Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

6 tournament games in two days and a day of refereeing leaves my memory of
things a little bit hazy, but to the best of my recollection, here's what I
faced:

NICT, Round 1: Bill Low, Mithradatic

Bill's a heck of a nice guy, and a veteran player, so this was an enjoyable
game, regardless of outcome.

I remember the Mithradatic as potentially having a lot of close order foot, some
peltasts, some scythed chariots, and some decent cav. One of the fringe benefits
of 10 Independent States is being tropical, and thus always being in your home
climate. I used a terrain tactic with Bill that I would use repeatedly at
Historicon: against an opponent whom I assumed wanted open space, taking four
hills as terrain picks and attempting to stick them as steep hills in the enemy
rear zone. The idea is to "flush him out", to force him to march forward
promptly to get clear of the hills, and thus into the waiting arms of my
archers. The nice thing about hill picks on tropical is you _always_ get it. My
first die roll was a "1", which with +1 meant "2", which meant "enemy rear
zone". Fine by me.

As it turns out, Bill was hardly affected by my terrain approach. He had no
close order foot, bunches of peltasts who would all start in column anyway,
some irregular loose order foot (Thracians and Bastarnae), and some SHC. Oh,
and scythed chariots. My army doesn't really notice scythed chariots. With a
little massaging from my LI, the chariots can all be directed towards units of
LTS,B where they will get shot up to the point of being unable to do a CPF. So
that was 72 points or so for me.

Bill lined up all his cataphracts on one flank, heading towards an MI B,Sh/B
unit. Otherwise, his peltasts began a relatively uniform advance across the
line. I directed my elephants to the flank with the cataphracts, and began a
general advance of LTS,B units. Bill brought up his irregular loose order to
intervene between the cataphracts and the elephants.

I never quite got the elephants to the cataphracts, but I did get them close
enough that he couldn't get his cataphracts to my close order foot without
suffering disorder from the elephants. Threat averted. I managed to get
elephants into a unit of Bastarnae that did not roll up, and hence were
recoiling disordered. Sadly, Bill passed all his waver tests (three bounds
worth?) with this unit, and it never shook. His pelts collided with my LTS
guys, and for a couple of critical bounds Bill consistently rolled better than
me in hand to hand.

Final score: Bill 3, me 2.

Observations: SHC and skirmishing pelts are about as invulnerable to missile
fire as any opponent will be, thus defusing the major threat of my army. While
Bill rolled some good dice, his overall better morale bought him time to roll
good dice, so this wasn't just luck. Not a lot I would do differently, though
-- not for the last time -- I had difficulty getting the firelancers into
combat.

NICT Round 2: Robert Turnball, Seleucids

This battle could be titled "Eating Crow". I'll explain.

Robert is one of the few veteran players I had never actually matched up against
(I think Derek is the only other I've yet to face), and we had an exciting and
enjoyable game. I needed a minimum of 4 points to make the cut, and Robert, as
it turns out, is not a conservative player, so we were quickly on our way to a
high scoring game.

Now, in email prior to NICT, Frank Gilson and I had been discussing what my
army's weaknesses were likely to be. This was immediately after the discussion
on this list in which I utterly belittled the idea of flank marching an entire
command as "never" being effective. Frank pointed out that a flank march in
force was indeed one of the things I was vulnerable to, as my army is both slow
and cumbersome to redeploy. I actually worked out a very specific plan for how
to deal with a possible flank march in force.

But, as Robert only had two generals, I just knew that he would never flank
march an entire command.

Oops. Major Mistake #1.

After setup it was clear that he had only one general on the table, and that
about 1/4 of his army was missing. It was pretty clear which side of the table
the flank march had to be on, and I sent an LMI unit to watch my rear zone on
that flank, and an MI unit to watch my forward zone on that flank. Yes, I know;
neither of those is enough to hold back an entire command. My plan was to
redeploy other reserve units once the flank march arrived, and to press hard
with my numerical advantage of on-table troops.

Well, Robert's flank march showed up right away, and quite the flank march it
was: two scythed chariots, two units of LC, and a Companion cavalry with
subgeneral. A bit much for my LMI unit to handle.

I was making good progress with my frontal attack, though. An elephant unit and
a firelance-armed heavy infantry unit charging into enemy infantry is a sweet
sight to behold (Robert failed his counter to get this particular peltast unit
out of the way). I had my swordsman (2HCW/1HCW, bow throughout) unit lining up
on the one thing in life it is optimized to kill: elephants. And though Robert
was trying to gang up two pike units in column on one of my LTS,B blocks, I
had an elephant unit in position to intervene and cancel one of those charges
with its own charge. The problem was my line was getting stretched between
units in the vicinity of the flank march and units pressing the center advance.
I had an LMI archer unit and 4 figures of LI trying to hold way too much space.

