Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

--- On Wed, 27 Jul 2005, I wrote: ---

>> If you find yourself consistently in battles with closed terrain and that's
>> not what you want, then you're doing your terrain picks wrong... I've played
>> mostly cavalry armies, and never felt particularly constrained, even in 25mm
>> at 2000 points.

--- To which Ewan replied: ---

> Well - I'm actually not sure that this is so true.
>
> Having brought Sassanids to the NICT again - report to come some time
> after next week, when I get to breathe - I was unsurprised to find the
> assorted pike armies that I faced trying to close the table. They all had
> decent success in doing so.
>

Excellent response, Ewan, and helps us differentiate two different parts of this
discussion.

Some armies want to fight primarily in difficult terrain: brush, woods, etc.

Some armies simply want to narrow the frontage, regardless of the terrain on
which the battle takes place.

The latter is very difficult to prevent. Four steep hill picks will likely give
a player a couple of hills to set up between. Or, a minor water feature + a
couple of marsh picks makes it highly likely that a player will get the minor
water feature and at least one of the marshes, likely narrowing the frontage as
much as they want. The resulting frontage will most likely be open terrain, but
if an army's problem -- as it is with many -- is simply an inability to hold 40
elements' frontage, then narrowing the frontage may be enough. It enables a
dense army to concentrate with superior force on the frontage where the battle
must be fought, and negates any skirmisher advantage an opponent may have.

This is not without substantial historical precedent, by the way. See, for
example, the Battle of Antioch Lake during the First Crusade.

What _is_ difficult to accomplish is a set of terrain picks that has a high
percentage chance of forcing the battle to be fought over difficult terrain.
Here the terrain selection system strongly favors someone who wants the
"meeting line" of the two sides to be in the open.

Again, here I think history supports this outcome. For every Agincourt or
Poitier that was fought across difficult terrain (and note that Poitier is best
classified as a "meeting engagement" rather than a "fair and open" battle),
there are a dozen battles across open terrain.


So yes, Ewan, if people try to cut down the frontage against your Sassanids,
that's going to be tough to prevent. Will the remaining frontage be basically
open? Most likely.


-Mark Stone

As a new warrior player, but someone who has played various other tabletops
systems, I have to say that we need to bear in mind one very important point
here, no matter what you feel about the terrain placement system:

Unless we are recreating an actual historical battle, each game is a
stretch, armies will fight that never fought, armies from hugely varied
times will clash, etc.

So, arguing which type of battlefield they would have fought on is rather
moot...

As long as the terrain set up rules are fair, and allow the game to be
played, then I think that is the most important part.

If we are saying that the 10 Independent States are engaged with Seleucid or
Alexander, then we are already in the realm of fantasy...so as long as the
fight occurs in terrain that exists on the planet, it is a possibility,
isn't it?

So, again, I think the main point would be to make the system fair, so that
the armies fight, rather than getting bogged down in where Alexander would
have fought General Yue Fei*, if they had lived in the same time and the two
had met on the field of battle...

Just my thoughts!

Peace,
Dan

*Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279 AD)


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

[scott holder]

FWIW, I've always felt, still do, that Warrior's terrain generation
rules, multiple +1s and all, remains one of the most elegant systems
out there.

scott

[scott holder]

Here's something else that hit me, particularly after reading Mark's and Ewan's
comments.

Yes, it's fairly easy to keep large chunks of the board clear, to include center
sections with woods, *if*, as Mark indicated, you go into the game picking
certain terrain pieces. If your first terrain selection is road or clear, then
you know where to put it in order to deny placement of certain terrain in
certain areas. If you lose the "place first" die roll, cie la vie, welcome to
random factors in our game:):)

OTOH, cluttered tables *usually* is the result of *both* players having some aim
in mind and thinking the opponent want's something different than what they
actually plop on the table. Ewan referenced his opponents and "clutter".
That's because, at least in our game, he, as well as I, picked four pieces of
"clutter". Who then, is "most" responsible for cluttering up the board? Plenty
of "blame" to go around there:):)

Turning to climate and the appropriateness of certain terrain types, Dry as
defined in Warrior applies to specified geographic regions:

"the Sahara, Libya, Egypt, West and East Sudan, Arabia, Persia, Mesopotamia, the
Indo-Persian border, the Central Asian Desert, and Mexico."

