Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[scott holder]

The FHE army list books represents a huge amount of work. I've spent the last 4
years writing army lists. That's twice as long as graduate school took for me
and 3 times as long as my master's thesis in graduate school. The amount of
work and scholarship that went into these books, heh heh, if I'd bothered to
footnote everything, is about two more masters theses of material or something
close to a doctoral dissertation. My wife has commented that the last 4 years
remind her of what it must have been like for me when she was getting her two
masters over a 5 year period while working a day job when we were back in DC.
Ugh.

When FHE formed, I grudgingly accepted the task of writing army lists knowing
full well it would take a horrendous amount of time, would be open to second
guessing and that I'd still not be satisfied with some aspects of the final
product(s). Sorry to say all of those things came true. This post isn't meant
to be a snarky rant or whine but I wanted to get this out of the way up
front:):)

First and foremost, I want to thank Bill Low. There have been several instances
in my wargaming "career" in which my path has intersected with somebody and the
result has been great, both hobby wise and personally. Totally unforseen in
terms of our ability to collaborate and complement each other's work. I've said
it before here but it bears repeating: the army lists you see are as much a
product of Bill's work as mine. His ability to review the initial drafts,
rework lists and bring additional scholarship to the material has been
immeasureably important. His editing has been marvelous. I'll come back to
this again and again.

Frank Gilson and Ewan McNay have commented on I think every book. They were our
"screw history, what does this mean from a play balance perspective" guys. This
was done primarily to avoid coming up with any super killer lists. Yes, this is
always subjective but between the two of them feeding material to me, who would
then run it past the rest of FHE, with Jon being the prime person in this
regard, I think we avoided the worst pitfalls. Todd Kaeser, on two tourney
occasions, gamely took armies to help playtest the Roman Rules and the
Macedonian Rules.

Two people who I wished had more time to devote to the lists were Don Coon and
Darrell Smith. Don just has the eye and mind to pick apart crud and that's
always good for looking for consistency issues. Darrell was our biggest
internal critic and that always helped us look at things and either reevaluate
our approach or come up with material needed to justify our approach. He's a
DBMer but plays Warrior with me but is also as much a fan of the history as of
any game. His comments on the earlier lists were invalueable but he had less
time to devote to this as things went along. Still, I appreciate their help.

Many people submitted lists, ideas, etc. Some we used, much we did not. Paul
Georgian did yoeman work on the Byzantine lists and Craig Scott submitted loads
of Persian material. That helped Bill and myself plow thru lists in a much more
timely manner.

There are no longer any "old" lists. Look at the variety of armies that
appeared in the Aussie Warrior Championships and I think you'll agree that we've
managed to expand the list of armies viable in open competition. Looking at the
old WRG lists (or any others) now is like looking at the old 5th Ed lists. They
form an interesting snapshot into the history of our hobby but that's it. The
surest way to have us ignore any list post is to have it include "well, in
>insert favorite H&C list here< list it sez........" or "why was >insert pet
troop type here< dropped from the FHE "Southern Illinois Iron Spear
Mound-Builder's list?" We won't answer those questions.

The purpose of this post is to outline the list writing process and dispell some
myths that have cropped up.

1) Each list book was a labor of love. I approached every book with zeal.
Despite what some might think, no book was shortchanged because of lack of
interest. Yes, Bill and I had specific period strengths but that didn't mean
that we blew off list books because it wasn't "our" period. Bill's big
interests were in Biblical, New World (clearly) and Classical. Mine were New
World, Feudal, Oriental and Classical. New World Warrior became a labor of love
collectively because it was the one area where the lists benefited greatly from
better scholarship over the last ten years. Bill took that to an extreme in a
way, much farther beyond what even I had set out to do with the lists. I worked
with *every* scholar in North America who's speciality is some form of Chinese
military history in order to get Oriental "right". That's probably why a few
eyebrows were raised at the final result.

