Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Ewan McNay]

The CW doubles brought an encounter with Tim Brown and Eric Turner running Tarascan: 18 or 19 4E units of missile-armed loose foot, most double-armed, and apparently mostly A and B class, Scary stuff, especially when we rolled two 1s on terrain and hence could not fill their deployment zone, allowing for the silly fire arrows to come into effect.

[That cost us the game; the only points we lost were when the CinC charged in and was hit with hyper-effective support fire from three units at artillery factors, taking the game from a 5-1 our way to a 3-4 loss. Whine, moan - no, not at all: it was legal, despite proclamations that 'this will be fixed', and we shouldn't have charged in given that.]

{Otherwise the team tournament went well: Dave M and I ran Italian Condotta, expecting to need terrain to shield our flanks but then faced Swiss and Samurai in the first two games and hence went for open spaces! We took 3 6E Swiss units, 4E LHI 2HCT, CB, Sh units, 4 SHK units and a couple of units of militia who were intended to sit on a hill and protect one flank - it was a very, very small army! Facing the Swiss in game 1, it was deja vu for me: as in the past couple of games against Dennis, there were no Swiss force-marchers and so a couple of Italian light units pinned the bigger Swiss command into irrelevance while Dave pounded on the other flank. The end of the Swiss line on that side was a unit of bombards which exploded on their first shot, and failed the waver test thus caused - the CinC was alongside but alas rolled a 1 for damage . Entertaining, but not really a factor: too many Italian units on that side, including Swiss in deeper formation than the Swiss Swiss, and it got rolled up.

Game 2 was similar in some ways: an unbroken line of LEHI Samurai from MWF to large wood. This time Dave got to run the small light units while I attached, and I was fortunate to have faced Samurai last year when using KoSJ, so I knew what to do: bound 3, as the Samurai echeloned forward, the end element of each of the right-most 3 units was hit with SHK, followed by 2HCT guys in bound 4, and the 3 Swiss units conerging on a 4th large Samurai unit on bounds 5/6. The Samurai had uniformly terrible combat dice and superb morale dice, so that nothing went away until about bound 8 when half the Samurai went into exhaustion simultaneously, and some of the rest hence went on to Retreat; the coup de grace was delivered by flank-marching Italian LC CB who got off their boats and charged into the rear of the Samurai CinC!.

The Tarascan battle saw me back in the 'delay' role, and that worked ok: Eric spent the game chasing me, and got me almost to the baseline but my 2x2E LI B and 2xLC CB held up about 40% of the Tarascans without loss - I even got off a knight charge into uneasy C class LMI in the open at one point, only to get shot the heck out of there again after they passed the waver and rolled up. On the 'action' flank, Tim did a masterful job of evading close combat for the most part; the Swiss caught and evaporated a unit of Tarascan LTS, B troops but none of the 6 surrounding units failed their wavers. In the middle, Eric had pushed me back enough that the two militia pike units trying to protect the flank of the attack force were exposed, shot to a halt, and then charged - they actually held, but then we foolishly made that CinC charge on the final bound and they were swept away. On the far flank, a second SHK charge into some 2HCT, B troops in column finally got a failed waver and hence an auto-rout, with two failed wavers as a result: before the two charges it was probably a 1-0 or 2-0 to us, and so we needed the points, but the CinC was still a mistake .

Eric and Tim faced Frank and Dave in the final game, and I have no idea what happened - anyone?}

[Frank Gilson]

In the Army Lists Tlaxcallan topic Ewan describes his experiences with Dave Markowitz at the 2008 Cold Wars 25mm Doubles event...and asks what happened in the final game between myself and Dave Stier against Tim Brown and his partner.

I'll run down roughly the entire event here...without too much detail. Dave and I used the Sicilian Hohenstaufen, Early Period. EHK/HK plus LC B, LI JLS,Sh and CB, and all the Reg C LMI B,Sh we were able to get.

Game 1 we face James B, his partner, and their Nikephoran army.

James generally buys lots of Kontaratoi. Knowing this our terrain planning was to muck up the table a bit with Brush. We ended up with just one big fat Brush in the table middle, and a steep hill we stuck in their rear zone.

The expected Kontaratoi showed up in force. Enemy Varangians were opposite the Brush. Our plan was to crush them, kill some LI, shoot up some LC, and see what else happened.

We killed some LI, shot away LC, pinned and danced against most of the Kontaratoi and did in fact kill the Varangians. That wouldn't have been enough for our 5 point victory. James' partner expanded out a Kontaratoi unit on their right flank. Dave was able to move a knight unit up for a Case II flank charge on each flank of that unit, although disordered for having to charge through our own LI. That eventually (with some follow up help) resulted in a rout of that MI unit. A couple of units nearby shook, etc. We had two very small LC flank marches each arrive...and eventually die...but each tied up two HC units.

