Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

Mark Stone · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:29 pm Post subject: Anatomy of an Army List

I've spent a good part of the last 18 months focused on designing and playing the 10 Independent States Chinese list. While a 2nd place finish in the NICT isn't quite everything I had hoped for from this list, it is still a respectable showing and overall I'm pleased with the performance of the army.

Since this army is going on the back burner for a while, I thought I'd put together a series of posts on how and why I designed the army the way I did. Beginning players may benefit some from seeing the thought process behind all of this revealed, and veteran players with better tournament track records than mine (there are many such veteran players) may have contrasting views they'd like to offer up on building an army list.

Stay tuned.

-Mark Stone

Mark Stone · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:58 pm Post subject: Anatomy of an Army List Part 1

The first step in building an army list is deciding which list you are going to play. Historical interest often does and often should factor at the top of the list of reasons to play an army. In fact it had nothing to do with my decision to play 10 Independent States, so I'll discuss all the other factors that go into army list choice.

After I wrote the "Skirmisher doctrine" essay I spent considerable time asking myself the obvious follow-up question: if "skirmisher doctrine" is such a great style of play, how would I defeat it? In thinking about that question I also found myself pondering the debate that Jon and I have had frequently on this list, namely that missile fire is overpowered in Warrior. If I really believe that to be true, then I should practice what I preach.

So I suppose my quest for an army began with tactical ideas with which I wanted to experiment: how to defeat a top notch skirmisher army, and how to demonstrate the power of missile fire. In my mind these seemed related: sheer density and quantity of missile fire seemed like a plausible way to make an enemy's skirmisher advantage irrelevant.

Since I was already committed to building a Shang Chinese army (I wanted to experiment with making chariots viable), I found myself looking closely at Oriental Warrior. Several lists seemed to fit the criteria of abundant and dense missile fire:

I also gave serious consideration to several lists in Feudal Warrior:

Just having lots of missile fire isn't enough, though. Otherwise I could simply play Midianite Arabs, arguably the most missile fire you can get on any list. There had to be some other dimension to the army, some legitimate shock power it could project in those sitations when missile fire wasn't enough.

That's one reason I looked hard at the Feudal Warrior lists: all had SHK, which is a potent shock troop type, and the War of the Roses English also had a number of 2HCT guys who seemed like, despite being slow, they might coordinate with the SHK into some kind of interesting combined arms tactic.

Running some numbers on these lists quickly led me to a couple of conclusions. First, 100 Years' War English didn't get enough missile fire. I know that sounds odd to most people, but I found that there were several lists that could definitely get in excess of 200 shooters on 1600 points, and 100 Years' War English just wasn't in that league. Second, getting a list with regular shooters was going to prove fairly expensive. Since an archer rolls the same shooting dice whether regular or irregular, paying the extra points for regular seemed something of a waste. And I just wasn't getting the quantity I wanted off the lists based primarily on regulars.

Expense also ruled out the Burmese and the Ming. The native Burmese list had very expensive elephants and either very expensive or very crappy support troops. I just didn't feel I could make it work. And the Ming list, while intriguing, was just way too expensive with too many required troops that didn't serve enough of a useful purpose.

Yuan gets a strong Mongol contingent, and all those relatively cheap LTS,B guys. But I had a hard time envisioning tactics that would enable the two troop types (EHC L,B and MI LTS,B) to interact in any kind of useful combined arms tactic. The shock troops would be needed to take down things the archers couldn't shoot up, and Mongol cav just don't have that kind of hitting power. So I ruled out Yuan and Koryo Korean.

I spent my longest time looking at Later Tang, which I still think is a very fine army. SHC hit a lot harder than EHC, and give the army a real shock threat against certain types of missile-impervious troops like Romans. There are some Irr A troops available, which make nice units to sit in reserve and threaten flanks. But it was still a pretty expensive army: all the LTS,B guys are regular, and SHC is an expensive troop type. I just felt like something was missing, particularly given that SHC really can't take on pike-armed foot frontally and Macedonian era armies have always been popular.

So I went back to the drawing board, combing Oriental Warrior again for possibilities. And in one of those moments that seems to happen to me a lot, I read a line on an army list that I had looked at a dozen times, and went from "these guys suck; why would anyone ever play this army?" to "wow; these guys are the key to this whole list".

