Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

Hear, oh gentle reader, the not so epic tale of Gilga-mess. Over this
past weekend, the warrior Gilga-mess led his army of Uruk III to do
battle against sundry opponents. It was a not so happy outing for our
hero as he struggled and clawed his way to mediocraty.

My first fight was against the early Mithridatic who had availed
himself of 6 (read 'em - 6!) scythed chariots, most opportune as my
opponent had been reading the postings to this group about the Pontic
eggbeaters. Unfortunatly he declined to put his chariots in front of
the rough terrain and proceeded to duff up my light infantry. My
spearmen made short work of them however and I opened lanes from the
rest to go down. Result was some LI were disordered but the chariots
were trundling along behind my lines preventing me from getting out of
their way. Unfortunatly, two of these things hit one of my spear
units and routed them on the spot. (note to self - "form orb
idiot, form orb!) Got to hate that Irr A big "up". I lost this battle
7-3.

My next opponent was a Tabascan. Ha! (thought I) I'll do this one
over like a dinner. Get the chariots into his loose foot and "Bob's
yer uncle" as they say. All was going quite well, he was staying away
from the spearment but I was pushing forward. Not much room to
backstep on a 4' table! Then it happened! One of his LMI units shot
my C-in-C with a +5 / -2 in prep shooting. The unit passed the two
waver tests but three units around him failed. The enemy LMI charged,
beat the snot out of the C-in-C and the C-in-C routed. More waver
tests and it was "good night nurse". Another 7-3 loss. Nothing if
not consistant.

A new day dawned (this IS a three day event) and I find myself up
against an Indian army. Dots this is, not feathers. Elephants, bow
blocks, hmmmm. Things were going reasonable well and then, success!
A 5 element unit of LI sling unit fired on one of his shieldless MI
bow units. 8 @ 5 (MI, shieldless) and rolled +3! Kowabunga dood!
Hit for three and he fails his waver test. But I was outside 40 paces
so my campaign for the recall move had no effect here. I decided to
press the advantage and charged him with the LI. He failed again and
it was MI on toast. Due to a lapse in planning, he did not follow the
game plan and proceded to pass all his waver tests! My good work was
soon undone by his elephants stomping a spear unit and another failing
it's waver test. All up, a 5-5. Well, it's an improvement.

Who's up next? Oh wonderful. Just wonderful - Parthians! He decided
to try an flank march and some 2/3s of his army were off the table. I
managed to corral his LC but his flank march arrived on the last bound
of play. The shining light was my Reg B LMI (JLS, Sh) taking a
cataphract charge and then routing them in the second round of combat.
This also ended in a 5-5.

On the third day, Vikings? Who the hell runs Vikings in competions
these days? His bondi charged my LTS blocks and found the spear was
not to their liking. Ahhhh, this is better. Then his wedge forming
Huscarls appeared. I threw some LI in his path and forced him to
charge them. All was going reasonable well, the LI were dieing like
flies but I had managed to corner a bondi unit and flank charged him
with a spear unit. His C-in-C, Harold Hardrader himself, threw the
big "1" for the waver test just as last bound was called. The result
was an almost respectable 5-5. Again.

After that battle I watched as the figure was demoted, his personal
banner stripped from him and he is now back in one of the Huscarl
units. Apparently this was the third time he had failed a waver
test in four games! Sven Forkbeard got the battlefeild promotion and,
in the last round of the competition, this army defeated the Parthians
10-zip! so the new C-in-C must have worked a treat!

My last fight was against the Assyrian. Lots of fencing and to-ing
and fro-ing and a desparate charge by the C-in-C (again!) into a
JLS unit was foiled by the +3 he threw in combat. He survived but
was really crook. In the end I went down 6-4 without killing so much
as a single enemy unit.

So, as this was 7th edition, what questions arose for Warrior? The
only real one was the angled charges. My hit in the huscarl / bondi
flank broke the unit in one hit due to having ALL the attacking
elements fight. Had I been playing Warrior, I would have had 2
elements fighting instead of 6. The huscarls where in a one element
wide column pursuing some LI and my spear unit (3 elements wide, 2
deep)was at rightangles to them. Sort of the "9 O'clock" position
with my spears being the little hand and his huscarls forming the big
hand. The seperation was about 2mm so I only had to wheel about 10
paces and go forward to hit them. In accordance to our method of
play, the entire unit now pivoted and conformed to the flank of the
huscarls. In the following combat I had 24 figures with LTS fighting.
In the proposed Warrior rules, only the first element (and the one
behind it?) would have reach it with the 80 pace charge reach. The
rest would have stood off 20 paces and formed the cheer squad.

In this case, the huscarls would not have broken and would not even
had to recoil as they did a bucket load of damage to the LI they were
pursuing. Can you tell me what the situation would have been then?
What happens to the left over spearmen? When can they fight?

Cheers

[joncleaves]

<< In the following combat I had 24 figures with LTS fighting.
In the proposed Warrior rules, only the first element (and the one
behind it?) would have reach it with the 80 pace charge reach. The
rest would have stood off 20 paces and formed the cheer squad. >>

This is not a 'proposed Warrior rule', this is and will be a Warrior rule.
We are long since done playtesting this one. Note the present and future
tense in that last sentence.

<<In this case, the huscarls would not have broken and would not even
had to recoil as they did a bucket load of damage to the LI they were
pursuing. Can you tell me what the situation would have been then?
What happens to the left over spearmen? When can they fight? >>

The elements kept back 20 are realigned as part of the combat results move of
that combat. From your description, it appears they will be fighting the
very next bound.

Jon