Our second game was against Jevon Garrett and Chris Damour. They employed Rajput. We were able to keep a lot of terrain off the table, although they did solidly anchor an entire flank. Chris' influence was felt by Jevon as all possible units of Irr C (1 element A) LMI JLS,Sh were present and surging forward in their army. We 'fluffed' the center against elephants (Reg LI and LC countering back, evading, etc. endlessly) while we slaughtered the LMI...all of it. Another 5 pointer...Our flank marches in this case (LI and LC) didn't do much...but didn't die.

The third game was against Rob Turnbull and his partner using Seleucids with four pike blocks and all eight elephants in four units. We thought first to use Brush against the pikes and elephants...but that would have given them homes for their LI and peltasts...troops we could otherwise rout easily. So...Open Spaces and somewhat bad terrain dice for our opponents kept the table almost completely clear...apart from a Woods in Rob T's right hand corner. Rob force marched some folks into said Woods and then trailed out from it with LI and LC in a skirmish 'fade' line, hoping to 'do nothing' and permit the pike and elephants to get something done. I pinned the pike with LI and LC and faded away. I had a flank march 12 man LC unit show up early and blast a sub general for 6 CPF...but then get hit with two HC units and rout off table. In just about the table center a pike block moved forward and Dave saw that he could get a Case II flank charge on its shieldless flank. I pointed out that an impetuous frontal charge by a knight unit would then give us enough casualties (exactly) to rout that unit. Rob was able to get an elephant unit in place to cause disorder to Dave's knight unit...so Dave responded with a +1 on the dice to overcome it and in fact rout the pike unit. Said routers carried away a different nearby elephant unit and a peltast unit failed its waver. This plus a few other things gave us our third 5 point victory.

The Tarascans, piloted by Tim Brown and his partner, had 14 basic points and were our opponents Sunday morning. The terrain was a mixed bag...we were not able to keep the Stone Wall off the table (nearly impossible) but we were able to provide only a small back rear corner space for it (rolled a 1 on my Road pick.) They thus still got indenciary arrows. We outscouted them and force marched a bunch of LC/LI to pin them back as far as we could. Fearing a flank march on his right, Tim had set up with an empty space and a ring of troops from his table rear. Dave was able to march up and stop Tim's marches...causing traffic jams. I began shifting knights to add to Dave's and Tarascan LMI peeled away to answer that. We routed a LI unit, converted into a Sub general, caused many wavers for charges in the open, etc...although most such wavers were passed and up rolls occurred for support shooting. We did rout a sling/bow unit, cause another unit to shake, and eat up a bunch of fire arrows...1-1 with the point total substantially in our favor. A victory of sorts...

Frank

[Mark Stone]

Here's an after action report from the bottom of the standings.

Alex always places a high value on having us play something unexpected and odd. We've been talking about Ming Chinese for a year now, and Alex almost nixed the idea when Jon played Ming in the NICT last year. I persuaded him there was still plenty of novelty factor left in the Ming.

The short summary of our experience is: get more practice with Warrior in general before a major tournament, and get more practice with the army you intend to play. We suffered on both counts, and I spent a lot of time Sunday replaying our games in my head and thinking "why did we do that?" The errors ranged from forgetting our cavalry had firelances in one game to forgetting a crucial counter with a sub-general in another... and just not thinking through the right plan against Japanese.

Here was our thinking on Ming: there's a ton of good stuff on this list, including firelance cav, firelance foot to Burmese elephants, Mongol cav, Korean LTS,B foot, the game's best artillery, and incendiary expendables in the form of bomb-carrying oxen. Even on 2000 points, you can't have it all.

Alex, of course, was intrigued by the bomb-carrying oxen. I was intrigued by the availability of Reg B LHI 2HCT. Charging together with the Burmese elephants, this makes for a very hard-hitting combination. Of the various foot who can charge together with elephants, these are amongst the hardest-hitting. Not as much first bound impact as, say, Spanish Reg C LMI HTW,JLS,Sh, but they sustain that impact from bound to bound better than guys armed with HTW. And the nature of Burmese elephants is that they often hit harder on the second bound than the first, since all 6 crew can fight on the second bound. The elephants want foot who can accompany them and deliver a solid punch on 2nd and 3rd bounds of combat, not just the first bound.

So the plan was a two-pronged attack:
* One "pod" of Burmese elephants accompanied by the LHI 2HCT, supported by some 4-to-a-stand shooters.
* Another "pod" of MI LTS,Sh with firelance and escorting bomb-carrying oxen, in tandem with EHC L,B,Sh with firelance. The idea is the oxen and EHC charge together at a foot target, which the oxen obligingly disorder for the EHC. The firelance LTS guys come in on a follow-up bound.