My LMI archer was going to end up within charge range of a peltast unit and an
HC unit. Simply going into skirmish would have allowed the HC, who were out of
my shooting arc, to get a free waver test on me. So I decide to counter
instead.

That was Major Mistake #2. If you have an option that brings a measure of safety
to one of your units without rolling dice, take it. Of course the LMI failed
their counter, and got hit by the peltasts. A good support shot roll kept me
from routing at contact, but....

The LI unit wasn't within charge reach or shooting reach of anyone. So I
prompted a retirement for it.

That was Major Mistake #3. Remember that elephant unit that was going to charge
and preempt one of Robert's pike charges? The one that I would have to prompt
to charge, since the crew is bow-armed? Didn't leave myself quite enough prompt
points. I needed to roll a "2" on my prompt, and rolled a "3" instead.

Robert charges and does not quite rout my LTS,B block. Things haven't turned
disastrous yet, but they are going to soon. My LMI bow unit is fighting
peltasts -- never a good thing -- and about to receive an HC charge. Robert's
flank march has killed an Irr A LMI unit and an LI unit, leaving me with a 32
figure MI B unit facing the wrong way to hold him off. My LTS,B unit recoiling
disordered from his pike hasn't routed or shaken yet, but it will. And all of
these losses are coming out of one command. Granted, it's a command with 10
units, but I'm still looking at a command under retirement in the next bound or
two.

I press on. Robert's peltasts rout, as does his elephant unit, taking it's LI
detachment with him. My EHC moves in position to charge his HC after it
destroys my LMI bowmen. But my entire right flank collapses, as expected, and
the command goes into retirement.

The thing is, this hasn't been painless for Robert. On the quieter parts of the
battlefield, he has an LI unit and an LC unit that have succumbed to massive
shooting. He's lost a peltast unit and an elephant unit along with the
elephant's LI detachment, and guys who can't get out of the way are going to
test. I'm going to rout his HC unit, and more guys are going to test. And all
of Robert's losses, because of how he divided his commands for flank march,
have come out of one command. It's a command with something like 15 units, but
he's actually getting close to retirement.

On the last bound Robert has to waver test with four units: As, willing Bs, and
two uneasy C units. If he fails 2 of these 4 -- granted, unlikely -- then his
main command goes into retirement, and I will likely finish ahead of him with
something like a 4-3 score. Alas, he passes 3 of 4 waver tests -- the expected
result -- and wins 5-2.

An ignominious exit from the NICT for the 10 Independent States, and it's on to
the Open on Saturday.

Robert is certainly a fine player, as his overall performance at Historicon
indicates. So there's no shame in losing, and indeed I really enjoyed our game.
And you just can't make multiple mistakes at this level of competition and
expect to win. Certainly I could chalk it up the the red eye flight and lack of
sleep from the night before affecting my concentration. But I am haunted by the
notion that, like my chess hero Nimzowitsch, my theoretical understanding of
the game may be greater than my game time ability to bring that understanding
to bear.


-Mark Stone

[Bill Chriss]

>
> Observations: SHC and skirmishing pelts are about as invulnerable to
> missile
> fire as any opponent will be, thus defusing the major threat of my army.
> While


Yes, Mark. I quite agree, and not liking the popular trouser wearing, bow
toting, tactics of barbarian armies, this is a major reason I, like Bill,
enjoy playing peltast heavy armies, particularly with 1/2 LHI armor
upgrades. In fact, Bill and I had an equally enjoyable game first round
of the 15mm Theme where his peltasts fought mine to a draw. He is, as you
say, a joy to play against.




> NICT Round 2: Robert Turnball, Seleucids
<snip>
> That was Major Mistake #2. If you have an option that brings a measure of
> safety
> to one of your units without rolling dice, take it.

Again, point taken. Todd Kaeser demonstrated this and a few other painful
lessons to me in a completely amiable and gentlemanly manner in the finals
of the 15mm Open. I made the mistake of trying to retire a (badly
misdeployed) general in charge reach of several LC units, and he rolled a
0ne. Oops.

I am constantly reminded of how critical initial deployment is. 2 of the 3
games I lost badly (2 in the theme and the one against Todd) were directly
attributable to that. Enjoyed meeting you, and was impressed by Alex's
play and demeanor to the extent i was able to observe it. Hopefully my son
will come again next year after a one year absence.


-Greek