The list was 10 Independent States Chinese, and the line was "Irr D MI LTS.... 12-36"

There are several points to note about these guys:

The last point is important. This is the first list on which Chinese foot can have firelance, and one of the few lists on which said foot can be both HI and C morale class. That starts to look like an interest shock troop type.

The clincher is that the list can also get 4 elephants. And while I felt puzzled on other lists about how to coordinate EHC or SHC with a bunch of spear/bow guys, it was crystal clear how to coordinate LTS with firelance and elephants. As non-impetuous foot, the firelance guys can charge together with the elephants.

This is powerful because the elephants win against many things, and barely lose against most others. Thus they create a "mounted opponent" in the melee that will force the loser to recoil disordered. They also force foot like Macedonians to take the charge at the halt. That's key for the firelance guys, who, if charging enemy foot, get 2 full ranks fighting, and can beat pikemen handily if the pikemen are 8 figures halted rather than 12 figures charging.

So I had found my list: abundant, dense, cheap shooting, with an added gimmick: the ability of elephants and firelancers to charge together forming a powerful shock combination. My hope was that most armies would be vulnerable to one or the other of those tactics.

Next: tactical and deployment considerations in army list design.

-Mark Stone

Bill Chriss · Centurion Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 1000 Location: Texas

Mark,

Thanks for this, and for your skirmisher article. It is a great help to those of us trying to get better. The skirmish article I read once before, but I obviously need to read it at least 5 more times and hope it sinks in. There is a lot there to digest.

Mark Stone · Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2006 8:19 pm Post subject: Anatomy of an Army List Part 2

10 Independent States gets no light cavalry. The available light infantry is not very high quality either. It can be regular, and can be C class, but can't have shields. Furthermore, a lot of LI is just going to get in the way of all those MI and LMI bow-armed troops that you really want to be shooting with.

So it doesn't make sense to take very much LI, and there's no LC. Conclusion: you're pretty much always going to be outscouted playing this army.

Being outscouted has several consequences. You can't force march to within 240p of the center line, and you opponent presumably has many more light troops than you, so you have a real risk of getting pinned deep on your side of the board. Any deployment plan, therefore, must minimize this risk.

Being outscouted also means that you'll set up your whole army before your opponent. Thus one reason for having a lot of generals -- namely getting more flexibility in deployment -- has been made irrelevant. Given that 10 Independent States can have a lot of regulars and does more shooting than charging, the other reason for having a lot of generals -- more prompt points -- doesn't matter all that much. I settled, therefore, on just the C-in-C and one subgeneral.

Being outscouted also typically means that you have to worry about holding less frontage than your opponent, and thus being vulnerable on the flanks. Turns out this is not a risk with 10 Independent States. My first iteration of the list had 4 8-stand units of MI LTS,B (half shielded), as well 2 8-stand units of MI B (half shielded), and 2 4-stand units of LMI B (half shielded). That's a lot of frontage. Assume the end units on each flank have 1 element between them and the table edge, and that these units form a line with 2 elements' space in between:

In other words, this line can hold 44 elements' frontage. Given that an 8x5 25mm table is 40 elements wide, and a 6x4 15mm table is 45 elements wide, there's really no problem with holding frontage with this army.

So, we have some initial data about configuration and deployment:

The light infantry equation is pretty straightforward. The goal is to create "zones of control" with the force marched LI that prevent the enemy from using march moves to get pasts the LI. In other words, there must be no area from table edge to table edge more than 240p from a force marched LI. 240p is 4 elements' frontage, meaning that whole 40 elements' width (in 25mm) must be within 4 elements of force marched LI.

Turns out it takes exactly 4 units of 2-stand LI units to accomplish this. Since, on 10 Independent States, these guys are Reg D LI B, that means you can block off enemy march moves past your force marchers for a grand total of 72 points (4 units costing 18 points each). It works like this:

So now we have some basics of deployment worked out:

Now it's time to think about terrain picks that go with this. Obviously we want primarily open space, given all the shooters and all the close order foot. Given that we'll be outscouted, we can onlly force march to within 240p of the center line, and given that we have a lot of close order foot we aren't going to be advancing very rapidly.

So the assumption is that we will fight primarily on the 1/3 of the table closest to our own table edge. The goal, then, is to secure this with as much open space as possible. An added bonus is that 10 Independent States, when taking the elephants, is considered Tropical, meaning it always fights in its home climate.