The rest of the army is light troops for screening. The dense 4-to-a-stand shooters all get a round of incendiary arrows to make them more resistant to mounted, particularly SHK and SHC.

That was the plan, and I still think it was a good plan. Like any plan, however, it requires careful execution.

Game 1: Toltecs. OK, so we don't actually have much of a plan for this. Elephants hate Meso-American armies, and their foot can go toe-to-toe with any of ours. Our best shot is to use the EHC to keep him from skirmishing away, get the MI LTS w/oxen lined up, and try to plow into a couple of units this way. The problem is that MI is slow, and even once we get everyone in position we are still dependent on them failing a counter.

We just never get that far. The terrain is pretty good for us, with a mostly open table, but they are able to set up between a woods on one side and a major water feature on the other, so they don't really have any exposed flanks. Our elephants spend the game sitting on a hill thinking about not getting pinned down in a frontal combat and then charged in the flank by Irr A Otomi. They avoid this fate, but contribute little to the battle. The MI just can't get lined up fast enough, and the weak skirmishing wing on our right falls apart under a hail of slings. We have a command under retirement before we're really ready to even start fighting with the MI and EHC in the center.

5-0 for the Toltecs.

Game 2: Nikephoran Byzantine. This is much more to our liking, as our elephants and much of our foot match up very well against Byzantine cavalry, and our cavalry w/firelance is slightly superior to theirs. They have several large units of Skutatoi and a unit of Rus spear, and our elephants really want nothing to do with any of that, but the game largely goes our way.

We have enough shooting and lights of our own to shut down their lights on one flank, and the elephants to shut down their lights on another flank. As their skirmish line fades back from things it doesn't want to fight they have a couple of Skutatoi units whose flanks get exposed. We end up routing these, and get a shaken unit or two from the resulting routs. Heading into the last bound it's looking like we'll take a 4-2 win.

Then the Varangians, who have taken all game to maneuver into a position they like, tee off an impetuous charge on the Burmese subgeneral, roll up 2, rout him, and cause a couple of failed wavers, putting the Burmese command into retirement. With the loss of some lights elsewhere, we end up with another command in retirement and find ourselves on the short end of a very bloody 5-3 loss.

I will say this was a really fun game, and the kind of matchup the Ming are designed for. A little more precision in setup and initial march moves, and remembering to counter my sub away from the Varangians, and we'd have had a better outcome.

Game 3: Japanese. Rich and Alex Kroupa opted to take the Japanese with longbow instead of with bow. Once I learned that, I was much less afraid of this matchup. The Japanese are still dangerous, especially with Irr As in every unit, but I'm less worried about the shooting.

They have a very homogeneous army, with (I think) 8 24-man units, and some smaller units in reserve. They got the terrain needed to cut the frontage down to what they could cover, and so we lined up to slug it out.

We attacked on two broad a frontage, going after basically 4 of the 8 units, when we should have gone after 2 or 3 on one end of the line and held a reserve to deal with the Japanese response. This cost us in the end, but not as much as the Japanese die rolls cost us. Rich rolled some very obliging middle results, I think even, even, -2 and +1 on the key combats he was involved in. Alex Kroupa, on the other hand, rolled something like: +2, +3, +1, even, even, +2, +2, +3 (the pluses are before factoring in the Irr a bonus). That was just too brutal to stand up to.

We had a Reg B LHI 2HCT unit rout outright, and an elephant unit shake as a result. We had a MI LTS unit get caught holding too much of the line and get shot to pieces and subsequently routed as a result. On the flip side, we had our Burmese subgeneral stomp rather badly on a beleagured Japanese unit, and we got off a very nice combined arms charge of bomb-carrying oxen and EHC into another Japanese unit.

Overall the first wave of contacts resulted in a couple of routed units on each side. However, our units testing for routers are mostly C and D class, while the Japanese are entirely B class. They had one unit shake in response to routs, and we had a bunch of units shake.

Again, a very bloody matchup and a ton of fun to play, but the Japanese came out on top 5-3.

I'll have to ponder what to do with the Ming. It doesn't do well against the Meso-American lists, and people are beginning to figure out that these are the strongest lists with circulating combatant rules, not the Romans (or Swiss). So I think we'll see more and more of them in competition. And Ming needs 2000 points to get enough troops to really cover the full table. On 1600 points it will have a frontage problem for which it must compensate. At the end of the day matchups and the luck of the draw have a lot to do with it. We'd have done better against 3 cavalry armies instead of just 1, and there were plenty of cavalry armies out there, just not in our draw.

I'll do my best to make it to Historicon. I won't be playing Ming. But I'm not giving up on them for the long run either.


-Mark Stone