Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

A few comments on Warrior at "The Shield":

Regarding Barbarian foot rules: Robert Forbes ran Spanish with large JLS,Sh units to take advantage of the rules, and it seemed to me the results were about right. These units certainly had to be respected, but they were not overpowering. Alex demonstrated in his game that well-played shock cavalry can still take down barbarian foot, and that no proposed list rule really helps when you fail your waver for being charged by mounted in the open. And -- sorry Robert -- it was nice to see Alex get a 5 point win.

Alex and Rich had a rollicking game that ended in a 5-3 win for the Swiss, but where die rolls certainly could have taken it the other way. This game featured the spectacle of Swiss charging Timurid swordsmen, getting interpenetrated by an incendiary camel cart on their way in, taking a big support shot from the swordsmen, but then rolling big dice in combat to still push back the swordsmen. Other Swiss did not fare so well against incendiary camel carts, but (not surprisingly) the Swiss passed their wavers better than the Timurids passed theirs. Alex made one mistake in dismounting a cav unit against Swiss pike that instead should have just skirmished away, but otherwise played a strong game.

I played to a couple of 1-1 ties using my Shang Chinese. I'm discovering that this is an army that is slow to develop its attack (a common problem with chariots), and therefore I need to be both more aggressive and more careful in my setup to assure that I'm trying to be aggressive in the right place.

My first game was against John Bauman's Tlaxcalans: hordes of Reg B LMI LTS,B,Sh, a smattering of smaller more dangerous units (Irr A 2HCW,JLS,Sh) and a Spanish command. Terrain picks definitely favored John, as he had several large brush pieces centrally placed in which to put the bulk of his army. I did get a road down across his rear zone, though, so both of his flanks had to operate in the open.

The middle of the table became a stalemate, as John didn't want to come out of the brush to face my chariots, and I can't go into the brush with chariots.

On my left I had a bit of luck getting an LI unit and an LMI unit to fail wavers when both were charged by a chariot unit; both ended up routing, and that was the total of my points for the game (John shook an LI unit of mine from repeated shooting somewhere in the middle).

On my right I was trying hard to push what I perceived to be the big opportunity, namely shooting up John's wheeled guns. I had messed up my deployment a bit, though, and instead of being able to quickly approach his guns with 16 figures of skirmishing LMI B, I had to settle for lumbering towards him with 48 figures of MI B. On the last bound I got off a terrific disordering shot against him, but I needed another bound or two to exploit that and begin rolling up his flank on that side.

My other game was against Dave Lauerman's Seleucids, and I think we were both guilty of being a bit too cautious. We got in 7 bounds, as I recall, which typically should be enough for a decisive result, but I spent two bounds correcting deployment errors, and then also had to deal with a cautious general taking his orders down to probe, thus precluding any of his chariots from frontally charging Dave's close order foot. I did attempt to change his orders, and he obligingly bumped them down to probe again. On the other side Dave was understandably heistant with his elephants, as Shang puts out a respectable amount of shooting, and his pikes were having trouble chasing down something they would want to fight.

On the last bound I did disorder and recoil a pike block with a combined charge from chariots and Northern Barbarians, and Dave's elephant unit on one flank of that attack was in jeopardy. On the other flank, however, I had to use a chariot unit soak off a pike charge -- which was fine -- but was facing some supporting foot coming up to help out the pike. That would not have been good. In another bound or two we both would have been taking some important waver tests, but simply ran out of time.

Overall turnout at the event seemed pretty good, and I hope Manny will be able to run this event again next year. It's nice to have one West Coast event that is dedicated entirely to historical gaming.


-Mark Stone