The first pick is road. This goes across the front of our own rear zone, meaning that no woods or brush can be placed behind that woods (these have a minimum width of 240p and have to be a least an element away from the road.

The next pick is open space. This forms a thin oval 240p in front of the road, 240p from one table edge, and 240p from the center line. This will secure about 60% of the width between the road and the center line as free of brush or woods.

The next pick is open space. It is place similarly to the first one, but within 240p of the other table edge. If you get all three of these, and your opponent is neither crafty enough nor lucky enough to throw terrain down on your side of the table, then you've kept all the area you're likely to fight in open.

The last pick is hill. It could be open, but half the time that would be useless because we'll be picking second. And a gentle hill can be as useful or more useful than open space late in terrain picks. Finally, hills can be thinner than other features (minimum width of 120p as opposed to 240p), meaning that late in terrain picks they can often fit into nooks and crannies where other picks cannot fit.

OK, we have a general picture of our command structure, and our deployment. We know what sort of terrain picks we're going for. Next up: actually building the army.

Footnote about deployment: I started out as a 15mm player, and made the switch to 25mm in the early 90s. For years after making that switch my deployment and initial bound 1 march moves sucked. I was used to the wide open spaces of 15mm, in which it was easy to fix whatever deployment problems you had in that first bound of marches. 25mm is a different game, and requires much more precision in deployment and initial march moves.

One benefit of playing 10 Independent States is that it has cured me of sloppy deployment and march moves. You have to count on fighting almost every battle from a very cramped position in which a lot of redeployment won't happen, and where you have very little room to march behind your main battle line. Your deployment has to be correct, and your initial marches very clean, or the resulting traffic jam problems will just kill you. Add to this that, as outscouted, you're setting up "blind" without any idea of your opponent's deployment.

Jon got a good taste of how much better this aspect of my game is when we played in the final round of the NICT. He set up differently from what I anticipated, but I had a flexible enough setup to compensate, and I've practiced march moving in cramped quarters enough that I was able to concentrate where I needed to be much faster than he had hoped.

So my advice is this: if you want to really improve the deployment aspect of your game, spend some time practicing with an army that routinely gets outscouted. You'll have no choice but to get better in this facet of the game.

-Mark Stone

Greg · Recruit Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 8

Army list anatomy becomes much easier when you get a hundred-plus extra points from savings on back rank shieldless and optimized morale.

FHE should allow all armies to do this, and should more liberally pass out double armed troops ... specifically, all shooter troops that were armed with a good quality sword, should be allowed 1HCW. It's only logical and would do a lot for game balance.

Mark Stone · Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 6:29 pm Post subject:

Greg · Recruit Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 8

I didn't see it as a complaint at all, and I wasn't picking on anyone. I thought your post was outstanding. I especially like the comparison between your skirmisher doctrine and what you did with this list.

Many of these things didn't exist prior to later version of army list book, at least not to any great extent. 1HCW is a good example. Far from being a complaint, I see the way FHE handled this as very positive, in that they gave a lot of play testing to get the weapon system right ... and they did get it right.

I don't see the down side of applying it to earlier lists. It can only make Warrior a better and more popular game. In that reguard, I can't see why this would even be considered anything but productive discussion.

I know everyone is sensitive to criticism, but does that mean that any suggestion is always going to be considered criticism? Don't we all want the same thing here ... to allow all players to have every LEGAL advantage they can get, for the army they historically love?

Just to be clear that I'm definately not picking on you or FHE, I played KofStJ for six years, and it's one of the most point friendly army you will find in this game, when it comes to back rank shields ... so if you must consider this criticism, then perhaps we can agree that it's equally self-criticism.

By the way ... congrats on NICT. Very impressive to be sure.

joncleaves · Moderator Joined: 29 Mar 2006 Posts: 16447

A. Every single thing Mark has said is right on. I had to come at him with a very one-dimensional army due to what I was experimenting with and his very well thought out design and tactics allowed him to block everything I tried. Preparation pays off.

B. FHE hat on now, we went to the forum for many reasons. One was to help players better select what they want to read and ignore what they find useless. Jumping in on a thread with a pet peeve unrelated to the thread's subject will not be tolerated. If you just *have* to talk about it, start your own thread on the issue, please. It is forum etiquette to stay on the topic the original poster establishes. And no, whining about shield availability *again* is by the definition of this moderator not related to this discussion. Please do not require me to address this issue again, thanks.

