Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Tom McMillan]

In a message dated 6/2/02 8:42:16 PM, WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com writes:

<< Absolutely correct and were Warrior a set of rules that was primarily
aimed
at simulating historical battles, using troops that would have been
customarily available to the ordinary field commander, that's the list that
would have been done. Warrior is not that kind of rules of set. It is a
tournament players set of rules where your Maurikians may be called upon to
fight any number of ahistorical enemies from Sumerian City states to
Burgundian Ordnannce and everything in between. On that basis, the list was
developed with the assumption that Maurikian players would want to field the
best army they could with high morale, good armour and weaponry type troops.
The best armies Heraklios and Maurikios could put into the field, in other
words, not some scraped together frontier force.
<<< SNIP>>>
As a final word, any army list based on ancient sources is at best a
compromise as we try to sift through what was an "ideal" vs what was actual
practice. The main problem with Warrior and most of the other ancients rules
is that, it is usually the armies with the most sources available and that we
know the most about, that get screwed in how they get advantages within the
rules, while armies about which next to nothing is known, such as the
Blemmyes, get major advantages (like having all their Cavalry be Irr A) on
the basis of one passage in single history (again this is a Barker rule.
Hopefully 4 Horsemen will reduce the invincible Blemmye to their deserved
obscurity in the Classical lists.). :-)

Paul G.

>>
It is a pity that this discussion was derailed, as it entailed a very
erudite question and a most intriguing answer, which left open a lot of room
for discussion.
I think this was going to be a Spearpoint article, but since the points I
was mulling are covered so directly in this post, and I am not currently on
the best of terms with that publication's editor ( he is not unique in that
regard..
&( .) I'll toss it out for consideration here.
I see 3 main points involving List writing philosophy addressed in the
article-

1) Should an army be able to consist only of rare elite troops? This would be
very old news to Napoleonic gamers, who tend to see that every two-bit French
border skirmish army has the Old Guard, Young Guard, and Guard Cuirrassier
miraculously present. As Paul points out it is wrong in a narrow historic
sense of battles as they were actually fought, but in the 'shopping list'
world of tournament Ancients the units did exist, they were available, and it
is hard to exclude them by fiat.

2) On a larger scale just how much flexibility should be allowed in choosing
an army? Some, rare, historical situations actually allowed the 'shopping
list' approach. Xerxes, in his invasion of Greece, had all 38 or whatever
satrapies to choose from, with their unique fighting styles, and chose those
he felt would be most useful. Arrian's array against the Alans, as Mr.
Pavcocic has pointed out, called on the Roman general to gather every unit
that could shoot or throw things- archers, horse archers, anyone with darts
etc, and pick and choose these units so that charging shock cav had to play
'Charge of the Light Brigade' to close.
Generally, however, you brought to battle about anybody you could get you
hands on, and in many cases most of your 'List' was not available. For
example, imagine a Patrician Roman general saying 'We are fighting archers
this campaign, so let's make friends with the Huns and Franks, and lose the
Goths because we don't need them.' Yet it is precisely this flexibility that
is the Patrician's strength- a flexibility they manifestly did not possess.

3) How do we prevent obscure armies from having the advantage of our
ignorance? Paul mentions the Blemmye vs the Byzantines. Other examples are
Bactrian Greeks vs Alexander, (Alex suffers because we pretty much know what
every single guy in his army looked like, the Bactrians get all sorts of
dubious, but useful, options which they may or may not have had, because we
just don't know) or the Kushite Egyptians , who are useful, vs the far more
signifigant but hapless New Kingdom.

