Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[D PIPER]

I just got to play my first real game of Warrior ever! But It raised a lot of questions for me as to Tactics and Army compositon. I have been a 15mm player for as long as I can remember and I have some pretty standard tactics and ways I buy my armies. But we used my friends 25mm armies with 1250 points on a standard 5x8 table, and I have to say it shocked me the way the armies deploy and the diffence in the way the battle was fought compared to the 15mm games that I played against myself.

One of the first things that I noticed when I compared the 25mm game to a 15mm game is the size of the central sector. In the 25mm game it is tremendously smaller in depth, a 15mm central sector is 1440 paces deep and a 25mm one is 1012 paces. So then I looked at total table area and realized that a standard 15mm table is 1920 paces deep by 2880 long for about 5.5 millon square paces of area, a 25mm table is 1500 paces by 2400 paces for about 3.6 mllion square paces of area.

Am I understanding right that 1200pts on a 5x8 table with 25mm and 1600pts on a 4x6 with 15mm are the standard sizes for most games now especially in tournaments?

So now to what I really wanted to ask is do people take into consideration when buying armies, deploying their armies, force marching their armies the differnce in table area and deployment distance from their enemy?

From what I can see this makes the Skirmish/Lights Battle a lot more important in 15mm than in 25mm. Armies in 15mm on standard tables have a lot more room to manuever. They also have less density of troops on the table if I am correct on the normal army sizes above.

Force marching in 15mm becomes alot more valueble because of the distance gained due to the size of the central sector and fatige savings on heavy foot marching across the board.

I played a 15mm game using only a 1000 pace central sector and useing 1800 points per side to upsize the battle to corespond to 25mm and for the 1.5 times the table area. This made each sides deployment zones 12inches deep and it really felt wierd starting that close. There was a lot less maneuvering and it felt alot more like playing a 25mm battle with smaller figures. This was a very different battle than what I was used too when using my 15mm armies.

Just thought I would see if this is anything that makes a differnce to people when playing the game.

Comments welcome.

Darin

[Frank Gilson]

It makes a variety of subtle differences to change from 25mm to 15mm and back...

First off, the tournament battles are at two standard point totals, regardless of scale...1200 and 1600.

Yes, armies with more skirmishers perform 'better' in 15mm...or at least they can.

Terrain features also take up much more space (area) in 25mm than in 15mm and so impact the battle more in the larger scale.

Thus I'd be very happy to run Mongols in 15mm...but vastly less happy to run them in 25mm.

I'd be happy to run certain infantry armies in 25mm...but would never run them in 15mm.

'Other' armies I might take a little more LC and LI in 15mm and a little more loose order troops than open in 25mm.

Frank Gilson

[D PIPER]

I see what you mean with the more close order foot armies in 25mm. I also would think artillery would be a lot more effective in 25mm since it can deploy in its home deployment zone and reach the mid line of the table, also with the small table area and smaller cental sector harder for armies to manuever around to avoid it.

[Ewan McNay]

Frank is (as usual) basically correct. [By the way, welcome to Warrior ]

I would add that the point level makes a big difference, regardless of scale; at 1200, deciding on whether you wish to invest in skirmishers is a bigger decision, because doing so but not winning the light-troops battle means that a higher percentage of your total force is losing.

The impact of terrain piece size is a big deal: 15mm terrain is rarely critical, in my experience, but 25mm terrain can dominate a battlefield and battle.

Close order foot will struggle to get into contact in either scale at any point level, often .

I would probably recommend starting at 1200 pts and 25mm if possible; that's in some ways the simplest option, and you can build from there.

[Frank Gilson]

As Piper mentions...Artillery is a real option in 25mm...but not something I think I'd take in 15mm...

I also want to re-organize my artillery so if they're regular and NOT bombards or stone throwers (so they can fire on the bound following movement) then that's best...

Frank

[Frank Gilson]

If you want, you can play 25mm using a special 15mm table and 15mm minis...as follows:

Scaling Factors:
Table Width : Army frontage is important here, which is width in elements.
Table Depth : March moves is important here, 240p segments
Terrain Features : Area percentage of table taken up is important here

Table Width :
A 25mm table is 8 feet wide, which is 96 inches, which is 96*25.4 (millimeters per inch) for 2438.4 millimeters. A 25mm element is 60mm wide, so 40.64 elements fit end to end on a 25mm table.

An element in 15mm is 40mm wide, so if we want 40.64 elements to fit end to end on a 15mm table then it needs to be 1625.6mm wide. That’s exactly 64 inches wide, or 5 feet, 4 inches (8 inches shorter than the standard 15mm table).

Table Depth :
A 25mm table is 5 feet deep, which is 60 inches, which is 1524mm across. That’s 6.35 240 pace segments in 25mm. 6.35 240p segments in 15mm is 38.1 inches, or 3 feet, 2.1 inches across...just about 10 inches thinner than the normal 15mm table.

Deployment areas :
240mm out of 1524mm on a 25mm table are used for an army’s deployment area. That’s a little under 16% of the table depth. The actual percentage, multiplied by 38.1 inches of our special 15mm table, magically reveals a 6 inch deployment area...as it should given that we've scaled the new table down to be the same # of 240p segments across.

Terrain Feature sizing :
This is a bit complicated…let’s start with the minimum/maximum sized Woods, Brush, Marsh, etc.

In 25mm these features are at minimum 240mm in diameter and at maximum 520mm in diameter. That means they have radii of between 120mm and 260mm. So, their areas range from 45,238.934 square millimeters to 212,371.663 square millimeters. The area of a 25mm table is 3,716,121.6 square millimeters. Thus, these types of terrain features take up from 1.22% to 5.71% of a 25mm table. Given that our 15mm special table has an area of 1,573,158.144 square millimeters (967.4mm deep by 1625.6mm wide), such terrain features will take up from 19151.149 square millimeters (diameter of 156.153mm or 6.15 inches) to 89904 square millimeters (diameter of 338.333mm or 13.32 inches). This is almost exactly the 6 inches to 13 inches that they normally take up in 15mm, so I’d recommend using the normal size features. Obeying the other terrain rules based on the new 15mm table size should give you similarly proper terrain features in other cases.

Frank Gilson