Woods in Warrior aren't defined per se but I've always assumed them to represent
an unorganized mob of trees to varying degrees of denseness. Because Woods are
not broken down into "light woods" and "dense/heavy woods" the way they are in
so many other games, that means they represent the gambit of what's out there.
And the assumption is that the troops that get "screwed" by woods get screwed no
matter what, meaning at the scale of Warrior, Cavalry going into woods doesn't
care if it's North American heavy growth, dense, deciduous growth or Turkestan
light clumps of tree fir trees. I would be more than glad to pull out all my
textbooks on this and provide additional detail but that would get in the way of
Fantasy Warrior list production:):)

And woods exist in all of the above dry geographic regions perhaps save the
Sahara, which is a geographic feature most unique. Okay, Arabia probably comes
closest in terms of the Sahara in base geographic features and there aren't a
lot of trees there, save near surface-level water sources. But the rest?
Clumps of woodsey areas, as ill-defined in Warrior, occur in all those places,
usually because of a combination of the water table happening to get closer to
the surface and wind patterns and ground topography that are conducive to trees
taking root and surviving. Also keep in mind that the climate *has* changed
over the years. What we see as "desert" now in parts of Mesopotamia, for
example, were quite different 2000-5000 years ago. Therefore, as a geographer,
I do *not* find it a stretch that an army playing in a dry climate comes across
woods anywhere on the battlefield.

scott

[Ewan McNay]

On Thu, 28 Jul 2005, Holder, Scott wrote:
> OTOH, cluttered tables *usually* is the result of *both* players having some
aim in mind and thinking the opponent want's something different than what they
actually plop on the table. Ewan referenced his opponents and "clutter".
That's because, at least in our game, he, as well as I, picked four pieces of
"clutter". Who then, is "most" responsible for cluttering up the board? Plenty
of "blame" to go around there:):)

Right - in the Theme, as opposed to the NICT, I picked lots of terrain (4
x brush in all games, running a Seleucid heavy on LHI peltasts,
Thracians, and EHC lancers). So did most of my opponents. I was right
). Again, report to come some time..

[joncleaves]

What about the idea of no +1 for either if in same climate?

Actually, I would also like to know what people felt about leaving the selection
system in place and making the climate system optional or putting some detail in
it. Just seems like the 'warm in dry' thing has no support the more I look at
who fought where and why.

Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: Holder, Scott <Scott.Holder@...>
To: warriorrules@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 07:19:18 -0500
Subject: [WarriorRules] Re: Tournament Terrain Selection


Here's something else that hit me, particularly after reading Mark's and Ewan's
comments.

Yes, it's fairly easy to keep large chunks of the board clear, to include center
sections with woods, *if*, as Mark indicated, you go into the game picking
certain terrain pieces. If your first terrain selection is road or clear, then
you know where to put it in order to deny placement of certain terrain in
certain areas. If you lose the "place first" die roll, cie la vie, welcome to
random factors in our game:):)

OTOH, cluttered tables *usually* is the result of *both* players having some aim
in mind and thinking the opponent want's something different than what they
actually plop on the table. Ewan referenced his opponents and "clutter".
That's because, at least in our game, he, as well as I, picked four pieces of
"clutter". Who then, is "most" responsible for cluttering up the board? Plenty
of "blame" to go around there:):)

Turning to climate and the appropriateness of certain terrain types, Dry as
defined in Warrior applies to specified geographic regions:

"the Sahara, Libya, Egypt, West and East Sudan, Arabia, Persia, Mesopotamia, the
Indo-Persian border, the Central Asian Desert, and Mexico."

