Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Todd Schneider]

There are several reasons to play a list, most have to do with how competitive it is on the tabletop.

There are other reasons to play a list as well, a player may like the period the army it's in, a certain unit within the list, or it has "something" that attracts them to it. From a competition point of view, they may not be the best Army to play, but from a "fun" point of view (at least the players "fun point of view ), they are worth the effort.

Mine is Araucanians, and it came about because I was looking for a list that had a good variety of Foot, and these guys fit my criteria. They have no mounted to speak off, but to me thats one of the fun and challenging things about it. I think properly handled they could even be a pretty decent tournament Army. I have yet to figure out all the nuances of running it though.

So, After starting out with LIR, and dabbling in some Medieval Germans, I went to Araucanians, and now Berbers (Because the Artizan Figs are gorgeous IMO). But Araucanians will always be a part of my Warrior repetoire.

So what armies have you all tried?

Thresh

[Mark Stone]

[Todd Kaeser]

Well, here are a few tournament lists I've tried just for kicks and giggles -

Berber in the NICT - needed some more practice and changes w/in the list (see Berber in the lists section for more detail)

First Crusade - tough w/ some matchups in a tournament, but cool to run.

Arab Conquest - tons of fanatical cav and foot - roll up and win!

Early Bulgar - it's been fun, but tough at times w/ some matchups.

Midianite Arab - camel machine guns - not that great in period w/ Assyrians/Sumerians/Babylonians, but an army no one looks forward to seeing in a tournament.

Scots Common - b/c they may take our lives...
Plus seeing it in 25mm w/ the schiltrons - even charging bombards

Polybian Roman
Ayyubid Egyptian
Anglo-Danish
Mac Jewish
Swiss - who doesn't love the history, plus now they are much better.
Illyrian

Knights of St. John - when they were mostly Reg D HG/CB but now they're part of my...

Competitive gaming:

Medieval Spanish
Macedonians
Mongol
Aztec (fell in love w/ the color and exoticness of them 20 years ago)
Ghaznavids
Khmer
100 Years War English

Todd K

[Ewan McNay]

For fun/glory:
* almost anything Scottish, even winning (courtesy of Chris Damour) the NTT with Pre-Feudals kinda by accident
* both Early and Late Crusader
* Sumerians
* Viking
* Andalusian
* Russ

The common feature here is irregularity and infantry: run forward, charge impetuously, roll up! Later Crusaders are perhaps an exception, but not much of one. Sumerians are the 'if I can win with *this*' candidate

To win:
* Imperialists for a long time under 7th
* Aztecs (under 7th) or other MesoAm for Warrior - this is an army I need to acquire some time
* Seleucids
* Sassanids, I guess

All highly regular; irregular shock mounted is OK, but not the support troops.

To wind up opponents:
* Mongol (even more so these days!)
* Early Libyan

I pretty much refuse to play Romans, but that's about it. And even then I've taken LIR to a Dogs of War tournament.

[David Smith]

[Ewan McNay]

Dave -

- it started back in the UK, where LIR was the consensus killer army for a long time and hence seemed too boring; the reason I got into knights in the first place was as a response to all the Romans around. These days it's still partly that - I'm always surprised not to see more LI Romans around. For the earlier Romans, it's at least partly that the all-HI mass of high-morale foot I find hideously overpriced; but in all cases, the feel of Romans has just never sparked my interest.

E

[Mark Stone]

[scott holder]

Heh heh, this whole "just because" isn't the exception to the rule for me, it's my guiding principle in army selection.

I've played Khmer for a bazillion years now because of the venerable Garrison Maiden Gaurd figs. Hell, I'll often deploy the Maiden Guard, yeah, they suck in the game, but the figs! I'm not even sure they're available anymore. This is one of the figure exceptions where I don't like Irregular's line over Garrison. I really need to find em again.

