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Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules
A Four Horsemen Enterprises Rules Set
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Ewan McNay
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 2769
Location: Albany, NY, US
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 Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:33 am Post subject: *Cold* Wars! - first day report. |
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As I type, folks are still straggling in, and many more are on the road - I believe that the Stones are attempting to drive from Canton, OH, that being the furthest East they could get by air.
Yeah: the storm hit hard. Roads are *bad*. Lancaster has had probably 6-8 inches of ice pellets, and the east coast is basically shut down.
Nonetheless, we had 20 folks for the mini: 10 in each of 25mm and 15mm. I decided to put my gaming where my mouth was  on the 15mm mini, and took Huns: almost every IrrD LC B guy I could lay my hands on, and over 190 scouting points. This worked pretty well when both my second and third games were against the expected Mongols, run by Mike Kelly and Frank Gilson. My first was against a delightful new player, Dimitri Garlic, who was playing in his first competition and ran Syracusan - a tough matchup for him with several small Irr LMI units, enough lights to be in trouble, and no missile power of his own. On the other hand, at 9 years old, he didn't play a bad game at all, and had a fantastic attitude; he clearly wants to learn a *lot*.
Against Mike, we both had luck: his Mongols (of whom there were tons, all Reg A/B!) never missed a counter, but my LC seemed to roll long on every charge to catch a bunch of his LC, and a unit of IrrD LC B passed a counter, then rolled long on evade, to escape from where he had massed; Mike eventually did get two of the IrrD units through superior numbers and outflanking on my left, but sheer weight of numbers and the long charges collapsed the Mongols on my centre-right.
Frank had a much smaller Mongol, with a Chinese ally (EHC, 2 reg LMI B. Sh units and 2 reg LI B, Sh) and interestingly, two units of Mongol camels and a lot of camel-proofed LC. This game was over really fast: he wanted to get into contact fast to offset my superior numbers, so 4E unit of L, B light camels faced off against a 7E unit of Hun LC with JLS, B, Sh/JLS, B. Pretty even matchup, until he rolls -4, routs, and the two big LC units adjacent both roll 1s for wavers - that was pretty much the centre of the Mongols gone and just not enough troops left. So the Huns have had a good day; greatly looking forward to playing teams with Todd tomorrow.
[Other armies in 15mm: a Scythian, a Wallachian, a Ghaznavid, Maccabbean, some form of Early Roman, and an all-cav Byzantine. 25mm saw Samurai, Alexandrian, Early Welsh (only 10 units!), Moldavian, Mongol, Bactrian, Pre-Feudal (I think) Scots, Arab Conquest... I forget.] |
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John Garlic
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 450
Location: Weslaco, TX
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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Hi All,
I would just like to say that I really enjoyed the mini on Friday. Although the performance of my Maccabees was certainly weak; the real high point was having my son Dmitri playing in his first event at table next to me. I would like to thank Ewan and Tim for being so supportive of a 9 year old newbie. Despite his results he is really psyched for more. On the drive back to a warmer clime, he explained it all to his mom thusly, "Mom, guess what happened in Lancaster. My army got mercilessly slaughtered twice." He then happily immersed himself in the army lists as he searched for the army he would like me to paint for him. |
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scott holder
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Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 6035
Location: Bonnots Mill, MO
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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John: Dmitri was nominated for Sportsman so you can guess if it was either Tim or Ewan.
When John came up to me with this, I was a tad bit dubious. Don't get me wrong, getting kids into this game is crucial but I've seen 30-somethings play Warrior and have trouble focusing much less 9 year olds.
Not Dmitri. I hope to see him back soon. Keep an eye on the forum for a possible tourney at Hcon this summer for exactly Dmitri's demographic.
scott
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These Rules Suck, Let's Paint! |
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John Garlic
Legionary
Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 450
Location: Weslaco, TX
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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That sounds cool. Perhaps either FW or a 1200 mini would be good for younger entries. I would be happy to bring along a couple 15mm 'loaner' armies for use. Of course given my weakness as a list writer it might be better for someone else to do that
John Garlic |
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Ewan McNay
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 2769
Location: Albany, NY, US
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 8:19 pm Post subject: Second day - Teams, NCTC |
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| As I type, folks are still straggling in, and many more are on the road - I believe that the Stones are attempting to drive from Canton, OH, that being the furthest East they could get by air. |
They made it; many others didn’t, though, and so lots of missing teams/players/lead which meant not only a relatively small turnout (especially in 15mm - only 4 teams) but also a bunch of impromptu pairings and armies.
