Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[John Murphy]

from the last place team...

There were three teams that signed up and due to how it worked out we could neither transfer to 25mm (we had troops but Scott did not want to wind up with an odd number in 25mm that way) or get a 25mm team to play 15mm for the same reasons, though again we had extra troops. So we just played two games each.

Lesson there, I don't know if 15mm teams will be a viable event every year, I think there was one other case of this in the FHE era?

Morning: Persian civil war Achamenids versus Sassanids
Afternoon: Moldavians (us) versus Achamenids
Evening: Modlavians (us) versus Sassanids

All told actually not bad matchups for us despite our bad scores, even with all the Sassanid elephants.

I will let someone who played in it or at least saw it comment on the Persian civil war.

We took the following list, very familiar if you have ever played me...

Holy Warrior List #35
24 units, 3 commands, 1999 total pts, 114 scouting pts

1x CinC/Boyars 2E Irr A HK L,Sh (PA std) @ 175
1x Sub-general/Boyars 2E Irr A/B HK L,Sh (P std) @ 112
4x Boyars 2E Irr A/B HK L,Sh @ 94
4x Viteji 6E Irr C LC JLS,B,Sh @ 109 [1.5-rank]
1x Roumanian Foot 4E Irr C LMI JLS,Sh @ 61
6x Roumanian Archers 6E Irr C LI B,Sh/B @ 55
1x Bombards 2E Reg C Art 4 crew,oxen @ 90
1x Crimean Tartar Ally-general/Cavalry 2E Reg B/C HC L,B,Sh/L,B (P std) @
141 [Mongol]
2x Crimean Tartar Cavalry 2E Reg C HC L,B,Sh/L,B @ 76 [Mongol]
3x Crimean Tartar Cavalry 2E Reg C LC JLS,B,Sh/B @ 42 [1.5-rank plus Mongol]

This is almost the same exact list Mark Hissam and I used with some good results a few years ago, but now I had up-armored the Tartar lancer back ranks (note to self - have to get some more of my Agas painted without shields so I am not using very MC figures for these back rankers in the future) for the almost trivial cost of dropping a 4th general to a normal Boyar unit.

Tim wanted to do the lights so I let him have the Tartars plus 3/4 of the Viteji, made him take the artillery to make up for it (<g>... I can't play artillery if my life depended on it), and we split the rest about even.

The Achamenids had a bunch (half dozen at least) scythed chariots and a truly massive flank march which arrived bound one into the tiny rear zone (for the first time I can remember we were not using any version of the extended rear zones) where and when we could perhaps have dealt with it... but unfortunately for us we had an opposed one-2E-LC-unit flank march which let them come in all along the edge the next bound when they were applying pressure from the front as well. It was Tim's edge, lucky him. It was a big mess. The effect combined with the scythed chariots charging from the front and pushing him back (not inherently dangerous for us on its own) and he just had a massive traffic jam from about the second bound all game as he tried to sort it out. Fun city.

I had never played against scythed chariots before (heck only played against chariots of any kind maybe once) and had no idea what to do about them. Fortunately I had drank my milk and read the good book that morning and maybe stayed at a Holiday Inn or something because I just happened to evade a single LC unit, which I used to trigger them off, from in front of them into a brush. Dead scythed chariots. Pure luck, I did not even know that would happen. I got my Boyars too close to an enemy LI and as I saw that Tim was not going to win the game for us I had to manuever them around the LI, without triggering them, to hit something more meangful. Did not have the time and wound up charging one into the LI just to have _something_.

I am guessing 1-5, I think we were just short with the chariots and the LI of geting 2 points. Oh well.

Lights out (if you did not know there was another piece of Cold Wars lore this year as we had a tornado watch and high winds and the power went out in that section of Lancaster from about 5:30 to 7:30 and it was quite dark in the Lampeter room which had few ememrgency lights --- the convention staff and our esteemed Mr Holder I must admit did an excellent job of keeping things under control at least from what I could see, which, er, wasn't much actually but you get the idea). So an extended break.

Against the Sassanids we thought about shifting around but it wound up that we kept the same structure.

Tim made some headway but was facing 2/3 or 3/4 of the enemy tontos so the idea I focused on from the get go was for me to ride in behind his lights and get a charge in from the Boyars against the SHC after their light support was cleared out. It was well suited to how I like to play these guys anyhow. Hopefully the wavers would then take care of the El before I became toe jam.

Well, I blew this one on literally bound one. I marched my only Viteji up behind a unit of LI skirting inside a flank brush. Up popped an enemy LI unit to shoot me in the flank. Totally forgot they could do that. LI waver passed, LC waver failed, would have been fine the other way around. That flank slowly crumbled with only LI and I made matters worse by charging with one LI unit a few bounds later. Just a hard habit to break - I am used to playing aggresively with them but I did not work out the impact this would create down the road on my command retirement level. Made matters worse by the LI unit sticking after a combat round against enemy LI so an enemy MI unit got to come up and plow into them.

However, all that said I got the impetuous charge of the Boyars set up at 121p against the enemy Cats who could only counter-charge so non-impetuously, enemy lights cleared away from them, El too far to support them, and prepared to make up in my mind at least for whole rest of the torney so far. SHC support shot was not too good and I was shot down 1 CPF going in and hit tired. So still 5@5 against 6@3 on both units. Mike Byrne rolled even for both his SHC units. I had an all- Irr A CinC and a unit with A/B mix. An up roll and all was well... so I rolled down 2 in both combats...

Same combat bound next one over was my last LI unit which finally got toasted and broke. Command in retirement. Game over.

I think this was a 1-5 because I think Tim must have killed _something_ over there, although I know one unit he shook was rescued by a general so maybe not in which case it was 0-5.

Lessons learned from my quarter of the table... Same as in most Warrior games I ever play it seems like. Know the rules. This time it was scythed chariots (though I was lucky on that one), flank marches, LI ambushes. Okay so now I remember those next time it will be something else which I know now but will forget then. Ah, that's the way it goes it seems.