J

scott holder · Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 1:15 pm Post subject:

Since several replies have been made to the post in question, I, as a moderator of this section of the forum, won't yank it.

I won't be so kind next time.

scott

Ewan McNay · Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject:

Mark -

- first, neat stuff. I'm off to more gaming this evening, so no long comments from me at the moment, but maybe later.

A couple of things, though.

(1) Terrain. Mark noted his terrain plan, and it's a good one; but he didn't make much of what he might do when faced with offensive enemy terrain placement. For instance: a competent opponent is going to realise that they're outscouting 10IS, and will hence be both likely to fight in the opposing half of the table and able to pick the location of that fight. If they're smart, they'll realise that your main line is close foot, so it's not going anywhere fast. So, their terrain picks are (should be) focussed on your table side also.

Especially if you're placing second, then, it's quite possible that instead of being able to place an unhindered road, there will be a large piece of terrain already sitting in the middle (or at least the medial side of a flank) of your deployment zone. Bad case, you miss the road, and now there are two max-size pieces of terrain. I have no doubt that Mark's thought about this, and how to deploy for this eventuality, but it does need thought, in advance, to get right. [In the H'Con Theme, my Condotta faced Post-Mongol Russians and threw three 1s for their first three terrain picks. Oops. I guess we went to the steppes, huh? Similarly, I faced Kelly's Burmese in the middle of a jungle last year after my Sassanids missed their road and both open spaces; at PointCon, very similarly, I faced Bill Low's Cathaginians with a table entirely filled, basically, by four max-sized woods. Worth playing with deployments and plans in such cases.]

(2) Note the presence of a plan for dealing with your enemy's light screen. I am surprised how often this is not present in even good players' game plans, even after Mark's previous lessons to us all on how well light troops can work. Mark hit this point explicitly, but I thought it worthy of emphasis. If you can't either destroy or neutralise an opponent's skirmish screen, you are not going to win (absent really horrendous random swings at the point where your opponent engages). Period.

The flip side of this: 10IS does not *have* a usable/self-survivable light screen. As long as you acknowledge this and plan for it, fine, but you must do both of these. Something like Swiss, for instance, needs to devote much time to working out how it is going to prevent opponents from ignoring the pikeblocks; and has to realise that an answer of simply 'use Reg B LI CB' is not an answer, because then you lose all those Reg B LI CB units to you opponent's cheaper-and-better light troops, and the army goes home.

Anyway, off to play Britannia and Age of Renaissance for a week...

Mark Stone · Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 5:22 pm Post subject: Anatomy of an Army List Part 3

Here I'm going to discuss how the actual army list I used in this year's NICT got built. Since this was the result of roughly 18 months' tinkering and play testing, it's appropriate to start with all of the things I did wrong before settling on this version of the list.

What drew me to the list was the sheer quantity of missile fire you can get. As such, I was reluctant to do anything to diminish the amount of missile fire, and my first version of the list had close to 300 figures of missile troops. In particular, I took the 36 stands of spearmen and split them up into 4 8-stand units of LTS,B and only 1 4-stand unit of firelancers. As a second "shock" foot unit I took a unit of swordsmen: 2 stands Reg C HI 2HCW,B,Sh + 2 stands Reg C MI 1HCW,B. It turns out that these guys just don't hit hard enough against top quality foot, and they are a bit vulnerable to well-played shock cavalry.

After my poor showing in last year's NICT I dumped them, and took a second unit of firelancers. This cost me a net of 32 figures' shooting: converting 4 more spearmen to firelance instead of LTS,B and losing the 16 bows in the swordsman unit. But I was much happier with the result, and felt like I had the shock core -- 2 elephant units and 2 firelance units -- to balance the missile fire.

