Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

"The Shield" proved to be a successful convention thanks to the efforts
of Manny Granillo. I don't know what the overall attendance figures were, but
I'm guessing around 200. Gaming covered everything from ancients to modern
armor, with lots of naval and air miniatures as well as the usual land battles.
My guess is that this will become the premier West Coast event for historical
gaming, given that larger cons like Kubla Con give top billing to sword/sorcery
genre gaming like Dungeons and Dragons. Nothing wrong with that, but it's nice
to have an event where the focus is historical.

The visual high point of the convention was the Siege of Tyre scenario,
re-enacting Alexander the Great's assault on the port city using the "Classical
Hack" rules set. Phillip, who organized this event, had built an 8' x 4' model
of the city of Tyre, sculpted and painted brick by brick, and had all the
figures and ship models needed to stage this in 25mm. It was truly a stunning
sight, and drew in onlookers from out in the hallway who had nothing to do with
the convention.

Numbers at the DBM event continue to dwindle, though there was a strong turn out
for DBA. By far the biggest turn out was for War Hammer Ancient Battles, both
for a couple of large set piece scenario battles and for the WAB tournament.
What all of this says to me is that we desperately need Warrior Battles, our
intro game, to provide a simple point of entry into our system that can compete
with WAB and DBA. Jon is well aware of this, and will work hard towards that end
I'm sure once Classical Warrior is out and once the rewrite of the rules is
done.

The Warrior tournament suffered in turn out, as Lenney Hermann was away on
vacation, Frank Gilson was unable to make it up from S. Cal, and John Bauman
got called into work at the last minute on Saturday. We ran four rounds from
Friday night through Saturday night, with players needing to compete in 3 of 4
rounds. Even so some players were given "byes", and scored accordingly, in a
couple of rounds so they could play in other events.

The players, armies, and results are as follows:

1st: Mark Stone, Later Paleologan Byzantines, 10 points
2nd: Rich Gagliasso, Early Imperial Roman, 8 points
3rd: Ed Forbes, French Ordannance, 5 points
4th: Alex Stone, Shang Chinese, 4 points
5th: Manny Granillo, Later Achmaenid Persian, 3 points


A few comments on the games:

LP Byzantines is just a very tough list, especially with 2 variants allowed.
This enables me, for example, to take the French ally with SHK against Rich's
Romans, and instead to take the Catalan ally with Almughuvars against Ed's
French with their Swiss allies. Ed played well, but when you're outscouted and
your main shock troops (Swiss) start out at a rout against "Moogs", there just
isn't much you can do. In general the quality of play was quite high, but, in
my opinion, the Byzantines represented the only real tournament army out there,
and I think the results reflect that as much as they reflect player skill.

Ed and Manny definitely get the "brass balls" award for having the guts to play
the armies they did. French Ordannance's required longbowmen are an expensive
liability, and Ed tried his very best to make them useful. Manny had large
numbers of shieldless close order foot, which is tough. He did manage to rout a
Roman cohort with them thanks to a big up roll, though it didn't change the
final outcome very much.

I'm really proud of my son Alex (age 11). This was his first time playing
Warrior without Dad's supervision, and he reallly kept his composure despite
sometimes difficult circumstances (no one playing a chariot army likes to see a
minor water feature and two marshes go down in their rear zone).

The high point for me was Alex's winning draw against Rich, with Alex killing
300 points of Romans and Rich kill 228 points of Shang. While I know Rich
played competitively, I really appreciate his willingness to treat the game
more as a teaching opportunity than a competitive opportunity.

Their game followed a common "pinwheel" pattern, with Alex pushing hard on his
right flank, and Rich pushing hard on Alex's left flank. All of this "rotated"
around a large woods Rich had thrown down in the middle. Rich's flank turning
action came to a halt when a unit of Roman SHC recoiled, but did not rout, a
large unit of HCh, giving Alex an opportunity to bring up a smaller reserve HCh
unit and hit the SHC in the flank, routing them and causing their supporting
Legionary unit to shake. Rich managed to extract himself on Alex's right with
some badly shot up but otherwise intact units. The climax of the game was a big
battle in the middle between Rich's auxilia (Reg C LHI JLS,Sh) and Alex's
Barbarian Ally General (Irr B LMI 2HCW,JLS,Sh/JLS,Sh). Rich didn't quite have
his unit supported well enough once Alex punched through the woods, enabling a
small MI LTS,Sh unit to charge Rich on the flank one bound, and a HCh general
to charge Rich's overlapping elements on the other end next bound. In the key
bound, over 200 casualties were dealt out as Alex and Rich both rolled up. The
Barbarian ally finished the game at 12 fatigue, but the auxilia were ultimately
routed.

