Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

Jon and List,
This weekend, the Triafata Historicals Club ran a demo and a 12
person tournament (25mm) at Pandamonium, a big Fantasy/RPG con up here
in Toronto. A good time was had by all. In another post, I'll outline
the tourny results.
Here, I want to talk abut the demo results.
A bunch of guys came around during the first round of the tourny
and watched avidly. By the second round (I had delberately put the
Warrior rounds after the 40K rounds to try and get some interest) half a
dozen mature 40K players were leafing through rules and asking questions
about figs manufacturers. On Sunday, I had five players for a Demo
(Alexander vs. Hektor). A sixth player drifted in and out between his
40K finals.
They, and some of our other new players, all shared the same set of
comments on the rules. which I'll pass on.
One, the rules are detailed and exciting. Just learning the
subtleties of the command and control, orders, terrain, and morale
really turned these guys on. A pleasure to watch.
Two, the layout of the rules was, in their opinion, confusing and
difficult. I was asked (and have been asked over the last year) "Why
aren't the rules laid out in turn sequence order?"
I've been playing this game a long time. I know where everything
is. I think the newbie perspective is important if we want to grow this
hobby and recruit guys (and gals) like these.
"Why isn't the deployment stuff in the front?" Uhh, I don't know.
"Why doesn't the terrain layout portion also cover the effects of
terrain on combat and movement?" Uhh, I don't know. Here, it's all
right here... and here.
Since the whole effect of groundscale on range and movement (ie,
the concept that one fig represents 50 men) is so important to the basic
concepts of the game, it probably deserves an explanatory paragraph. I
spent more time explaining what fig scale does to ground scale than I
did explaining the importance of unease. This is a key concept; WFB and
40K players have never played Napoleanics and have different assumptions
about a game than I did at their age.
Please don't mistake me; the rules are so much better than 7th for
layout that I don't want to sound whiney. On the other hand, I'd love
to pick up 5 smart 20 somethings at every major Canadian tournament, and
I'd like to make their entry into the hobby as painless as possible.
Final comment - what they loved was the complexity. Ambushes,
force marches, the trade off of fatigue for movement in force
marches... anyway, when I explained fast warrior, most of the
prospective newbies said, in effect "Hey, I want to play it all."

I'm used to recruiting historically interested players. Clearly,
recruiting Fanatasy/40K players is a different hack.

Yours,
Chris Cameron

[joncleaves]

Good stuff, Chris.

We have implemented a lot of what you said as part of the prep for the revised
rulebook. If you'd like, I will add you to our list of proof readers when the
time comes so you can make comments on the new layout directly once the final
draft is done.

Jon