My Sumerian army was originally painted on contract for someone else. The figures are soo klunky, not at all slick works of art unpainted but somehow, that style works for the first army in the first army list book. That person then sold the army to someone else. I then traded a 15mm Viking army and some cash. I'd fallen in love with the army, again based on the figs, while I was painting it.

scott

[Bill Chriss]

Mark said:
[quote="Mark Stone
If nothing else, I am eternally grateful to FHE for rescuing us from those days and ushering in an era in which the most charismatic and intriguing heroes/leaders/generals of our period are part of top notch (Alexandrian Imperial, 100 Year's War English, Mongols, Later Carthaginian) or at least very competitive (Marian Roman, Early Imperial Roman, Later Crusader, Berbers, etc.) armies. [/quote]

I heartily agree. I also echo Scott's remarks because I never even think about competitiveness in choosing an army...now designing an appropriate OOB from that army is a different matter ... and more fun with an army you really love and are loyal to.

I started in 6th with Alexandrian Imperial in 15mm, most of which was painted by a contract painter. I shudder to think of the quality of the paint job on the units I started adding to that core. I soon switched to Antigonos/Demetrios, since the maverick in me wanted something different than either Alex or Seleukos, but quickly moved on to Macedonian Early Successor just because I read a biography of Antigonos Gonatos by WW Tarn, and I became rather disappointed with Demetrios' character after reading Plutarch's account of his life. Somewhere in there, theme tournaments required that I get a medieval army, so I picked Komnenan Byzantines out of religious loyalty and because of what I learned of the Komnenan dynasty in a class taught by G.G. Arnakis in the 1970's. Sure Nikephoreans would have been more competitive, but who wants to be Nikephoros Phokas? And Basil Bulgaroctonos was a pretty dour an uncultured individual.

After about 15 years of losing with both Macedonians and Byzantines, I finally realized that I didn't know how to use cavalry, and needed to remove them as a temptation from my armies. I also realized that all true Greek armies prior to Orthodox Christianity had the same problem. Combine that with the fact that I began to feel that Macedonians were not Greek enough for a guy like me , and thus began a long flirtation with hoplite armies, beginning around the 1995 (or 96?) HCon hoplite theme tourney. Since pikes were the theme soon after that, I was forced to graduate to Hellenistics.

After 10 years of working at it, I began (slowly) to see some opportunities with these ponderous ancient Greek armies, especially if played against opponents overconfident from believing they had gotten an advantageous matchup against a week opponent. Nonetheless, it is still most often a challenge to play competitively with these armies. But that doesn't stop me from enjoying the hell out of it, even if I do have to relearn the rules every July in my first game at H'con.

Conclusion: Like Scott, pretty much all my armies are played just for the hell of it! And I do like to trot out my icons with Alexios or Manuel from time to time, too. Nobody paints up like Byzantines

[cloppdave]

As one of the newer players (6 games 3 against Todd) and I hope one of Todds favored Paratice Dummys .
I choose My Late Greek (Theban sub-list ) as one of my all timea Favorite Army's and this was the Army I started with in 4th ed WGR and yes I am that old and Tru' Du' Street in Saigon was an Ok place when back in from the Bush.
The other Real Big seller for Greeks for me was Xystron figs.

[Bill Chriss]

[quote="cloppdave"] I choose My Late Greek (Theban sub-list ) as one of my all timea Favorite Army's and this was the Army I started with in 4th ed WGR and yes I am that [clip] The other Real Big seller for Greeks for me was Xystron figs.[/quote]

Wow, my favorite army and sublist also (in part because I did some of the research for the list-see my 1995 Spearpoint article). More importantly though, I love to recreate the army of Epaminondas of Thebes, the liberator of the Messenian helots (my ancestors) from Spartan domination. This is also one reason you'll never see me field Spartans of any type

I agree with you about Xyston's 15's as to hoplite and general figures, but I prefer Essex for the cav and auxilliary troops. The Essex horses in 15 are magnificent in my opinion.

This later hoplite army dreads Romans, Incas, Aztecs, and pike/elephant armies but is a good match for cav/knight armies that are still so popular now, and is quite serviceable against many other opponents. However, lately I've been playing Hellenistics, which rely on the same tactical premises but are more versatile. Of course, they aren't as powerful as most Macedoinian armies, but then, I'm not Macedonian.

[Noel White]

I play all Classical, all the time.

Alexandrian Macedonian -- My favorite general of all time (before he turned into a jerk), also nice mix of forces for a period I love. Decent balanced force for tournaments.

