Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

Saturday morning was a fresh start, as I was out of the NICT and now in the
Open. Disappointing, but a chance to get an early start on qualifying for next
year's NICT.

Round 1, Ty Downs, Seleucid

I'm not going to comment a lot on this game. Ty is a beginner, I'm _really_
happy to see him here and playing, and I spent as much time as I could coaching
and teaching him in this game. At times it felt like me playing myself.

Ty used his Dad's variant: 2 small, up-armored, high morale pike units, 3 bigger
MI pike blocks, 2 48 figure shieldess MI archer blocks, 2 units of elephants, a
unit of peltasts, some Thracians, some LI, and some HC. Basically he sets up a
big wall and steadily advances.

This isn't a matchup that 10IS particularly fears. A unit of Irr A LMI, an LMI B
unit, and an EHC general took care of one shieldless archer block, and two LTS,B
units took care of the other (having played shieldless MI archers extensively,
I've also thought a lot about how to carefully take them down). His elephants
and spearmen slammed into my elephants and spearmen, and I rolled better dice
than Ty, resulting, after a couple of bounds, in the rout of a pike unit, one
of his elephant units, and some shaken units with that. Ty actually routed one
of my LTS,B blocks with a big up roll, and I had to take a waver with uneasy Ds
for the adjacent unit, but passed.

Final score, 5-1 to me.

Round 2, Jake Kovel, Early Polish

By far my most enjoyable game of the whole weekend; thanks Jake!

I threw down my four hills in Jake's rear zone, and -- having learned the hard
way from Robert -- set up anticipating a flank march even though Jake had just
two commands.

Problem was, I had a rash general who bumped his orders up from "Wait" to
"Probe". This was almost my undoing. Jake's flank march arrived on Bound 2:
three knight units and 2 LC units. Problem was, until it charged onto the table
(I didn't give him room to approach on), he doesn't actually meet the definition
of "known" and thus half my probing command had to keep marching away from the
flank march, and indeed marching away as fast as possible.

This is one of a number of problems with flank marches I observed as both player
and referee; more on that in another post.

Jake actually had two flank marches. The other one never arrived, but turned out
to be a single LC unit. I kept a reserve watching it, tried to reorganize my
probing command as best I could to attack the flank march, and sent the rest of
my troops towards Jake's CinC's command. This command consisted of a couple of
LMI 2HCW/JLS units, a couple of HI 2HCT/JLS units armed with bow, some LI, and
an EHK unit. Jake was somewhat hampered by having this command under "Wait"
orders, waiting for the flank march to arrive, but having his general in at a
distance where he was unable to see the flank march. He did eventually get
orders changed for this command.

Over the next several bounds I got an elephant and a firelance unit into his LMI
(a good thing; they eventually routed), had to sacrafice an Irr A LMI unit to
protect my flank (it routed, and things shook but eventually got rallied as a
result), and watched his 2HCT guys collide with one of my LTS,B units and roll
up big, inducing a rout. In other words, general carnage in typical Jake
fashion. I would say that this engagement lasted 4 or 5 bounds, and resulted in
several hundred points killed on each side. In that local area, I'm not sure who
came out ahead.

But the flank march was Jake's undoing. I had an elephant unit marched to 240p
away, I had my EHC general ready, as well as an LMI archer unit and an MI
archer unit. Mostly these units played "containment" roles while the elephants
waded through Jake's cavalry. Jake nearly pulled this out with some huge die
rolls, shaking my MI archer unit and forcing my EHC to take several waver tests
for disordered while disordered. Given losses the rest of this command had
suffered in the middle of the table, I would have gone into retirement if the
EHC general had shaken. My general hung tough, however, and even with up die
rolls there really isn't anything knights and LC can do against elephants.
Eventually Jake's command went into retirement, and those units not already
routed left the table.

Jake killed 465 points of my guys, but I killed just over 1000 points of his.
Final score, 5-3.

Round 3, Marc Cribbs, Saitic Egyptian

I'm feeling much better about my army and my performance at this stage. Scott
has told Marc and me that ours is basically the finals, as we both have 10
points and no one else is close.

Again, I throw four steep hills into my opponent's rear zone, but Marc is a
veteran player and unaffected by this. All it causes him to do is march forward
aggressively, which he was clearly going to do anyway.

His army is an interesting challenge. He has a lot of bowfire, with two big MI
archer blocks, 2 LMI archer blocks, and an assortment of LI and LC. Not as much
shooting as I have, but maybe half as much, which is pretty darned impressive.
He also has a _lot_ of guys, as his army is pretty cheap. He can just about
match me in number and size of units. His shock combo is two units of HI LTS
and two units of chariots; my shock combo is a unit of firelancers, a unit of
swordsmen, and two units of elephants. My sense is we are pretty evenly matched
up.

This is not a finesse game; our lines basically move forward and collide. His
light troops on the wings are no match for my shooting, but he does an
excellent job of rotating his skirmishers (one unit moves up and gets blasted
while the other is rallying, which then moves up as the first one recalls
back).

I get an early attack on a 24 figure unit of LMI JLS,Sh. Over the course of
several bounds, an Irr A LMI unit, an EHC general, and an MI B unit will do
various combinations of 3 CPF and twice as many to this unit, but never at the
same time. It turns out to be Reg B, and passes all waver tests except on the
last bound. *Sigh*

In the center where our lines collide, Marc has a bound in which -- with
regulars -- he rolls up 3 on four separate occaisions. This is followed by two
up 3 rolls the next bound, and two more the bound after that. He also passes a
bunch of waver tests, including some with uneasy Cs, and one with uneasy Ds.

My army has no answer for that. Each bound I keep trying to wratchet up the
pressure on him, but at some point I'm just out of "ammo". Every unit is
committed, and there's nothing more I can do. And when my army starts taking
multiple waver tests, things get bad in a hurry.

I draw some blood, with a couple of routed units and some shaken units. By the
"domino" effect of waver tests I'm taking has the expected result, and both my
commands go into retirement on the last bound.

Marc wins, 5-1.

Dice happen. I'm not unhappy with the result, as I'd fight basically the same
way if I had it to do over. I'm disappointed with my NICT performance, but not
with the army. I'll be making some minor tweaks to it, but right now 10IS is
one strong contender for what I'll play next time at Historicon.

I'll be considering some other armies for a while (revisiting Shang, also
looking at Ming, and tinkering with Italian Condotta). But I may well be back
with 10IS again.


-Mark Stone