You can get a fair amount of Southern Tribesmen: Irr A LMI JLS,Sh. Initially I had a version of the list with a 6-stand unit of these guys, with the idea of needing some serious rough terrain troops. Again, a mistake. If this army is trying to win in the rough, then it is fighting with sub-optimal parts of the army. Do what you do well, and don't try and be something you're not. That's one thing I learned from tinkering with this list. With smaller Tribesmen units, the regular bow-armed LMI, and one or two LI units you have enough to deny your opponent success in rough terrain, and still try to win with the core of your army elsewhere. That's a better approach than trying to win in terrain in which you aren't optimized to fight. So I settled on 2 2-stand units of the Tribesmen, which mainly hung out behind the line as a reserve to threaten flanks, charge off annoying LI or LC, and sometimes bolster the defense of a piece of terrain.

I was so confident in my ability to hold frontage that I went into last year's NICT without much thought to dealing with flank marches. Both Robert Turnbull in the NICT, and Jake Kovell in the open, used major flank marches against me. Robert caught me completely off guard, showing up with a companion unit, a couple of LC units, and a scythed chariot. That's a nasty combo, and I lost the game -- and my chance to continue in the NICT on Saturday -- because of my lack of planning. I fared better against Jake, whose flank march consisted of knights and LC, because I had an elephant unit bearing down on his flank march. Still, the elephant unit was late getting there and some low morale foot had to survive for a bound or two on its own. A little luck helped me, or Jake would have put a command into retirement and won the game.

So for this year I needed a plan and list configuration better suited to dealing with flank marches.

A related mistake I made at first: my early versions of the list had two commands that were nearly symmetrical. I'm a tidy, orderly type and the symmetry was just too tempting to me. In fact, a game rarely plays out with similar things happening on each wing. Given I was playing an army that re-deployed slowly or not at all, I invariably found myself with too many points tied down by too few enemy points on one wing, and not enough punch on the other wing.

I made several adjustments to deal with all of this. I dumped the 2 8-stand units of MI B,Sh/B in favor of 1 12-stand unit. And I went from 2 4-stand units of LMI B,Sh/B to 2 6-stand units. Further, I put the MI and the LMI in opposite commands. The big MI B unit became the end unit in the "refused" flank, and the 2 LMI units became the end units in the "attack" flank. The rationale here is pretty clear: with 3 march moves and 120p approach, the LMI can move forward with a fair amount of speed. While they are vulnerable to mounted charges in the open, putting them together with my best "attack" units helped mitigate that problem. the large MI unit is both cheap and hard to break. I might eventually lose the unit, but it would take a while, do some damage while going down, and thus made an excellent anchor to the weak end of my line.

I also changed my terrain tactics and deployment a bit to deal with the flank march issue. I found myself more often taking road-open-hill-hill rather than road-open-open-hill. The aim was to get one steep hill along one flank of my rear zone. This would then become the "attack" wing with one of the LMI units setting up on the hill. I was fairly sure no serious flank march would come that way. At the other end of the line, I took the 12-stand MI B unit and angled it back from the front of my rear zone to the back of my rear zone (actually 40p from the back of my rear zone so that it's first recoil wouldn't take it off the table). If my opponent appeared to have a flank march, it would stay in place. If my opponent did not have a flank march, it would swing out to within 40p of the table edge on that side and line up with the rest of the advancing line.

Another mistake I made: in the first incarnation of this list, the only C-class foot I took was the intended "shock" units: the firelancer and the swordsmen. I had some Reg D LMI and LI, and all the LTS,B units were Irr D. This was very efficient in terms of points, but made it difficult for me to press the attack on occaisions when I actually needed to prompt the LTS,B guys to charge. This happened, for example, in last year's Open against Ty Downs. He was playing his dad's version of Seleucids, which includes a big 12 stand block of shiieldless MI w/Bow. I ended up with an Irr D LTS,B unit facing this unit, and didn't dare prompt it to charge.

In refining the list, I settled on 2 6-stand units of MI LTS,B (half shielded) that I made regular, and 2 8-stand units of MI LTS,B (half shielded) that I made irregular D. One of the 6-stand units was entirely C, and the other had an element of C. These two units went into the "attack" command and the irregular units went into the "refused" command.

A related mistake that I made: using Probe orders. My initial thinking had been that I wanted Probe orders as I wanted to close to shooting range, but not necessarily to charge range. I further reasoned that since the elephant crew were bow-armed I'd have to prompt them to charge whether they were under Probe or Attack orders. There are three problems with this reasoning:

So I settled on issuing "Wait" orders most of the time, with separate signals for the CinC and the Sub. The CinC commanded the attack wing, so I'd know for sure that his orders would be accepted. The Sub commanded the "refused" wing, where I could certainly live with "Wait" getting bumped down to "Hold" by a cautious general, and could probably cope with "Probe" when a rash general bumped his orders up. This latter case would have been a bit more complicated to manage, but fortunately never came up in tournament play.