2) The Codex Effect. There ain't none. What you see is an increasing
sophistication in list writing, not any attempt to "Games Workshop-ize" army
lists. Jon mentioned this a while back but the order of the army list books was
deliberate since we knew we wanted to tackle some things, like the Romans, later
on and wanted the time to develop those concepts. And we had some synergy with,
of all things, Fantasy Warrior, since it enabled us to playtest and work out
concepts that had applicability in Warrior. That's another reason why NWW broke
ground for us in a number of ways. Because the basic Warrior mechanics simply
didn't "get" Aztec warfare, it was our chance to develop something that we also
knew would have some applicability to Romans. Thus, the apparent codex effect
isn't. Well at least in terms of the concept of "trying to outdo the last book"
because many of these concepts and aims were there, at least in my mind, in the
beginning. I *knew* I wanted to treat Mongols and Japanese differently when
starting out on this project in 2000, I just didn't know how at the time. So,
by starting somewhat simpler (BW and DAW), we were able to get the process down
before diving into things that were one of many reasons we purchased the rights
to this system.

3) History Matters. The Notes section are important, well at least to Bill and
myself:) I consider myself a historian first, a gamer second. I have an
eye and a knack for best taking the material and translating it *effectively*
into the game, that's probably the real reason I took on the list writing task
for FHE. And as time has gone on, I've felt that even the most hard bitten "who
cares about history" gamer (heh heh, Ewan and Frank come to mind) will get a
little something out of the Notes *and* we reach a broader audience of
historical gamers who find the history as appealing as anything else. If
anything, I'd like to expand the Notes in the earlier books with this in mind;
don't panic, it wouldn't change the army, simply provide more depth to it's
history. I will admit that from the "labor of love" standpoint, Bill clearly
wanted to provide history for NWW and me for OW. Both periods are understood
only at the most shallow level in our circles, or most circles for that matter.
Try making sense of China's "Era of Disunity" after around 300 AD up until the
establishment of the Tang Dynasty. You need a big board with post-it notes and
lotsa lines to keep track of the confusion.

4) Retroactive Cleanup. As Jon has mentioned before, we will go back and look
at some mins/maxs from BW and DAW. We will also look at how list rules
developed later will apply to those troops that popped up earlier. But, until
that happens, the army list books are literal, ie, if Mongols show up in an
earlier book and there is no reference to Mongol list rules in that book, they
don't get em. I want to plod along carefully on these before leaping. In many
instances, such troops might NOT get said rules. Again, we'll see. The same
applies for some troop types that appear one way earlier and another way later.
Skythians/Saka come to mind. In those cases, we'll examine them one by one and
make any appropriate changes to the older representations of them. But until
that shows up on the Lists page at the FHE website, play em the way they're
written.

5) List "Historians". FHE is collectively responsible for the appearance of
these lists. However, Bill and I are the "FHE List Historians" so call a spade
a spade if you have a *new* gripe and don't hide behind some passive aggressive
facade. Many people have contacted me or posted material regarding list
specifics. If I haven't responded to you personally at some point, that means
your idea has been duly noted but will not be acted upon so please, don't ask
again. If I have responded to you personally, that means your material will be
looked at even more carefully down the line (I have some great stuff from Chris
Cameron, for example, on Sea Peoples).

