Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Don Coon]

The approach rules currently make you determine nearest known enemy for
your unit wishing to move in the approach phase and then you can not get
further away from that enemy body during the approach move. Patrick and
I wonder if we could convince you to exclude broken enemy bodies from
this "nearest known enemy body" group. Several times (maybe once every
three games or so) we have a unit wanting to get into a fight, but it
can not move towards the desired fight as a broken unit is closest to
it. It effectively is stuck until the broken unit has routed far enough
away to "free" it up. Any thoughts on this?

Also, we always play that when placing terrain you must leave a one
element minimum gap to any already placed terrain. It is not in the
Warrior rules set. Should it be?

Also Also, If a lance armed cav unit fight w/o its lances (it was
contacted to flank on bound X, countered in bound X+1) and causes the
opponents to recoil, does it get to fight 1.5 ranks in bound X+2? I do
not feel it should get to, but the rules seem to say that any lance
armed cav fight 1.5 ranks as other cav, when follwoing up. I do not
feel you should get the extra .5 rank in X+2 when you did not get them
in X=1. Am I all wet here and should just leave it alone?

Don

[joncleaves]

<< The approach rules currently make you determine nearest known enemy for
your unit wishing to move in the approach phase and then you can not get
further away from that enemy body during the approach move. Patrick and
I wonder if we could convince you to exclude broken enemy bodies from
this "nearest known enemy body" group. Several times (maybe once every
three games or so) we have a unit wanting to get into a fight, but it
can not move towards the desired fight as a broken unit is closest to
it. It effectively is stuck until the broken unit has routed far enough
away to "free" it up. Any thoughts on this?>>

Why, yes, I have some thoughts on that. The basic theme of our research
shows that ancient/medieval troops chasing after beaten opponents was the
rule and having the discipline to stop and reorient was by far the exception
(being a problem even late into the nineteenth century). You could counter,
representing the local commander getting control and reorienting or retire,
representing the wing commander repositioning.
And yes, you could fail the counter or the waver from a close-in retirement.
Risk v. need is the height of military decision making.
The answer to your question is no, we are not changing this rule.

<<Also, we always play that when placing terrain you must leave a one
element minimum gap to any already placed terrain. It is not in the
Warrior rules set. Should it be?>>

It's there, buried in 'combining features.' I will move it up and highlight.

<< Also, If a lance armed cav unit fight w/o its lances (it was
contacted to flank on bound X, countered in bound X+1) and causes the
opponents to recoil, does it get to fight 1.5 ranks in bound X+2?>>

Nope, but it would if they broke their opponents and pursued.

<< I do not feel it should get to, but the rules seem to say that any lance
armed cav fight 1.5 ranks as other cav, when follwoing up. I do not
feel you should get the extra .5 rank in X+2 when you did not get them
in X=1. Am I all wet here and should just leave it alone?>>

Lance does NOT fight 1.5 when following up.
Note that whether or not lance gets 1.5 is tied to charging, counter-charging
or pursuing and not what happened on a previous bound.

Jon

[Don Coon]

JonCleaves@... wrote:

> Why, yes, I have some thoughts on that. The basic theme of our research
> shows that ancient/medieval troops chasing after beaten opponents was the
> rule and having the discipline to stop and reorient was by far the exception
> (being a problem even late into the nineteenth century).

I totally see your logic. The cases we have had involved a broken unit
pinning another unit that had nothing to do with breaking it in the
first place. This is what caused us to think the broken unit might be
ignored. What you are saying is that any broken unit kind of gets the
enemy troops nearby in a mood to pound an easy target, thereby making
them behave in a manner other than the caommander (or omnipotent player)
would like.

One of the things I have always liked about WRG/Warrior is that some of
the all seeing player knowledge is removed. This is another case of
that. Thanks for the clarification on your rationale. We will play on
as intended.

> <<Also, we always play that when placing terrain you must leave a one
> element minimum gap to any already placed terrain. It is not in the
> Warrior rules set. Should it be?>>
>
> It's there, buried in 'combining features.' I will move it up and highlight.

Thanks.

> << Also, If a lance armed cav unit fight w/o its lances (it was
> contacted to flank on bound X, countered in bound X+1) and causes the
> opponents to recoil, does it get to fight 1.5 ranks in bound X+2?>>
>
> Nope, but it would if they broke their opponents and pursued.
>
> << I do not feel it should get to, but the rules seem to say that any lance
> armed cav fight 1.5 ranks as other cav, when follwoing up. I do not
> feel you should get the extra .5 rank in X+2 when you did not get them
> in X=1. Am I all wet here and should just leave it alone?>>
>
> Lance does NOT fight 1.5 when following up.
> Note that whether or not lance gets 1.5 is tied to charging, counter-charging
> or pursuing and not what happened on a previous bound.

My bad. I never meant to say recoil/following up, I meant
broke/pursuit. I guess you feel the cav has the time to get the lances
out when their opponents break. Thats really all that is at issue
here. We just wanted to make sure that if Cav broke a unit by bashing
them with maces, they could spit them as they ran the little girls
down. We played correctly and always have. We were just confirming
that is what you intended.

Thanks for the responses.

Don