I do not know how to deal with these problems in their entirety, but I
have proposed a partial solution in using number of allowed lists to balance
these inequalities. With a default option of 2 Lists, armies that had many
resources at their command could get 3, armies of limited resources would get
1. Granted, this doesnt solve all the problems, the wretched Seleucids would
have to get 3, which would only help , for example, ( as a scientist, rather
than an advocate, I am burdened by having to point out the flaws in my own
arguments) but in general historically prominent armies, who are hurt by our
knowledge of them, would get more choice than the obscure ones. The
Patricians become far less fierce when you have to show up for an event with
one fixed List. (Aetius was damn lucky to have even one!) Alexander
sometimes used no pike, sometimes just cav armies.
An example of how this would work comes from the discussion above. When the
Byzantines were flourishing, as in the Nikephorian and Maurikian eras (and
I'm largely guessing here, knowing absolutely zilch about Byzantines,) they
would be a 3 List army, so could afford a list consisting of largely elite
guard troops against an appropriate enemy. During the weaker 'Thematic' eras
they would be restricted to one list, so could not afford to risk bringing
just a small elite force.
I do think that using such a system would have the very positive effect of
bringing 'real' armies to the table, and relegating those ' I use that one
with the elephants and the Thracians, I don't remember the name but it's List
62'
forces to the obscurity they deserve.

In a message dated 6/4/2002 10:25:09 PM US Eastern Standard Time,
Quahog25@... writes:


> On a larger scale just how much flexibility should be allowed in choosing
> an army?

Good post and interesting thoughts. The army lists for DBM show signs of this
curse of being too well known. Polybian Romans and Nikephorian Byzantines
(for two examples) have all sorts of troops that they have to take in
mandatory ratios to each other, which is only because we know so much about
them. Other more obscure armies have a much wider choice.

I'm all for things that reduce list flexibility and the shopping list
approach to picking armies. That is one reason why the idea of smaller point
tournaments are appealing, precisely because they reduce the ability of
player to take the absolute minimum of the bread-and-butter troops and max
out on toys.

At lower points, at least the number of toys are reduced.

Of coure, I'd also like to require units be taken in 500 or 1,000 man sizes
at a minimum unless we known they fought in different configurations.

I'd also like to see a steep reduction in the number of command factors
available to lots of armies -- especially ones that historically fought in
fairly large undifferentiated masses.

Oh well. That is why we run club games and scenarios.

John Meunier


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

[joncleaves]

My $.02

<< 1) Should an army be able to consist only of rare elite troops?>>

No.

<< 2) On a larger scale just how much flexibility should be allowed in choosing
an army?>>

It should provide the historically aware gamer all the options that have
reasonable history behind them. It should give reasonable outcomes versus
historical opponents.
If there is support to two different interpretations in a troop's
characteristics, the player should have both choices.

<<3) How do we prevent obscure armies from having the advantage of our
ignorance? >>

Do our best with what we know. And use the philosophy above.

To me, Warrior is an historical simulation first. We need to get these armies
as right as we can in period. The tourney guy is on his own.

Having more theme and duplicate tourneys would help.

Having more histoical battles at cons would help.

Jon

> I do think that using such a system would have the very positive
effect of
> bringing 'real' armies to the table, and relegating those ' I use
that one
> with the elephants and the Thracians, I don't remember the name but
it's List
> 62'
> forces to the obscurity they deserve.

Some interesting points brought up here even if I could not quite
follow the suggested solution (it is only 7.30 a.m) Another solution,
that would have an elegance and simplicity to it and would have the
advantage of mightily pissing off competition gamers would be to
have set competition army lists, a la Fast Warrior. The competition
then becomes one based on tabletop generalship rather than who can
pick the cleverest/ cheesiest list.

Digging a flameproof foxhole as you read this,
Adam

[Kelly Wilkinson]

In regard to this, I remember a rule system a while
back called "Shock of Impact" that gave a percentage
of availability for said troop types per unit. This
would certainly be quite a huge task to create versus
historical opponents but would be neat to be able to
use. For instance, in several lists you have certain
troops that can only be used against armies that had
elephants. If you are Arab Conquest and you are going
against the Sassanians the percentage chance would be
high for Anti-elephant troops Whereas verses Byzantine
it would be lower not non-existant. My point is this
unit doesn't go away just because you are fighting a
historical opponent without elephants, your percentage
to have them would be very low. And ofcourse one could
have anything they please verses Ahistorical matches!
This type of system would probably slow things down
too much for tournament play but would certainly spice
things up for the guys in the basements of their homes
who are looking for a little more in their gaming...
just my $00.02 worth!