6) Reworking Lead. I have around 10,000 25mm figures, I'd say 8,000 of them are
ancient/medievals. I've never made a list change that I wasn't willing myself
to rework my lead in order to get it in line with a new list and in fact, every
one of my 25mm armies, probably short of the Galatians, needs more stuff and
additional work in order to make it effective. That being said, as I stated
early on, in many instances, I was sympathetic to what these lists might do to
someone's existing army and if there was a way to not totally discombobulate the
owner, I worked with that in mind. Prime example, LIR Scythed Chariots. Pure
fiction. My intent in 2000 was to get rid of em when it came time to do
Imperial Warrior. Lo and behold, I discovered that several figure manufacturers
made them and that a number of people had scratch built their own. Hence, we
found a way to incorporate them into the game. And in many other instances, the
lead itself didn't need to be trashed, just called something else and possibly
rebased with that in mind. But there were some instances, NWW is a good example
of this, where the history simply screamed that we do what we felt was best and
let the lead follow. I did much the same thing with several OW lists. Another
example in CW are the Libyan chariots for the Syracusan list. The new number
represents reality so if you had 12 chariots, you're SOL. Sorry but no sane
historian in the 21st century could adhere to the thought of a fairly simple,
not terribly rich, kingdom having more chariots than the collective empires of
Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt. Again, an example of the history screaming we do
something at the expense of lead.

7) List Rules. A lot of egroup space has been expended on the philosophy
surrounding this and how it interacts with the basic nature of any points driven
army compilation system. Let me state up front that it was my intention before
FHE started but when I had moved far enough along with Phil that I knew at least
I'd be purchasing the rights to 7th, that I would address what I felt was the
biggest fundamental flaw in the system: the oddities that one rule set simply
cannot address up front in a game that purports to simulate 5000 years of
history. Hence, list rules. One of the first things discussed when the 4 of us
sat down to hammer out FHE was the philisophical acceptance of this approach.
You now see the results of that evolving concept. Will we go back and examine
earlier books with this in mind? Yes (see above about Mongols) and will we
potentially concoct a few things new for those earlier books? Quite possibly.
Will the fundamental idea of list rules go away? Heh heh, nope.

Now, for the first time in the history of this game system, we have a body of
work that was specifically written for the system. Now let's go use it like the
Aussies just have!

scott

[Mike Turner]

Scott,
I walked down the hall to Jon's office, we were going to check the
group to see if this was your longest post! Great Stuff.

You asked who needed 25mm figures for the May KC Tournament, how
about 4 stands of Reg, LMI, Bow-Shield (Roman Aux.?)

We were also wondering about the status of the Traditional Fantasy
Lists????
:-)

Mike T.