Woods in Warrior aren't defined per se but I've always assumed them to represent
an unorganized mob of trees to varying degrees of denseness. Because Woods are
not broken down into "light woods" and "dense/heavy woods" the way they are in
so many other games, that means they represent the gambit of what's out there.
And the assumption is that the troops that get "screwed" by woods get screwed no
matter what, meaning at the scale of Warrior, Cavalry going into woods doesn't
care if it's North American heavy growth, dense, deciduous growth or Turkestan
light clumps of tree fir trees. I would be more than glad to pull out all my
textbooks on this and provide additional detail but that would get in the way of
Fantasy Warrior list production:):)

And woods exist in all of the above dry geographic regions perhaps save the
Sahara, which is a geographic feature most unique. Okay, Arabia probably comes
closest in terms of the Sahara in base geographic features and there aren't a
lot of trees there, save near surface-level water sources. But the rest?
Clumps of woodsey areas, as ill-defined in Warrior, occur in all those places,
usually because of a combination of the water table happening to get closer to
the surface and wind patterns and ground topography that are conducive to trees
taking root and surviving. Also keep in mind that the climate *has* changed
over the years. What we see as "desert" now in parts of Mesopotamia, for
example, were quite different 2000-5000 years ago. Therefore, as a geographer,
I do *not* find it a stretch that an army playing in a dry climate comes across
woods anywhere on the battlefield.

scott



Yahoo! Groups Links






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

[Bill Chriss]

Irobot wrote:

> Woods in Warrior aren't defined per se but I've always assumed them to
> represent an unorganized mob of trees to varying degrees of denseness.
> Because Woods are not broken down into &quot;light woods&quot; and
> &quot;dense/heavy woods&quot; the way they are in so many other games,
> that means they represent the gambit of what's out there. And the
> assumption is that the troops that get &quot;screwed&quot; by woods get
> screwed no matter what, meaning at the scale of Warrior, Cavalry going
> into woods doesn't care if it's North American heavy growth, dense,
> deciduous growth or Turkestan light clumps of tree fir trees. I would be
> more than glad to pull out all my textbooks on this and provide
> additional detail but that would get in the way of Fantasy Warrior list
> production:)
>
> And woods exist in all of the above dry geographic regions perhaps save
> the Sahara, which is a geographic feature most unique. Okay, Arabia
> probably comes closest in terms of the Sahara in base geographic features
> and there aren't a lot of trees there, save near surface-level water
> sources. But the rest? Clumps of woodsey areas, as ill-defined in
> Warrior, occur in all those places, usually because of a combination of
> the water table happening to get closer to the surface and wind patterns
> and ground topography that are conducive to trees taking root and
> surviving. Also keep in mind that the climate *has* changed over the
> years. What we see as &quot;desert&quot; now in parts of Mesopotamia,
> for example, were quite different 2000-5000 years ago. Therefore, as a
> geographer, I do *not* find it a stretch that an army playing in a dry
> climate comes across woods anywhere on the battlefield.
>

Greek legei (says):

No need to repeat here my general agreement with Mark and Scott noted in
previous posts. However, I do want to note the impressively wide variety
of expertise we have represented on this listserve, and I would think it
hard to refute the geographer as per the above.


-Greek

[Charles Yaw]

Scott wrote:

> Therefore, as a geographer, I do *not* find it a stretch that an
>army playing in a dry climate comes across woods anywhere on the
>battlefield.

I too have signigicant geograpy background and I can't dispute your
statements about climate change or there being some woods in those
areas (Dry) However, what my orginal post concerned and I take
exception with here is the predominance of woods in the center of
battlefields.

I played 3 Alex Imp armies in the last 3 weeks (2 in KC and 1 at
Historicon) and all made Alexander look like a Botany Major.
Further, I observed terrain placement on many games at Historicon
and woods in the central sector was a common terrian placement.

And to Mark Stone, I understand how to prevent or limit this if I
can get decent die rolls.

Woods in the central sector is the most un-natural terrain feature
allowed by the Warrior rules. And again before someone starts
pointing out the 5 or 10 battles where this acturally happened,
remember there were thousands where it didn't.

Are woods appropriate for the field, yes, on a flank. There is
other terrain that belongs in the center, opens, brush, hills.
Woods anchored flanks.

If we must have woods in the center, then don't allow a +1 for it.