I will put up some pictures later on to show some of the convention. In the
interest of saving disk space, I'll put these on my web site rather than in the
Yahoo Group folder, and I'll post links to the pictures here.

I will also upload to the group a short document I've been using to help Alex
along. I call it "Warrior Rules of Thumb", and it is intended to be a sort of
"Cliff Notes" guide to the rules aimed at the beginner who has read, but not
fully digested all the rules.


-Mark Stone

[joncleaves]

Good stuff, Mark. And thanks to all, especially Manny, for keeping the flame
lit on the left coast until we can get you some reinforcements.

<<What all of this says to me is that we desperately need Warrior Battles, our
intro game, to provide a simple point of entry into our system that can compete
with WAB and DBA. Jon is well aware of this, and will work hard towards that end
I'm sure once Classical Warrior is out and once the rewrite of the rules is
done.>>

Indeed so. Given that Warrior Battles uses the same lists as Fast Warrior and
that they will be updated as part of the rules revision and that we need
Classical done to make sure we get the update to the fast lists right, we just
have to do these things in that order. The flip side is, when the last list
book is done and we have the revised rules at the printer, we will already have
the WB lists complete, the new layout and production values set and 'settled
down' core rules text to work from. It will be a much smoother process and I
look forward to the playtest of WB this late summer and fall.... I don't see
any reason at this point why it should be next year's big product for us. It
will be released with a demo packet to our Fifth Horsemen for use at events like
Shield.....

J

Mark,

The SHIELD Convention was a lot of fun. I got to play my Early Imperial Romans
in
two tournaments (25mm WARRIOR on Fri/Sat and 25mm WAB on Sun) which was great.
Manny Granillo did another great job organizing the event and deserves a round
of thanks.

I also felt that the high point of the Warrior tournament was my game with Alex.
When Alan Crandall and I first started playing WRG 7TH Ed., it took us a good
six months to a year of playing on a weekly basis before we felt like we were
playing competively. Alex played a good solid game and really seemed to
understand the rules well. I was very impressed, especially considering his age
and the fact that he only had played 1/2 dozen or so games. If he stays with it
he is going to be a heck of player.

Richard

Mark Stone <mark@...> wrote:
"The Shield" proved to be a successful convention thanks to the efforts
of Manny Granillo. I don't know what the overall attendance figures were, but
I'm guessing around 200. Gaming covered everything from ancients to modern
armor, with lots of naval and air miniatures as well as the usual land battles.
My guess is that this will become the premier West Coast event for historical
gaming, given that larger cons like Kubla Con give top billing to sword/sorcery
genre gaming like Dungeons and Dragons. Nothing wrong with that, but it's nice
to have an event where the focus is historical.

The visual high point of the convention was the Siege of Tyre scenario,
re-enacting Alexander the Great's assault on the port city using the "Classical
Hack" rules set. Phillip, who organized this event, had built an 8' x 4' model
of the city of Tyre, sculpted and painted brick by brick, and had all the
figures and ship models needed to stage this in 25mm. It was truly a stunning
sight, and drew in onlookers from out in the hallway who had nothing to do with
the convention.

Numbers at the DBM event continue to dwindle, though there was a strong turn out
for DBA. By far the biggest turn out was for War Hammer Ancient Battles, both
for a couple of large set piece scenario battles and for the WAB tournament.
What all of this says to me is that we desperately need Warrior Battles, our
intro game, to provide a simple point of entry into our system that can compete
with WAB and DBA. Jon is well aware of this, and will work hard towards that end
I'm sure once Classical Warrior is out and once the rewrite of the rules is
done.