--- In WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com, "Holder, Scott"
<Scott.Holder@f...> wrote:
> The FHE army list books represents a huge amount of work. I've
spent the last 4 years writing army lists. That's twice as long as
graduate school took for me and 3 times as long as my master's thesis
in graduate school. The amount of work and scholarship that went
into these books, heh heh, if I'd bothered to footnote everything, is
about two more masters theses of material or something close to a
doctoral dissertation. My wife has commented that the last 4 years
remind her of what it must have been like for me when she was getting
her two masters over a 5 year period while working a day job when we
were back in DC. Ugh.
>
> When FHE formed, I grudgingly accepted the task of writing army
lists knowing full well it would take a horrendous amount of time,
would be open to second guessing and that I'd still not be satisfied
with some aspects of the final product(s). Sorry to say all of those
things came true. This post isn't meant to be a snarky rant or whine
but I wanted to get this out of the way up front:)
>
> First and foremost, I want to thank Bill Low. There have been
several instances in my wargaming "career" in which my path has
intersected with somebody and the result has been great, both hobby
wise and personally. Totally unforseen in terms of our ability to
collaborate and complement each other's work. I've said it before
here but it bears repeating: the army lists you see are as much a
product of Bill's work as mine. His ability to review the initial
drafts, rework lists and bring additional scholarship to the material
has been immeasureably important. His editing has been marvelous.
I'll come back to this again and again.
>
> Frank Gilson and Ewan McNay have commented on I think every book.
They were our "screw history, what does this mean from a play balance
perspective" guys. This was done primarily to avoid coming up with
any super killer lists. Yes, this is always subjective but between
the two of them feeding material to me, who would then run it past
the rest of FHE, with Jon being the prime person in this regard, I
think we avoided the worst pitfalls. Todd Kaeser, on two tourney
occasions, gamely took armies to help playtest the Roman Rules and
the Macedonian Rules.
>
> Two people who I wished had more time to devote to the lists were
Don Coon and Darrell Smith. Don just has the eye and mind to pick
apart crud and that's always good for looking for consistency
issues. Darrell was our biggest internal critic and that always
helped us look at things and either reevaluate our approach or come
up with material needed to justify our approach. He's a DBMer but
plays Warrior with me but is also as much a fan of the history as of
any game. His comments on the earlier lists were invalueable but he
had less time to devote to this as things went along. Still, I
appreciate their help.
>
> Many people submitted lists, ideas, etc. Some we used, much we did
not. Paul Georgian did yoeman work on the Byzantine lists and Craig
Scott submitted loads of Persian material. That helped Bill and
myself plow thru lists in a much more timely manner.
>
> There are no longer any "old" lists. Look at the variety of armies
that appeared in the Aussie Warrior Championships and I think you'll
agree that we've managed to expand the list of armies viable in open
competition. Looking at the old WRG lists (or any others) now is
like looking at the old 5th Ed lists. They form an interesting
snapshot into the history of our hobby but that's it. The surest way
to have us ignore any list post is to have it include "well, in
>insert favorite H&C list here< list it sez........" or "why was
>insert pet troop type here< dropped from the FHE "Southern Illinois
Iron Spear Mound-Builder's list?" We won't answer those questions.
>
> The purpose of this post is to outline the list writing process and
dispell some myths that have cropped up.
>
> 1) Each list book was a labor of love. I approached every book
with zeal. Despite what some might think, no book was shortchanged
because of lack of interest. Yes, Bill and I had specific period
strengths but that didn't mean that we blew off list books because it
wasn't "our" period. Bill's big interests were in Biblical, New
World (clearly) and Classical. Mine were New World, Feudal, Oriental
and Classical. New World Warrior became a labor of love collectively
because it was the one area where the lists benefited greatly from
better scholarship over the last ten years. Bill took that to an
extreme in a way, much farther beyond what even I had set out to do
with the lists. I worked with *every* scholar in North America who's
speciality is some form of Chinese military history in order to get
Oriental "right". That's probably why a few eyebrows were raised at
the final result.
>
> 2) The Codex Effect. There ain't none. What you see is an
increasing sophistication in list writing, not any attempt to "Games
Workshop-ize" army lists. Jon mentioned this a while back but the
order of the army list books was deliberate since we knew we wanted
to tackle some things, like the Romans, later on and wanted the time
to develop those concepts. And we had some synergy with, of all
things, Fantasy Warrior, since it enabled us to playtest and work out
concepts that had applicability in Warrior. That's another reason
why NWW broke ground for us in a number of ways. Because the basic
Warrior mechanics simply didn't "get" Aztec warfare, it was our
chance to develop something that we also knew would have some
applicability to Romans. Thus, the apparent codex effect isn't.
Well at least in terms of the concept of "trying to outdo the last
book" because many of these concepts and aims were there, at least in
my mind, in the beginning. I *knew* I wanted to treat Mongols and