Charles

[Mark Stone]

--- On July 28 Jon Cleaves said: ---

> What about the idea of no +1 for either if in same climate?
>
> Actually, I would also like to know what people felt about leaving the
selection
> system in place and making the climate system optional or putting some detail
in
> it. Just seems like the 'warm in dry' thing has no support the more I look at
> who fought where and why.

I'm all in favor of something that provides more sophistication than "warm in
dry", and I'm also in favor of dropping the mutual +1 situation. Here's my
rationale:

Our terrain selection system is an abstraction that reflects how two armies
maneuvered to fight a particular battle at a particular place. Even when
positing ahistorical matchups, it seems to me that the terrain system still
services this abstract simulation purpose.

Historical accounts make it very clear that in most battles one general had more
influence than the other in determining where the battle was fought. This seems
to come about for two reasons:

First, better knowledge of the local lay of the land. Numerous examples
illustrate this, but two of my favorites are Hattin (Second Crusade) and Arsuf
(Third Crusade). At Hattin the Saracens manipulated both location and time of
day of the battle to put the Crusaders just short of water and at maximum sun
exposure in the desert before joining battle with them. This clearly comes from
knowing their "home field" and how to make the most of it. At Arsuf, Saladdin
attempted to ambush Richard, springing his attack from a woods that ran
parallel to the road to Jaffa. Finding a sufficiently sized woods in Palestine
could not have been easy (it runs counter to the notion of "Dry" climate), but
again, Saladdin knew the lay of the land.

Second, assuming a defensive rather than an offensive position. The defender can
often withdraw until finding a suitable place to make a stand (Agincourt), or
often can pick a point the attacker must pass to continue the attack (Hastings,
Stamford Bridge).

There seem to be a number of occaisions on which both sides have simply lost
their grasp of where the opponent is, and battle happens at an accidental
point. Out of our period, but obviously Gettysburg is an example of this. In
our period, Poitier is certainly an example of this.

I would conclude, then, that there are situations in which it makes sense that
_neither_ side would get a +1, but it's hard for me to see how _both_ should
ever get a +1.

I also think we jam too much -- both who is on their home field and who is the
attacker -- into the current climate comparison system.

So here's a suggestion:
- give armies an aggression ranking from 0 to 2, with 2 being more aggressive
- keep the current climate comparison chart, but give the "loser" a +2 on their
aggression ranking (i.e. if it's "Dry" vs. "Tropical" then "Dry gets a +2)
- have each player roll a D6 and add their aggression ranking and their climate
plus, if any
- high scorer is the attacker, and low scorer gets a +1 on all terrain picks
- in the event of a tie, nobody gets a +1 on terrain picks.


Just my opinion,
Mark Stone

[joncleaves]

Good post Mark. I'll look at these closely when I get home.

Jon, spilling lobster meat on the keyboard....

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Stone <mark@...>
To: warrior <WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:28:17 +0000
Subject: [WarriorRules] Re: Tournament Terrain Selection


--- On July 28 Jon Cleaves said: ---

> What about the idea of no +1 for either if in same climate?
>
> Actually, I would also like to know what people felt about leaving the
selection
> system in place and making the climate system optional or putting some detail
in
> it. Just seems like the 'warm in dry' thing has no support the more I look at
> who fought where and why.

I'm all in favor of something that provides more sophistication than "warm in
dry", and I'm also in favor of dropping the mutual +1 situation. Here's my
rationale:

Our terrain selection system is an abstraction that reflects how two armies
maneuvered to fight a particular battle at a particular place. Even when
positing ahistorical matchups, it seems to me that the terrain system still
services this abstract simulation purpose.

Historical accounts make it very clear that in most battles one general had more
influence than the other in determining where the battle was fought. This seems
to come about for two reasons:

First, better knowledge of the local lay of the land. Numerous examples
illustrate this, but two of my favorites are Hattin (Second Crusade) and Arsuf
(Third Crusade). At Hattin the Saracens manipulated both location and time of
day of the battle to put the Crusaders just short of water and at maximum sun
exposure in the desert before joining battle with them. This clearly comes from
knowing their "home field" and how to make the most of it. At Arsuf, Saladdin
attempted to ambush Richard, springing his attack from a woods that ran
parallel to the road to Jaffa. Finding a sufficiently sized woods in Palestine
could not have been easy (it runs counter to the notion of "Dry" climate), but
again, Saladdin knew the lay of the land.