My only other comment has to do with the choice of LMI over MI for the bow units. Like many people, my first inclination with missile-armed troops is to make them skirmish-capable. However, as I mulled over tactics I realized that I need a number of big bow units (8-stand or more) to hold frontage, project dense enough firepower, and hold up against enemy missile fire. And I really didn't want to have a big 8-stand or 12-stand unit shake because it failed its waver test as uneasy Ds charged in the open by mounted. The close order option slowed the army down a lot, and took away some of the tactics available to skirmish-capable troops, but in the end I really needed the size and sturdiness of large blocks of close order foot.

So I took 2 units of LMI with Bow (and the 4 little LI units) because I needed some fast troops and some terrain capable troops, but the rest of the missile troops were all close order.

Putting all these considerations together, here's the list I settled on for this year's NICT:

Attack Command:
2 stands of Reg A EHC L,B,Sh/HC L,B w/CinC
2 stands Irr A LMI JLS,Sh
2 x 2 stands Reg D LI B
6 stands Reg C MI LTS,B,Sh/LTS,B
6 stands Reg D (1 elem C) MI LTS,B,Sh/LTS,B
6 stands Reg D (1 elem C) LMI B,Sh/B
6 stands Reg D LMI B,Sh/B
2 stands Irr C El, crew of 3 w/B
4 stands Reg C HI LTS,Firelance,Sh/LTS,Firelance

Refuse Command:
2 stands of Reg A EHC L,B,Sh/HC L,B w/Sub
2 stands Irr A LMI JLS,Sh
2 x 2 stands Reg D LI B
2 x 8 stands Irr D MI LTS,B,Sh/LTS,B
12 stands Irr D MI B,Sh/B
2 stands Irr C El, crew of 3 w/B
4 stands Reg C HI LTS,Firelance,Sh/LTS,Firelance

TOTAL: 1601 points, 300 figures, 252 missile figures, 19 units

I think the most important lesson here is that most of this list design came from trial and error. I had good intuitions about why this list would be powerful, but I made a lot of mistakes in the first 6-9 months of playing the list, including a fairly dismal performance in last year's NICT. Any reasonably powerful army is also going to be reasonably complex, and you'll only learn the nuances of designing and playing it with practice. In the end, there really isn't any substitute for time spent with an army.

Next (and final): putting it all together into a battle plan.

-Mark Stone

Mark Stone · Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 2:01 am Post subject: Anatomy of an Army List Part 4

I don't consider myself a particularly strong tournament player. I do well locally, and generally finish in the top half nationally, but getting a top result nationally has been a struggle for me. While I'm happy to match my knowledge of the rules and theoretical understanding of the game with anyone, there is a focus, concentration, and tactical intuition that the very top players have which I lack to some degree. So if I want to turn in a strong performance, I really have to do as much preparation as I can. Having a well-worked out army list is part of that. But having a battle plan to go with it is essential.

Looking over my game records from my five games in the NICT, I see that I have these units:

that shot an average of 2.7 times per game. That's 208 figures of 4 to a stand shooting, times 2.7, equals 561 figures of shooting in the course of a game (not counting shots from LI, elephants, and loose order cav). Put another way, that's 7 big units times 2.7 = roughly 19 times a game I'm rolling shooting dice that can have major impact.

So, on the one hand, when I roll up 3 and disorder one of Rich Kroupa's pike blocks, that looks like luck. On the other hand, when you're rolling shooting dice with big units 19 times a game, you're going to get some luck.

And that's really one key to the battle plan: a down roll on shooting doesn't hurt that much, and an up roll can often make something really good happen. Shooting armies, then, make excellent counter-punching armies. Let your opponent come to you, see what shooting delivers you, and then be ready to take advantage of it.

That's half the battle plan, in simplified form. The other half has to do with combined arms between firelancers and elephants. This combination still takes people by surprise, and it shouldn't. There's some history here to explain why people get surprised.

