

I'd personally like to see more 'tactics' posts about in-period battles,
which is how we teach new guys here in KC. It seems better to us for
them to learn open-tourney stuff (which has a lot of artificialty)
*after* mastering how these armies really matched up.

>I'll second that. FW played "in period" goes a long long way to
helping new players work out the "obvious bits" with just 5-6 units, not
10-14. Moreover, you tend to get more "obvious historical combats" that
are not seen as often in a "big open" game. For example, the Armenian
cataphract vs EIR legionaire matchups that we saw at CTA in all three
games.

>Everybody, don't forget that at Hcon, we'll be experimenting with table
size in the Mini, 1200 pt lists on "standard" table sizes, 6x4 for 15mm,
8x5 for 25mm. Depending on feedback from that, we might explore
changing table sizes for Open events next year, or cutting back on army
sizes. Ewan, remind me, what was the "standard" size army in 1990 at
Derby? We played 15mm on a 6x4 table but I can't remember,
specifically, the army size. Something like 1450 or something.

Scott

[Ewan McNay]

On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Holder, Scott <FHWA> wrote:
> sizes. Ewan, remind me, what was the "standard" size army in 1990 at
> Derby? We played 15mm on a 6x4 table but I can't remember,
> specifically, the army size. Something like 1450 or something.

1600, in fact.

e