Second, assuming a defensive rather than an offensive position. The defender can
often withdraw until finding a suitable place to make a stand (Agincourt), or
often can pick a point the attacker must pass to continue the attack (Hastings,
Stamford Bridge).

There seem to be a number of occaisions on which both sides have simply lost
their grasp of where the opponent is, and battle happens at an accidental
point. Out of our period, but obviously Gettysburg is an example of this. In
our period, Poitier is certainly an example of this.

I would conclude, then, that there are situations in which it makes sense that
_neither_ side would get a +1, but it's hard for me to see how _both_ should
ever get a +1.

I also think we jam too much -- both who is on their home field and who is the
attacker -- into the current climate comparison system.

So here's a suggestion:
- give armies an aggression ranking from 0 to 2, with 2 being more aggressive
- keep the current climate comparison chart, but give the "loser" a +2 on their
aggression ranking (i.e. if it's "Dry" vs. "Tropical" then "Dry gets a +2)
- have each player roll a D6 and add their aggression ranking and their climate
plus, if any
- high scorer is the attacker, and low scorer gets a +1 on all terrain picks
- in the event of a tie, nobody gets a +1 on terrain picks.


Just my opinion,
Mark Stone




Yahoo! Groups Links






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

[Tim Grimmett]

Woods means water and in a dry climate it is a place armies tend to congregate
around.

hrisikos@... wrote:Irobot wrote:

> Woods in Warrior aren't defined per se but I've always assumed them to
> represent an unorganized mob of trees to varying degrees of denseness.
> Because Woods are not broken down into &quot;light woods&quot; and
> &quot;dense/heavy woods&quot; the way they are in so many other games,
> that means they represent the gambit of what's out there. And the
> assumption is that the troops that get &quot;screwed&quot; by woods get
> screwed no matter what, meaning at the scale of Warrior, Cavalry going
> into woods doesn't care if it's North American heavy growth, dense,
> deciduous growth or Turkestan light clumps of tree fir trees. I would be
> more than glad to pull out all my textbooks on this and provide
> additional detail but that would get in the way of Fantasy Warrior list
> production:)
>
> And woods exist in all of the above dry geographic regions perhaps save
> the Sahara, which is a geographic feature most unique. Okay, Arabia
> probably comes closest in terms of the Sahara in base geographic features
> and there aren't a lot of trees there, save near surface-level water
> sources. But the rest? Clumps of woodsey areas, as ill-defined in
> Warrior, occur in all those places, usually because of a combination of
> the water table happening to get closer to the surface and wind patterns
> and ground topography that are conducive to trees taking root and
> surviving. Also keep in mind that the climate *has* changed over the
> years. What we see as &quot;desert&quot; now in parts of Mesopotamia,
> for example, were quite different 2000-5000 years ago. Therefore, as a
> geographer, I do *not* find it a stretch that an army playing in a dry
> climate comes across woods anywhere on the battlefield.
>

Greek legei (says):

No need to repeat here my general agreement with Mark and Scott noted in
previous posts. However, I do want to note the impressively wide variety
of expertise we have represented on this listserve, and I would think it
hard to refute the geographer as per the above.


-Greek





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[Kelly Wilkinson]

This is a good comment. Interesting as well. It seems to me that very good
generalship always mattered. When one thinks of very aggressive generals like
Hannibal who always seemed to get the terrain he wanted, home climate seems to
go out the window, especially when one considers that Hannibal was fighting on
his enemies soil. But then again, the Romans weren't too heavily into scouting.

kelly

JonCleaves@... wrote:
What about the idea of no +1 for either if in same climate?

Actually, I would also like to know what people felt about leaving the selection
system in place and making the climate system optional or putting some detail in
it. Just seems like the 'warm in dry' thing has no support the more I look at
who fought where and why.

Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: Holder, Scott <Scott.Holder@...>
To: warriorrules@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 07:19:18 -0500
Subject: [WarriorRules] Re: Tournament Terrain Selection


Here's something else that hit me, particularly after reading Mark's and Ewan's
comments.

Yes, it's fairly easy to keep large chunks of the board clear, to include center
sections with woods, *if*, as Mark indicated, you go into the game picking
certain terrain pieces. If your first terrain selection is road or clear, then
you know where to put it in order to deny placement of certain terrain in
certain areas. If you lose the "place first" die roll, cie la vie, welcome to
random factors in our game:):)

OTOH, cluttered tables *usually* is the result of *both* players having some aim
in mind and thinking the opponent want's something different than what they
actually plop on the table. Ewan referenced his opponents and "clutter".
That's because, at least in our game, he, as well as I, picked four pieces of
"clutter". Who then, is "most" responsible for cluttering up the board? Plenty
of "blame" to go around there:):)

Turning to climate and the appropriateness of certain terrain types, Dry as
defined in Warrior applies to specified geographic regions:

"the Sahara, Libya, Egypt, West and East Sudan, Arabia, Persia, Mesopotamia, the
Indo-Persian border, the Central Asian Desert, and Mexico."

Woods in Warrior aren't defined per se but I've always assumed them to represent
an unorganized mob of trees to varying degrees of denseness. Because Woods are
not broken down into "light woods" and "dense/heavy woods" the way they are in
so many other games, that means they represent the gambit of what's out there.
And the assumption is that the troops that get "screwed" by woods get screwed no
matter what, meaning at the scale of Warrior, Cavalry going into woods doesn't
care if it's North American heavy growth, dense, deciduous growth or Turkestan
light clumps of tree fir trees. I would be more than glad to pull out all my
textbooks on this and provide additional detail but that would get in the way of
Fantasy Warrior list production:):)

And woods exist in all of the above dry geographic regions perhaps save the
Sahara, which is a geographic feature most unique. Okay, Arabia probably comes
closest in terms of the Sahara in base geographic features and there aren't a
lot of trees there, save near surface-level water sources. But the rest?
Clumps of woodsey areas, as ill-defined in Warrior, occur in all those places,
usually because of a combination of the water table happening to get closer to
the surface and wind patterns and ground topography that are conducive to trees
taking root and surviving. Also keep in mind that the climate *has* changed
over the years. What we see as "desert" now in parts of Mesopotamia, for
example, were quite different 2000-5000 years ago. Therefore, as a geographer,
I do *not* find it a stretch that an army playing in a dry climate comes across
woods anywhere on the battlefield.

scott



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



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

[Kelly Wilkinson]

This is a good comment. Interesting as well. It seems to me that very good
generalship always mattered. When one thinks of very aggressive generals like
Hannibal who always seemed to get the terrain he wanted, home climate seems to
go out the window, especially when one considers that Hannibal was fighting on
his enemies soil. But then again, the Romans weren't too heavily into scouting.

kelly

JonCleaves@... wrote:
What about the idea of no +1 for either if in same climate?

Actually, I would also like to know what people felt about leaving the selection
system in place and making the climate system optional or putting some detail in
it. Just seems like the 'warm in dry' thing has no support the more I look at
who fought where and why.

Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: Holder, Scott <Scott.Holder@...>
To: warriorrules@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 07:19:18 -0500
Subject: [WarriorRules] Re: Tournament Terrain Selection


Here's something else that hit me, particularly after reading Mark's and Ewan's
comments.

Yes, it's fairly easy to keep large chunks of the board clear, to include center
sections with woods, *if*, as Mark indicated, you go into the game picking
certain terrain pieces. If your first terrain selection is road or clear, then
you know where to put it in order to deny placement of certain terrain in
certain areas. If you lose the "place first" die roll, cie la vie, welcome to
random factors in our game:):)

OTOH, cluttered tables *usually* is the result of *both* players having some aim
in mind and thinking the opponent want's something different than what they
actually plop on the table. Ewan referenced his opponents and "clutter".
That's because, at least in our game, he, as well as I, picked four pieces of
"clutter". Who then, is "most" responsible for cluttering up the board? Plenty
of "blame" to go around there:):)

Turning to climate and the appropriateness of certain terrain types, Dry as
defined in Warrior applies to specified geographic regions:

"the Sahara, Libya, Egypt, West and East Sudan, Arabia, Persia, Mesopotamia, the
Indo-Persian border, the Central Asian Desert, and Mexico."