Todd’s Knights of St. John are glorious to play with - every opponent complimented them copiously, and I took a couple of trips to the other side of the table so that I could get the full spectacle of ‘banners are us.’ We really benefited from having had a couple of practice games - me especially, not used to playing either shooting armies or armies with troops to protect, had to adjust to a new army style. I also had to become convinced of the power of the Marinarii (LHI 2HCT, CB, Sh) against many troop types - especially other rough-terrain types such as peltasts. So, thanks to Bill Low in particular for the practice venues.
[[I also *need* to credit Bill on the Huns’ success, and omitted to do so appropriately in a previous post. I had originally set up the list with mostly B-only units; his suggestion was to sacrifice something (turned out to be morale and some HC) to get more units fronted by JLS, Sh and maybe a second rank of JLS. That turned out to be utterly key. Thanks, Bill.]]
Teams in 25mm: Scott will doubtless post the full list, but there were two Samurai, two Sassanids (the One True Army is finally being recognised!), an Inca, a Nik Byzantine, a Spanish Tartessian, a Tang, a Marian Roman - lots of foot armies of a whole variety of types, I think we were the *only* knight army, and not many elephants - good to see the variety; no pikes, few elephants, etc.
Game 1: Mikes Mallamacci and Byrne, an impromptu pairing with an impromptu Nikephorian Byzantine list. They roll open spaces, we roll steep-fronted hills for both our flanks, and that’s it. I’m facing off against Mike Byrne, and (as John Kendall, the English sub) am both unreliable and roll a ‘1’, hence on Wait. That persuades the Byzantines to denude the flank opposing me of anything other than LC during initial marches; however, the Sub’s command contains only two K units and a 4-man LI unit, so the big missile-LMI blocks on my side happily march on bounds one and two to outflank the LC on our left, which is a really bad place for the LC to be, especially when they are forced to go into column on their first recall moves. That gives us a place to push early on, and when I go onto attack on bound 3 I am able to march SHK right around to the Byzantine baseline and charge some Varangians at the halt because their covering light troops have evaporated. The command goes onto retreat, and turns out to include two of the large skutatoi blocks pushing down the centre; one of those also shakes when some IrrA Norman HC decide that they need to try something and charge SHK, with predictable results, and that’s pretty much the game as the skut now break on contact even if they hadn’t routed from being charged; we also get lucky on the opposing flank to catch some Byzantine LMI bowmen with Marinarii on the hill.
Game 2: Tim Brown/Ambrose Coddington (aka Neo) with Marian Roman. Now there’s an odd choice, thought I. Right up until the point where the legions got into contact and *destroyed* a marinarii unit on the second bound of fighting, despite being charged in both flanks by knights; said double flank charge didn’t prevent them circulating combatants against the LHI, hence counting as once again first contact with HTW but getting the advantage of the 2HCT guys now counting shieldless. Errr - ouch. But I get ahead of myself. We actually did good things during terrain placement here: Tim/Ambrose got the entirely clear centre that they wanted, but we had the same hills *and* - crucially - two pieces of brush, flanking Tim/Ambrose’s central sector. The Marian list allows 2 4E units of peltasts, and we were confident that (i) they’d go to the brush, (ii) we could beat them with Marinarii, and (iii) nothing else in the Roman list would be able to interfere successfully. For once, a plan survived contact with the enemy. We faced a centre full of legions - matched pairs of 4E and 2E units - along with a 2-elephant unit, and then wings made up of peltasts, LC and S, Sh/B LI. No forced-marchers, though, which really surprised me and really helped: we’d sent out a *lot* - including two turcopole LC units, which were intended to beat up on opposing force-marched LI, but which instead were able to pin the legion line basically in their starting positions. That in turn allowed us freedom to deploy the big missile blocks and marinarii to the wings, where they slowly forced back the opposing lights. On the right, Todd’s wing, the last bound saw LC forced back off their own baseline and LI caught at their baseline by LMI CB guys, while on the right an SHK unit marched around to force off another LC unit and one of the S/B LI units finally crumbled after several bounds of focussed missile fire; the LC actually went into column as part of a plan not to go off-table, but then got caught in their evade by the charging SHK when they evaded short. And on both wings marinarii got to the peltasts in the brush and routed them. All of that good stuff was needed, because - as I mentioned - in the centre, a unit of Marinarii failed a counter and had to face up to a legion. Not so bad first bound, but they got a dice advantage; utterly devastating second bound. Thankfully, only a LC unit shook from the rout. We had an interesting choice to make - send in knights to (as we thought) kill off the legion, but leave them in a risky spot, or just accept the loss. In this case, being bold paid off, as both knights (including some uneasy IrrC Colonists) passed their waver checks, *and* I was able to shoot the elephants advancing on to the Colonists’ flank for 2 cpf; they failed their waver and the situation stabilised, although the CB block putting out that 2cpf then failed in turn when charged by Roman EHC, as did a bow block next to it; on the last bound, two legions got caught in the open without making it into fulcum, but neither knight unit rolled up (even against the legion in column, where a +1 would have been enough) and so nothing happened there. The legion with knights in both flanks never even shook. A 4-2 win to the KoSJ, and one of the few games that went the whole 4 hours (and more!).