Respectfully,

Kelly

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[Kelly Wilkinson]

Actually Adam, I've played in "Horse Archer
tournaments" where no multiple armed foot is allowed
and moral is lowered by one grade for all foot units.
Also, as I recall, there was an incentive to purchase
large amounts of light cavalry. This made for very
quick and bloody games! I really miss those St. Louis
tournaments. Alas, those were the days before Darrell
Smith was turned to the "dark side. . . "

Kelly

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[Greg Regets]

Did someone say 'Horse Archers'?

Most of us down here in South Texas grew up playin' 15mm with 1,350 or 1,400
points. Way back when the horse archer ruled the range! Sure, there was a mess a
two-stepping and shootin', but we could have three games on Saturday and still
mosey off to the clubs before all the flillies were too drunk to dance and the
Lone Star was all drank up. Games didn't go no four hours, sure as heck you had
to be afixin' to do some stallin' just to last three, and no triple armed,
killer list, wedge fightin', IRR A, elephant havin', scythed chariot packin',
army you ain't never heard of playin' guy, had any more chance then a suck-egg
mule!

I miss them there days too!!!!!

Greg

----- Original Message -----
From: kelly wilkinson
To: WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 2:47 AM
Subject: Re: [WarriorRules] Re: Of Lists and options



Actually Adam, I've played in "Horse Archer
tournaments" where no multiple armed foot is allowed
and moral is lowered by one grade for all foot units.
Also, as I recall, there was an incentive to purchase
large amounts of light cavalry. This made for very
quick and bloody games! I really miss those St. Louis
tournaments. Alas, those were the days before Darrell
Smith was turned to the "dark side. . . "

Kelly

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[Patrick Byrne]

I favor a list to contain the troops available to the army within their
period of time. And to have the quantity of troops assigned according to
the approximate amounts available during that time.

If an army did or could have fielded a totally elite army, then so be it;
the point cost should even out the difference.
If an army didn't or couldn't have fielded an all elite army and the list is
indicating it could have, then either the quantity should be changed (like
0-2 in lieu of 0- or the different elite troops should not be able to
combine with one another (like unit X can not be fielded if unit Y is
fielded).

The Tournament host should be the one to say how many points should be able
to be fielded, how many lists can be brought, which armies can be brought,
along with indicating any further restrictions.


Greg, let us know when the next tourney is down in Rivercity. A 1250pt
rnage tourney is fine with me.



The more restrictions you put on the troops available, the less chance the
meta-game has to change.
-PB

[Kelly Wilkinson]

Well Greg,
You know, a lot of those rowdy's came from
Missouri! Former Border Ruffians! Heeheee!

Kelly

--- "Greggory A. Regets" <gar@...> wrote:
> Did someone say 'Horse Archers'?
>
> Most of us down here in South Texas grew up playin'
> 15mm with 1,350 or 1,400 points. Way back when the
> horse archer ruled the range! Sure, there was a mess
> a two-stepping and shootin', but we could have three
> games on Saturday and still mosey off to the clubs
> before all the flillies were too drunk to dance and
> the Lone Star was all drank up. Games didn't go no
> four hours, sure as heck you had to be afixin' to do
> some stallin' just to last three, and no triple
> armed, killer list, wedge fightin', IRR A, elephant
> havin', scythed chariot packin', army you ain't
> never heard of playin' guy, had any more chance then
> a suck-egg mule!
>
> I miss them there days too!!!!!
>
> Greg
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: kelly wilkinson
> To: WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 2:47 AM
> Subject: Re: [WarriorRules] Re: Of Lists and
> options
>
>
>
> Actually Adam, I've played in "Horse Archer
> tournaments" where no multiple armed foot is
> allowed
> and moral is lowered by one grade for all foot
> units.
> Also, as I recall, there was an incentive to
> purchase
> large amounts of light cavalry. This made for very
> quick and bloody games! I really miss those St.
> Louis
> tournaments. Alas, those were the days before
> Darrell
> Smith was turned to the "dark side. . . "
>
> Kelly
>
> __________________________________________________
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> Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
> http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> WarriorRules-unsubscribe@egroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo!
> Terms of Service.
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
>
>


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