Japanese differently when starting out on this project in 2000, I
just didn't know how at the time. So, by starting somewhat simpler
(BW and DAW), we were able to get the process down before diving into
things that were one of many reasons we purchased the rights to this
system.
>
> 3) History Matters. The Notes section are important, well at least
to Bill and myself:) I consider myself a historian first, a
gamer second. I have an eye and a knack for best taking the material
and translating it *effectively* into the game, that's probably the
real reason I took on the list writing task for FHE. And as time has
gone on, I've felt that even the most hard bitten "who cares about
history" gamer (heh heh, Ewan and Frank come to mind) will get a
little something out of the Notes *and* we reach a broader audience
of historical gamers who find the history as appealing as anything
else. If anything, I'd like to expand the Notes in the earlier books
with this in mind; don't panic, it wouldn't change the army, simply
provide more depth to it's history. I will admit that from
the "labor of love" standpoint, Bill clearly wanted to provide
history for NWW and me for OW. Both periods are understood only at
the most shallow level in our circles, or most circles for that
matter. Try making sense of China's "Era of Disunity" after around
300 AD up until the establishment of the Tang Dynasty. You need a
big board with post-it notes and lotsa lines to keep track of the
confusion.
>
> 4) Retroactive Cleanup. As Jon has mentioned before, we will go
back and look at some mins/maxs from BW and DAW. We will also look
at how list rules developed later will apply to those troops that
popped up earlier. But, until that happens, the army list books are
literal, ie, if Mongols show up in an earlier book and there is no
reference to Mongol list rules in that book, they don't get em. I
want to plod along carefully on these before leaping. In many
instances, such troops might NOT get said rules. Again, we'll see.
The same applies for some troop types that appear one way earlier and
another way later. Skythians/Saka come to mind. In those cases,
we'll examine them one by one and make any appropriate changes to the
older representations of them. But until that shows up on the Lists
page at the FHE website, play em the way they're written.
>
> 5) List "Historians". FHE is collectively responsible for the
appearance of these lists. However, Bill and I are the "FHE List
Historians" so call a spade a spade if you have a *new* gripe and
don't hide behind some passive aggressive facade. Many people have
contacted me or posted material regarding list specifics. If I
haven't responded to you personally at some point, that means your
idea has been duly noted but will not be acted upon so please, don't
ask again. If I have responded to you personally, that means your
material will be looked at even more carefully down the line (I have
some great stuff from Chris Cameron, for example, on Sea Peoples).
>
> 6) Reworking Lead. I have around 10,000 25mm figures, I'd say
8,000 of them are ancient/medievals. I've never made a list change
that I wasn't willing myself to rework my lead in order to get it in
line with a new list and in fact, every one of my 25mm armies,
probably short of the Galatians, needs more stuff and additional work
in order to make it effective. That being said, as I stated early
on, in many instances, I was sympathetic to what these lists might do
to someone's existing army and if there was a way to not totally
discombobulate the owner, I worked with that in mind. Prime example,
LIR Scythed Chariots. Pure fiction. My intent in 2000 was to get
rid of em when it came time to do Imperial Warrior. Lo and behold, I
discovered that several figure manufacturers made them and that a
number of people had scratch built their own. Hence, we found a way
to incorporate them into the game. And in many other instances, the
lead itself didn't need to be trashed, just called something else and
possibly rebased with that in mind. But there were some instances,
NWW is a good example of this, where the history simply screamed that
we do what we felt was best and let the lead follow. I did much the
same thing with several OW lists. Another example in CW are the
Libyan chariots for the Syracusan list. The new number represents
reality so if you had 12 chariots, you're SOL. Sorry but no sane
historian in the 21st century could adhere to the thought of a fairly
simple, not terribly rich, kingdom having more chariots than the
collective empires of Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt. Again, an
example of the history screaming we do something at the expense of
lead.
>
> 7) List Rules. A lot of egroup space has been expended on the
philosophy surrounding this and how it interacts with the basic
nature of any points driven army compilation system. Let me state up
front that it was my intention before FHE started but when I had
moved far enough along with Phil that I knew at least I'd be
purchasing the rights to 7th, that I would address what I felt was
the biggest fundamental flaw in the system: the oddities that one
rule set simply cannot address up front in a game that purports to
simulate 5000 years of history. Hence, list rules. One of the first
things discussed when the 4 of us sat down to hammer out FHE was the
philisophical acceptance of this approach. You now see the results
of that evolving concept. Will we go back and examine earlier books
with this in mind? Yes (see above about Mongols) and will we
potentially concoct a few things new for those earlier books? Quite
possibly. Will the fundamental idea of list rules go away? Heh heh,
nope.
>
> Now, for the first time in the history of this game system, we have
a body of work that was specifically written for the system. Now
let's go use it like the Aussies just have!
>
> scott