The two good wins led to a top-table third rounds against Eric Turner and Tim Grimmett, two of the hobby’s nicest folks, running Japanese. Todd is suffering a pretty significant stomach virus, and so I’m promoted from Sub-general (having been unreliable *twice*, once going on to Wait orders!) to CinC; I promptly become rash… Even 2000 points of Japanese is not a lot! The KoSJ terrain dice were terrible - as in, 4 failed picks - and so we were fighting on the Japanese-choice terrain: major water feature, two max-size woods on the flanks of a central open space. Unsurprisingly, the Samurai start out aimed at the centre line; slightly more surprisingly, they only have 11 units! 6 8E blocks of LEHI backed by LMI, 5 units of 4E HK/HC, and a single-element CinC. This made me very happy that we had flank-marched 2E units of LC on *both* flanks, and even happier when they both show up on bound 3. [We flank-marched a single unit of LC in both other games, in both cases on my flank, both of which showed up only after the game was basically over.] This was a really interesting, thoughtful, and challenging game, with the interaction between the LEHI and our SHK/LHI being very delicate. In the wood to my right, I have a 2E unit of LI in ambush, which manages to jump out and charge an 8E unit in the flank as the Samurai line charges forward moving first on bound 1; does nothing, of course, but pins it so that I can hit it at the halt optimally. I’m moving first bounds 2 and 3, so not getting within 240p of the Samurai line and it’s rapidly brushed aside the LI on my left to start enveloping; so I need to make stuff happen. From right to left as I look at the 6-unit main Samurai line: unit 1 is plowing through the wood, and will eventually catch LMI CB (but roll -4 and fail to rout them!) Unit 2 gets pinned by the LI, hit at the halt by 2 SHK units, and rolls +5 - so still loses, but both K units are disordered (and the Colonists have a rear rank of HC…). Unit 3 is making counters as needed, but has crept within 40p of Unit 4 - this will be important in a second - and unit 4 decides to make a stand as unit 5 is poised on its flank. Unit 6 is now in the far-left wood and out of the game for a while. Against each of units 2, 3 and 4 I have lined up Marinarii 2-wide, SHK, and Colonists along the 4E frontage. So, bound 3: Marinarii go into the pushed-back unit 2, 2xSHK into unit 4. Unit 2 now rolls +6. Yeah - so both K units lose, are made disordered for a second time, but thankfully the KoSJ combat dice are also pretty good and the Samurai lose again, are pushed back by the Marinarii, and are now on 12 fatigues. The two LC flank marches come on - one goes for the camp, the other lines up behind Samurai unit 5 but has a Samurai HK unit marched to 240p of its own rear - approach order will be critical next turn! Unit 4 rolls -1 and is pushed back, although it rolled up in support shooting to again disorder both SHK units. I get my one mass missile-fire shot on my left, against unit 5: 40 bowmen at -1 and 24 CB at 1; on even dice, that’s 66. On a -3, that’s 12 and a lost opportunity!
Bound 4: camp dies, but the Japanese are moving first and defuse my marauding LC on the left. Marinarii go in to support the SHK against unit 4 and are hit in turn on their flank by unit 5, while unit 3 - pinned by now being within 40p of enemy - can’t do much except counter back again. This is when unit 1, in the woods on the right, catches the LMI CB guys, but the irregular loose samurai foot are being pushed a little too hard: unit 2 evaporates, unit 4 routs, and unit 5 shakes - together with the loss of the camp, that puts the big central Samurai command onto retreat, and we call the game. Whew!
We had some significant luck in army matchups. Inca would have been very hard for us, Sassanids not easy, but we instead fought two armies with significant light troops to shoot up and/or brush troops to target, and a Japanese against which the SHK/LHI combination of the KoSJ actually works pretty well, especially with plentiful missile troops to draw Samurai fire. After 3 games, Todd and I are apparently clear enough on 14 (with the next team at 11 or so) that Scott calls it, and that concludes a pretty successful weekend - Todd also wins best camp!
Thanks as usual to Scott; to all of our opponents for really enjoyable games; and mostly to Todd for being a superb teammate and pleasure to be around. Or, in Tim’s words: “well, everyone likes Todd, so maybe they won’t be so nasty to you!” See you all in July. |
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