Late Achaemenid Persian -- the ultimate arch-villian for my Alexander. Though I must say, the more I learn about the Persians, the more I like them. Hard to play with -- the army list is tricky.

Thracian -- sort of a side-gig. I ended up with a bunch of extra figures. These guys are fun. Kinda like a hockey team with weapons. No matter who wins they always give a 110% and play an A1 game.

Noel.

[Guest]

Almost all the armies we play here in Beijing are for fighting 'what if' battles like:

Imperial Alexander v. Warring States
Roman v. Han Chinese
Viking v. Tang Chinese
Viking v. Yuan Dynasty


Because we're in China we like to play 'what if' battles between Chinese armies and Western armies that didn't meet but existed at the same time. So we play armies less for their fighting power and more just to see how the Chinese and Western armies interact with each other.

Our experience has been:

Alexander and the Warring States is a good game but the WS player always has trouble with Alexander's elephants as Warring States don't have a fire list rule.

Roman v. Han Chinese is also interesting but we only played this with a very old WRG Roman list v. OW and haven't used the IW list as we just got it. With the old list the Romans were constantly getting mauled because they had no missles.

Vikings v. Chinese Armies are almays hard for the Viking player. Almost no light troops and no cav make them very difficult to play but maybe we're just doing something wrong. Suggestions welcome.

We also play historical Chinese v. regional enemies matchups but using the above armies for this list of theoretical matchups is the most fun. We have a big list of stuff we want to play through like: Mongols invade France, Expansionist Muslims invade Tang China, etc..

Jonathan

[John Murphy]

My first foray into miniatures was back in the very early 7th dats (mid-80s) in California where I was introduced to the ancients tournament scene by Mike Reid. This was the time when the GMT boardgame "Alexander" had recently come out and was being played at our boardagame club. So my first army I played was Alexandrian Macedonian. I only dabbled, maybe a half dozen games total, never actually owned any lead of my own. I did not play ancients (lots of homebrew Napoleonics) again on the West coast.

Shortly after moving back East in the mid-90s I get involved with some people who played DBA and occassionally DBM and I would borrow whatever they brought. About the same time I started going to HMGS-E cons and playing either DBx or, a bit later, 7th. My first army I actually owned was a Macedonian army I bought at the flea market which I used briefly as Seleucids and then mostly as Greco-Bactrians, all in DBM.

More on-topic, two things happened about the same time next - I started getting interested in playing 7th more and I started being very interested in the history of the Byzantines. So the first army I actually built from scratch (getting someone else to paint) was Maurikian Byzantines which I then used a number times against Craig Scott's Sassanids and occassionally in tournies at Lancaster. I still favor the Byzantines, though there are more fun armies to play, for historical reasons. At some point, probably in response to some reading suggestions from Paul Georgian, I get more into the late-Thematic / early-Nikephorian period instead of the Belisarian/Maurikian period.

Meanwhile I got some other armies (Normans, Later Crusaders / Romainian Franks) which I also played out of some historical interest. Somewhere along the line my Byzantine interest expanded also into Patrician Romans which I put together as a DBM army (not _that_ DBM army though). Never played them in 7th or Warrior though I always wanted to. As Warrior was coming out I was getting more into knight and longbow armies, partly on a historical basis but also for gamesmanship reasons. So I played in Warrior a succession of Lusignan Cypriot, HYWE, Medieval Spanish and Free Company - while also trying out Later Crusaders a fews times.

Then, generally a really horrible player, I went through some introspection and sought some advice from this esteemed forum regarding my playing style and army list choices. After wasting a lot of everyone's time and running back and forth between every army list that struck my fancy I tried to figure out what elements in an army I enjoyed and felt competent to use. This, coupled with historical interest, led me to Later Polish but before that even got off the ground I was re-directed by someone to look at the Moldavians for similar reasons. And that seemed to fit like a glove, and had a history that while I would probably never have noticed it otherwise is very intriguing. So I am still a horrible player but at least now I can't blame my whimsical list choices.

So now there are really three armies from the above that I would say I am most interested in playing - Moldavians (still the clear favorite), Early Medieval Spanish Aragonese and Early Nikephorian Byzantine.