The Warrior tournament suffered in turn out, as Lenney Hermann was away on
vacation, Frank Gilson was unable to make it up from S. Cal, and John Bauman
got called into work at the last minute on Saturday. We ran four rounds from
Friday night through Saturday night, with players needing to compete in 3 of 4
rounds. Even so some players were given "byes", and scored accordingly, in a
couple of rounds so they could play in other events.

The players, armies, and results are as follows:

1st: Mark Stone, Later Paleologan Byzantines, 10 points
2nd: Rich Gagliasso, Early Imperial Roman, 8 points
3rd: Ed Forbes, French Ordannance, 5 points
4th: Alex Stone, Shang Chinese, 4 points
5th: Manny Granillo, Later Achmaenid Persian, 3 points


A few comments on the games:

LP Byzantines is just a very tough list, especially with 2 variants allowed.
This enables me, for example, to take the French ally with SHK against Rich's
Romans, and instead to take the Catalan ally with Almughuvars against Ed's
French with their Swiss allies. Ed played well, but when you're outscouted and
your main shock troops (Swiss) start out at a rout against "Moogs", there just
isn't much you can do. In general the quality of play was quite high, but, in
my opinion, the Byzantines represented the only real tournament army out there,
and I think the results reflect that as much as they reflect player skill.

Ed and Manny definitely get the "brass balls" award for having the guts to play
the armies they did. French Ordannance's required longbowmen are an expensive
liability, and Ed tried his very best to make them useful. Manny had large
numbers of shieldless close order foot, which is tough. He did manage to rout a
Roman cohort with them thanks to a big up roll, though it didn't change the
final outcome very much.

I'm really proud of my son Alex (age 11). This was his first time playing
Warrior without Dad's supervision, and he reallly kept his composure despite
sometimes difficult circumstances (no one playing a chariot army likes to see a
minor water feature and two marshes go down in their rear zone).

The high point for me was Alex's winning draw against Rich, with Alex killing
300 points of Romans and Rich kill 228 points of Shang. While I know Rich
played competitively, I really appreciate his willingness to treat the game
more as a teaching opportunity than a competitive opportunity.

Their game followed a common "pinwheel" pattern, with Alex pushing hard on his
right flank, and Rich pushing hard on Alex's left flank. All of this "rotated"
around a large woods Rich had thrown down in the middle. Rich's flank turning
action came to a halt when a unit of Roman SHC recoiled, but did not rout, a
large unit of HCh, giving Alex an opportunity to bring up a smaller reserve HCh
unit and hit the SHC in the flank, routing them and causing their supporting
Legionary unit to shake. Rich managed to extract himself on Alex's right with
some badly shot up but otherwise intact units. The climax of the game was a big
battle in the middle between Rich's auxilia (Reg C LHI JLS,Sh) and Alex's
Barbarian Ally General (Irr B LMI 2HCW,JLS,Sh/JLS,Sh). Rich didn't quite have
his unit supported well enough once Alex punched through the woods, enabling a
small MI LTS,Sh unit to charge Rich on the flank one bound, and a HCh general
to charge Rich's overlapping elements on the other end next bound. In the key
bound, over 200 casualties were dealt out as Alex and Rich both rolled up. The
Barbarian ally finished the game at 12 fatigue, but the auxilia were ultimately
routed.

I will put up some pictures later on to show some of the convention. In the
interest of saving disk space, I'll put these on my web site rather than in the
Yahoo Group folder, and I'll post links to the pictures here.

I will also upload to the group a short document I've been using to help Alex
along. I call it "Warrior Rules of Thumb", and it is intended to be a sort of
"Cliff Notes" guide to the rules aimed at the beginner who has read, but not
fully digested all the rules.


-Mark Stone

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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Jeff Zorn]

Howdy,

Nah, just that most DBM players aren't interested in this event. There're
2-3 mid-size DBM events in the Bay Area each year.

Jeff Zorn

At 01:59 PM 2/14/2005 -0800, you wrote:

>Numbers at the DBM event continue to dwindle, though there was a strong
>turn out
>for DBA.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]