Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[scott holder]

Reguarding the Swiss, an army I am presently trying to master....
Allowing the 2HCT to be detachments for teh larger pike blocks
would help imensly, as they could join the unit as a rear rank, depart
to get rid of the pesky lights, and provide flank support.

>That's a great idea for the Warrior list. Obviously this won't impact on the
Fast Warrior list (I'm making it a later period list) but it's an obvious (and
hithertoo unthought of) partial solution.
I have to agree with Todd in that the 120 pace move would allow
the agressiveness of the Swiss to be played out on the table, but have to
wonder if teh problem is not with the inability of the Swiss to catch
stuff, but with the large amount of loose order heavy and medium infantry
taht people play in this period (myself included). Whle the Siwss did
certainly
advance through woods to smack their opponents (the Burgundians), they
never fought (to my knowledge) in those same wood, but simply advanced beyond,
then fought. Should they ignore terrain? I doubt this,

>I also agree here. No battle of the period shows the Swiss fighting in crud,
just being able to adroitly move around and thru it. I would need to tighten
up the existing Theme Rule verbage to make that clear.


This from a player desperately trying to figure out how to beat
Romans with the Swiss (it could be argued that they shouldn't be able to,
as teh Romans in some ways remind us of the Spanish Sword and Bucklers).

>Good point, never thought of it that way. Kinda makes you wonder what would
have happened if the Swiss had to ever realistically deal with armies that
relied on lotsa missile power (WOR English, 100 Years War English). I mean,
yeah, the Burgundian's had a core missile group (I'm the long term Burgundian
Ordonnance player) but Charles the Bold never seemed to employ them to their
best advantage. Since the Swiss pike blocks clearly never used shields, it
becomes clear that they didn't need that little tactical innovation to deal
with their opponents. I mean gunpowder weapons of the period simply weren't
going to put enough ordance on target plus as Sean mentioned, the halberdiers
were there to chase them away since by the time they closed, the "handgunners"
would what? get one maybe two shots off? The Swiss *should* remain
vulnerable to troops that approximate the Sword/Buckler dudes of the
Renaissance and the Theme Rule certainly doesn't do much to change that.

Sean-Patrick Scott, PhD

>My god, we've all grown up:) Why, it was just yesterday that you were an
impoverished undergrad. Now you're an impoverished post-doc:) Dave
Markowitz is now chasing down financial criminals on Wall Street, Jevon is
sending people to death row, wow!

>Sorry for that digression. We're a tight bunch.

Reguarding the Swiss, an army I am presently trying to master....
Allowing the 2HCT to be detachments for teh larger pike blocks
would help imensly, as they could join the unit as a rear rank, depart
to get rid of the pesky lights, and provide flank support.
I have to agree with Todd in that the 120 pace move would allow
the agressiveness of the Swiss to be played out on the table, but have to
wonder if teh problem is not with the inability of the Swiss to catch
stuff, but with the large amount of loose order heavy and medium infantry
taht people play in this period (myself included). Whle the Siwss did certainly
advance through woods to smack their opponents (the Burgundians), they
never fought (to my knowledge) in those same wood, but simply advanced beyond,
then fought. Should they ignore terrain? I doubt this, as then you could argue
so should dismounted knights since this was the common way to deal with
Swiss pike (AUstrian and Milanese).
In summary, consider developing the detachment rules (for many
troops) to mimic the 2HCT role, consider decreasing the amount of loose
order heavy troops on other lists (or give them 120 paces to compensate for
in period and count as loose), why are Burgundians and English and Genoeese
considered such anyhow, and (agreeing with Greg) try not to create army
specific rules.
This from a player desperately trying to figure out how to beat
Romans with the Swiss (it could be argued that they shouldn't be able to,
as teh Romans in some ways remind us of the Spanish Sword and Bucklers).
Sean
******************************************************************
Sean-Patrick Scott, PhD
Post-Doctoral Fellow at Georgia State University
Address: Temple University
Department of Biology
324 Biolife Science Building
1900 N. 12th Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
email: scott@... Phone:215-204-8868
webpage: http://athens.dental.upenn.edu/scott Fax:215-204-6646
******************************************************************

[Chris Bump]

In a message dated 12/15/2000 12:36:23 AM Pacific Standard Time,
WarriorRules@egroups.com writes:

<<
Greetings,
I am not an expert, but I have done a fair amount of research on the
Swiss and have played them in both the theme and non-theme events.

.Greg's letter snipped..
>Is it not true that the Swiss match up well against their Historical
>opponents as they are right now? It seems to me that they do.

When looking at the Swiss vs. Burgundian, the Swiss match up rather poorly.
The loose LB troops shoot up the Swiss forcing them to waver. While they
are A class and usually pass it is also difficult to catch the buggers
without luck of terrain or stupidity of an opponent. The increase in mov't
would allow for a more historical feel of the Swiss charging at great speed
to crush their opponents. The theme rules work well at how they fought
historically.

Greg snipped again.
>It bothers me that we would start considering rules to make this army
better
>against a variety of opponent that they never fought. Why not address this
>same issue with any number of other armies that has splendid reputations in
>given set piece situations, but suffer in the tournament environment?

Greg, I agree with you. We have to remember that we are using a rules set
that encompasses 4500 years of armies and that certain sacrifices with
regard to history have to be made in order to make the game work smoothly.

Scott snipped...
2) Let Swiss pike and halberds fight in mixed units with all kinds of goofy
rank combnations. The major problem
with this is that the Swiss simply didn't fight that way. The pike boys
were
in the front rank, second rank, third rank, and fourth rank. The
halberdiers
seemed to simply be hanging around in the center ranks just in case they
were
needed to whack off pesky opposing infantry who managed to out flank or out
fight the pikes.

I agree that the Swiss should not be allowed to have the 2hHCT in the front.
They could be allowed to expand the 2HCT figures in subsequent bounds after
contact. This would allow for the historical feel of the choppers getting
out on the flanks. Historically the halberdiers would flow through the pike
to the front of the fighting when the pike block was stalled or in a
hedgehog. There is good evidence for this happening. How do you play this?
Well the back ranks of 2HCT could be allowed to expand out when the pike
block is in combat and not following up. This would allow for more figures
to fight, but make the Swiss unit vunerable to shieldless MI on the edge of
the block. The halberdiers could, as an alternative, move to the front of
the unit and fight as a front rank and have the second rank of pike fight as
normal. In the second round of combat the 2HCT would not count shieldless
and the opponent would take the -1 minus for facing 2HCT. This second
example would actually be a better historical approach to the Swiss Rule in
my humble opinion.

The Swiss are a lot of fun to play, but if your opponent does not want to
mix it up it is quite annoying. They are just too slow, shieldless, and
have little in the way of support.

Todd Kaeser
>>
Having faced Todd in a Swiss on Swiss battle in the Theme at Historicon 99, I
am in agreement with him that the Swiss do lack in a lot of ways. Our game
design does allow for perhaps too much helicopter generalship and
consequently the screening of all of the Swiss close order while the few
loose order troops they do have are massed on and destroyed piecemeal. Since
all too often Armies that were designed to close and close quickly still end
up playing a shoot and dodge game the swiss are vulnerable to all except
maybe the Early Germans.

Coincidenally we played a game this past weekend using the Swiss Rule vs a
very balanced Later Hungarian List. It was only the rapid movement of the
Swiss Kiels and their disregard for the broken terrain thrown out before them
that kept them competitive in the face of dancing horse archers flanked by
way tooooooooo many knights. I like the rule, it makes a shieldless,
entirely shieldless Greg, Army competitive; but by no means overwhelming.

$.02

Chris