Woods in Warrior aren't defined per se but I've always assumed them to represent
an unorganized mob of trees to varying degrees of denseness. Because Woods are
not broken down into "light woods" and "dense/heavy woods" the way they are in
so many other games, that means they represent the gambit of what's out there.
And the assumption is that the troops that get "screwed" by woods get screwed no
matter what, meaning at the scale of Warrior, Cavalry going into woods doesn't
care if it's North American heavy growth, dense, deciduous growth or Turkestan
light clumps of tree fir trees. I would be more than glad to pull out all my
textbooks on this and provide additional detail but that would get in the way of
Fantasy Warrior list production:):)

And woods exist in all of the above dry geographic regions perhaps save the
Sahara, which is a geographic feature most unique. Okay, Arabia probably comes
closest in terms of the Sahara in base geographic features and there aren't a
lot of trees there, save near surface-level water sources. But the rest?
Clumps of woodsey areas, as ill-defined in Warrior, occur in all those places,
usually because of a combination of the water table happening to get closer to
the surface and wind patterns and ground topography that are conducive to trees
taking root and surviving. Also keep in mind that the climate *has* changed
over the years. What we see as "desert" now in parts of Mesopotamia, for
example, were quite different 2000-5000 years ago. Therefore, as a geographer,
I do *not* find it a stretch that an army playing in a dry climate comes across
woods anywhere on the battlefield.

scott



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[Kelly Wilkinson]

Charles,

Hopefully, Jon will come out with rules for Siege Warrior where you can buy
flaming arrows to take care of that "Woods problem." To be honest, I don't see
where it would be a problem to flame them up!

kelly
"The Pyromancer"

riderofrohan2001 <yaw@...> wrote:
Scott wrote:

> Therefore, as a geographer, I do *not* find it a stretch that an
>army playing in a dry climate comes across woods anywhere on the
>battlefield.

I too have signigicant geograpy background and I can't dispute your
statements about climate change or there being some woods in those
areas (Dry) However, what my orginal post concerned and I take
exception with here is the predominance of woods in the center of
battlefields.

I played 3 Alex Imp armies in the last 3 weeks (2 in KC and 1 at
Historicon) and all made Alexander look like a Botany Major.
Further, I observed terrain placement on many games at Historicon
and woods in the central sector was a common terrian placement.

And to Mark Stone, I understand how to prevent or limit this if I
can get decent die rolls.

Woods in the central sector is the most un-natural terrain feature
allowed by the Warrior rules. And again before someone starts
pointing out the 5 or 10 battles where this acturally happened,
remember there were thousands where it didn't.

Are woods appropriate for the field, yes, on a flank. There is
other terrain that belongs in the center, opens, brush, hills.
Woods anchored flanks.

If we must have woods in the center, then don't allow a +1 for it.

Charles





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[Doug]

>>>
If your first terrain selection is road or clear, then you know where
to put it in order to deny placement of certain terrain in certain
areas.

If you lose the "place first" die roll, cie la vie, welcome to random
factors in our game

OTOH, cluttered tables *usually* is the result of *both* players
having some aim in mind
>>>

Its a complicated game which favors those who study it. The terrain
system can be "gamed." The power players like it that way since they
have invested the time to study the mechanics.

I'd prefer a simpler method which starts from the desired result and
works backwards. Each player would pick whether he wanted :
-- narrow or wide overall frontage, and
-- the flanks easy for cavalry or not, and
-- the center clear or "cluttered."

Some sort of comparative chart would yield how many pieces/sizes in
each area, modified by scouting ability.

Perhaps each player could select how many D6 they wanted to roll for
the width of clear space in the center and on each flank (D6 x
element widths frontage).