Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Adrian Williams]

Allow more mixing of troops in the Anglo-Danish army

[Martin Williams]

1) I'm not sure any sort of lance armed cav needs any help, Norman or not.

2)The JLS armed can are perhaps more entitled to feel hard done by. Mayble let some 3 to a base jls armed cav fight 1 1/3 ranks. This way they would still loose to lancers but be in less danger of an immediate break

3) On the viking/saxon front how about something for housecarles/hirdsman accompanied by a general. The whole hero ethos/never survive your master thing. Maybe such units never waver, or add +1 even to positive dice results or some such. Wont help the armies much but adds a bit of colour and encourages players to have the generals in the main line leading large warbands

Martin

[Adrian Williams]

Surely you mean lose not loose Martin! And you an English teacher

[Todd Schneider]

It seems odd that Loose order foot not be eligible for Shieldwall, especially when Ancient contemporaries are Loose Order and get the Hoplite rules.

Perhaps a loose order unit in Shieldwall does not have to take a waver from a charge coming from the front, while a close order unit in shieldwall confers a minus on the attacker?

Todd

[Adrian Williams]

Any unit fronted by Axeman - close or loose order - perhaps should be exempted from waver testing when charged by mounted in the open - at the moment 2HCW is the choice of cripples

Adrian

[Rich Pichnarczyk]

Regarding Viking Berserks - How about the option of upgrading (or attaching) a stand of berserks into a hirdsmen or warrior unit? I find berserks often as detachments (and useful) but there just seems way too many stands of them for their actual numbers.

Regarding Anglo-Dane Huscarls - Think about making them more like their Viking Hirdsmen cousins and give them rank and a half for the axemen charging and countercharging.

Regarding loose order Jav armed cav - Consider giving them rank and a half versus foot only.

Boats & mounted infantry - consider making them more cost effective for certain armies to use. They add so much color to any game.

This is a great discussion on some fun armies.

[AntiokosIII]

I am enjoying this thread immensely. I will leave the Viking and Norman comments to others as I don't know as much.

On the Shieldwall issue, though; First, I like Frank's version of a shieldwall rule very much. It's really better than my idea, and I think it's worthy of serious considereation. Any movement allowed to a shieldwall shoud be veru slow, 40p at most, and I personally believe that the requirement of a formation change to get in or out models it reasonably well; any movement requires the men to dress ranks. Maybe the drop out of shieldwall could be a freebie, like skirmish; then you could always move 40p and reform.

Second, the whole idea of a loose order shield-wall is troublesome. The whole notion of a shieldwall is to pack troops more closely together, so that their shields overlap. If loose order troops did that, they'd be changeing to close order. Maybe we ought to permit that if somebody wants to provide duplicate stands of figs for the same unit, but loose order shield wall is kind of a contradiction in terms.

I agree that at least the Anglo-Danes ought to be able to form a shield-wall with the 2HCW Huscarls in front backed up by JLS armed Fyrd. COmbined with Frank's proposed rule, this becomes a reasonably formidable unit. Beatable, to be sure, but no longer the pushover it was. It might get my Anglo Danes off the shelf for some exercise once in awhile.

[scott holder]

I'm up to my eyeballs in shieldwall right now so the commentary is helpful.

Shieldwall ain't gonna be available to loose order troops, that much is certain.

Everything else?

........

scott

[Todd Kaeser]

I know I've suggested the use of boats by the Vikings. The boats could also possibly be used on minor water features. They did have shallow drafts and were able to advance to some extreme locations due to this.

Any real thought to the extension of the mongol flank march rules for Vikings who can come in on boats on a MWF?

Todd K

[Siward]

[Siward]

WARBANDS

For units regarded as warbands ( Franks/Goths/Saxons/celts etc ) I think a simple rule could be used to help them out. The idea should be to encourage historically large units. To qualify as a large unit it would need a minimum of 8 elements. If charging/counter-charging following up or pursuing, count ¼ of figures in 3rd and 4th ranks. For loose formation this would round up to 1/3. This is not a major addition to their effectiveness but does help out.
The only exception to the bonus should be that loose formation warbands armed with HTW miss out at first contact.
I would like an additional provision that to count in the 3rd and 4th ranks the element must be shielded and armed with a hand to hand weapon apart from side arms. This would reflect that missile only troops didn’t really add much value in the press of action and that in the true warband armies, anyone without a shield just wasn’t very serious. Units with shieldless troops still get the bonus of cheap casualty absorption. Missile troops get the invaluable bonus of attracting fire plus dishing out a bit of their own as well as cheap casualty absorption.


Cheers.....Geoff

[Mark Stone]

[Siward]

[quote="Mark Stone"]

[Tibor]

At the risk of attracting a huge amount of opprobrium, cost effectiveness is an argument which has such wide ramifications. Whole armies at present are not used because of this idea - (Who likes taking compulsory MI or HI Jls?).

Making Warbands fight in larger formations could be promoted by simply saying 8E units or larger do not need to pay command points? But then why not extend this further still ... Maybe a revision of the points values might be in order?

Hanging it out there to be poked at



Tibor

[Siward]