[scott holder]

> You asked who needed 25mm figures for the May KC Tournament, how
> about 4 stands of Reg, LMI, Bow-Shield (Roman Aux.?)

I have some godawful-looking Minifig early Byzantines that are mounted
close but I have loose order bases that they can sit on. These would
do for B-armed Roman Aux. I don't remember if they have shields on
the figs but that's not a show stopper. Do you want em?

scott

[Mike Turner]

Yes, I would appreciate it. I'm cranking to get it all done, but back
rank legionare archers and EHC are ahead of them on the paint table,
Mike


--- In WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com, "irobot00" <Scott.Holder@f...>
wrote:
>
> > You asked who needed 25mm figures for the May KC Tournament, how
> > about 4 stands of Reg, LMI, Bow-Shield (Roman Aux.?)
>
> I have some godawful-looking Minifig early Byzantines that are
mounted
> close but I have loose order bases that they can sit on. These would
> do for B-armed Roman Aux. I don't remember if they have shields on
> the figs but that's not a show stopper. Do you want em?
>
> scott

[Dave Smith]

Mike;

For some inspiration, check these out:

http://www.davidimrie.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/late_romans.htm


Dave



--- In WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com, "turner1118" <Turnerm@l...>
wrote:
>
> Yes, I would appreciate it. I'm cranking to get it all done, but
back
> rank legionare archers and EHC are ahead of them on the paint
table,
> Mike
>
>
> --- In WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com, "irobot00"
<Scott.Holder@f...>
> wrote:
> >
> > > You asked who needed 25mm figures for the May KC Tournament,
how
> > > about 4 stands of Reg, LMI, Bow-Shield (Roman Aux.?)
> >
> > I have some godawful-looking Minifig early Byzantines that are
> mounted
> > close but I have loose order bases that they can sit on. These
would
> > do for B-armed Roman Aux. I don't remember if they have shields
on
> > the figs but that's not a show stopper. Do you want em?
> >
> > scott

[Mike Turner]

A fine line between inspiring me, and depressing me.....!
Mike


--- In WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com, "David Smith" <davidsmith@k...>
wrote:
>
> Mike;
>
> For some inspiration, check these out:
>
> http://www.davidimrie.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/late_romans.htm
>
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> --- In WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com, "turner1118" <Turnerm@l...>
> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, I would appreciate it. I'm cranking to get it all done, but
> back
> > rank legionare archers and EHC are ahead of them on the paint
> table,
> > Mike
> >
> >
> > --- In WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com, "irobot00"
> <Scott.Holder@f...>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > You asked who needed 25mm figures for the May KC Tournament,
> how
> > > > about 4 stands of Reg, LMI, Bow-Shield (Roman Aux.?)
> > >
> > > I have some godawful-looking Minifig early Byzantines that are
> > mounted
> > > close but I have loose order bases that they can sit on. These
> would
> > > do for B-armed Roman Aux. I don't remember if they have
shields
> on
> > > the figs but that's not a show stopper. Do you want em?
> > >
> > > scott

[Kelly Wilkinson]

Mike,

I'm planning on talking Mark Duncan into playing and I think he may have
some extra Late Roman Bowmen. You might consider asking him since he's right
here in KC and they are Late Roman figs.

kw

irobot00 <Scott.Holder@...> wrote:

> You asked who needed 25mm figures for the May KC Tournament, how
> about 4 stands of Reg, LMI, Bow-Shield (Roman Aux.?)

I have some godawful-looking Minifig early Byzantines that are mounted
close but I have loose order bases that they can sit on. These would
do for B-armed Roman Aux. I don't remember if they have shields on
the figs but that's not a show stopper. Do you want em?

scott





---------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links

To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WarriorRules/

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
WarriorRules-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

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