Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

Quoting "WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com" <WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com>:

> Message: 8
> Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 20:26:46 -0500
> From: "John Murphy" <jjmurphy@...>
> Subject: Warrior Early Imperial Romans
>
> Note for the purposes below I will be away from again and in no way
> possible have any chance to even play these, let along buy or paint any
> more, prior to Historicon.
>
> Here is what I have, with a set of questions.
>
> (1) Most important, what can best be done to play the current
> figures in the theme tourney and get the best results possible from them
> (not expecting to win the whole thing anyway).

OK, I no zilch about Roman history, so my comments come entirely from a
playability point of view.

The biggest shortcoming you have in the troops you describe below is a complete
absence of light troops. If you play with no LC and no LI, you are going to
lose against players of any significant experience. Given that you have no
time/opportunity to do additional painting, I would:

(1) Take 4 stands of HC and rebase them as 6 stands of LC.
(2) Take 1 or 2 stands of auxilia and rebase them as LI JLS,Sh.

Those small changes leave this army far from perfect, but give you vastly more
flexibility in how you play it, as well as giving you a taste of the importance
of working with light troops.

>
> (2) What tactical advice would there be to go with the list? Terrain
> choices, deployment, how to use the different troop types? Not that I do
> not have my own ideas formulated of course but I am curious what other
> players would do if forced to play this army (beyond running away
> screaming helplessly).

Given the large amount of close order foot, you need to fight in the open, and
this is compounded by your inability to hold large frontage. In that situation,
I would probably take my terrain picks -- in order -- as: woods, woods, hill,
hill. Ideally you want a woods in the middle of your rear zone, and then you
will set up on half the board only, between the woods and one table edge. Some
auxilia (like, one unit) will set up in the woods and anchor that flank.
Against the table edge you'll put LI and LC (if you've followed my rebasing
advice). You'll then attack by seeping forward in an arc, like a door whose
hing is the woods.

Any additional bad terrain that you can operate out of will help. Hence the
other woods pick (and in case you fail your first pick). Take the hill picks
last because they have the greatest flexibility. They can be any of the
following, which you don't have to decide until you put them down:
1. Largely gentle, as a place to park close order foot who then count as
defending higher.
2. Entirely rocky (making them like brush), as a place for auxilia, LC, and LI
to operate.
3. Entirely steep (making them like marsh), as a place for LMI archers to
operate and pour shooting out of.

> (3) Finally, what should I be looking to add to this army to make it
> more fun to play and less easily trounced, maybe even win once in a
> while? For my own peculiar reasons the Regular Moorish Light Cavalry are
> going to be at the top of this list, followed closely by a whole slew of
> cart-mounted bolt shooters. So realizing that what would be the next few
> things?
>

I'm dubious about the value of bolt shooters, but more LC and LI would be a good
thing. You're never, ever going to need to take as much loose order cav as you
have now.


-Mark Stone