WRG7 had a rule that said something like the following: "Troops who recoil without follow-up must rally back." This rule went away in Warrior when rally backs were eliminated. But the WRG rule led to a particular kind of interaction to which old timers are accustomed, and Warrior leads to a new kind of interaction which still takes people by surprise.

The old way: My mounted and foot charge enemy foot together, and win overall, although the mounted lose. I still disorder the enemy foot, unless my mounted break or break off. This much has always been the rule, in Warrior and in WRG7. And I still get people complaining "but I beat the mounted; how can they disorder me?" Answer: because that's what the rule says, and has always said.

The problem with the old way was I often ended up with my mounted out of charge reach of the recoiled opponent on the next bound. This is because my opponent recoils 40p, my mounted recoils 40p (we're now at 80p), and then I have to make a rally back on top of that because of the "recoil without follow up" rule. So I've accomplished something, by recoiling my opponent and disordering him, but I haven't accomplished all that much since my foot is now up there by itself fighting against an opponent that overlaps it on at least one side.

Because of this interaction, old timers tend not to worry too much about combined mounted-foot charges unless the mounted can win outright. That means, for example, that against pike-armed foot you'd better come in with elephants that are either pike-armed or have two crew with JLS. And given the high variability of die rolls from irregulars, you'd really like those elephants to be Irr B.

That was then. This is now. There is no "rally back." There is "recall", but recoil without follow up is not a circumstance that generates a recall move. So if my elephants, for example, are recoiled in a combat I won overall, as long as the elephants aren't disordered they are in a position to charge back in again next bound, and in very favorable circumstances since they'll be fighting disordered foot.

So let's look at a sample combat in the new Warrior world order. My enemy presents an 8-stand block of Macedonian Reg C MI P,Sh in a 2-wide, 4-deep formation. 80p away I have a 4-stand block of Reg C LTS,firelance half HI w/Sh, half MI in a 1 x 4 column. I also have a 2 model elephant unit of Irr C crew of 3 w/Bow in a 1 x 2 column. Here's how it plays out:

So that's a very powerful combined arms shock attack. And, in that particular combination, out of all the army list books, only 10 Independent States get this. Few armies have Reg C HI w/firelance, and nobody else has that plus elephants.

So all of the shooting is great, and the opportunities yielded by a big up roll are also great. But you have to have more, or the army is simply too one dimensional. The firelancer+elephant combo gives you a very potent complimentary tactic to the shooting. This works especially well because the elephants most fear enemy shooting, but 10 Independent States puts out enough shooting to mitigate that problem. The firelancers fear certain shock cavalry, but the elephants take care of cavalry. The shooters fear large blocks of foot that are impervious to shooting, but the firelancer/elephant combination takes care of most of that.

In practice, the setup and battle plan looks something like this:

Some final comments. It took a lot of thought to work out this army's capabilities, and then a lot of practice, mistakes, and refinement to get anywhere close to competent at executing the battle plan. Even with all of that, this army's success was still very dependent on matchups and luck of the draw.

I worried about facing Late Imperial Romans, Patrician Romans, or Incans, because all of those armies put out a lot of shooting without being particularly vulnerable to shooting in return (they shoot shielded, or shielded and in skirmish). I worried about facing Japanese or Aztecs, because they put out almost as much shooting as an army like Incans, are equally impervious to shooting, and have dangerous impetuous foot in addition. I worried about facing an earlier Roman army that could use testudo to minimize my shooting impact and could use circulating combatants to minimize my elephant/firelance combined arms tactics. I'm not saying I couldn't have won any of those matchups -- ultimately a game comes down to the players -- but those would have been particularly challenging matchups for me.

I looked forward to playing knight armies, because both my shooting and my elephants match up well against knights. I looked foward to playing an Alexandrian army, because I knew I could hold more frontage than a typical Alexandrian army and I knew that I had a combined arms answer to their most potent attacks. Now, I had good reason to expect these matchups, too. Alexandrian armies were prominent in last year's NICT, and I saw no reason to think this year would be any different. And with a high Medieval theme, I figured on lots of people using the same army for the theme and the NICT.

In fact in the NICT there were 5 Japanese armies and 1 Late Imperial Roman. I faced none of them. Instead I fought 4 knight armies and 1 Alexandrian army. That's just the luck of the draw, for which I am thankful.

-Mark Stone

Mark Stone · Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 4:43 pm Post subject: