Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Ewan McNay]

OK, so instead of working this morning I wrote a piece on this, which
I'm about to upload to the files section. Feedback welcome.

Ewan

[joncleaves]

In a message dated 10/21/2002 10:57:37 AM Eastern Standard Time,
ewan.mcnay@... writes:

> Feedback welcome.>>

Let's see if you meant that...

First, a note to new players. Ewan wrote a great piece. It is also only one
person's opinion. We can and probably will argue all day about his points, but
be careful not to take some of the more 'definitive' statements as the way it
absolutely has to be. For example:

Climate can matter greatly. It is another tool the 14.0 competition rules give
the player to influence the battlefield. Just because Ewan does not care hardly
makes the probability of getting the terrain you like irrelevant.

The primary waver close foot take isn't always for routing friends. To use
Ewan's writing style, my opponent's close foot will be taking wavers for second
cause of disorder as they continue to recoil from mounted and/or take 2x and 1
CPF.

My skirmishers aren't going to be chased away by chariots, scythed or otherwise.
My skirmishers plan to shoot any chariots to irrelevancy.

There are other examples. I am NOT saying there isn't a lot of good stuff
there, I am saying one should take it all with a grain of salt.

Yes, B-armed troops must be prompted to charge. It's a great rule, not silly at
all. Ewan is neither overly concerned with history, nor a game designer. He's
a power gamer of the most advanced sort. I'm not sure he realizes sometimes who
reads this list, or how important our new, especially crossover, players are to
us. I am sure he does not realize how much offline mail I am about to receive
asking me if some of these things are true...lol

My biggest concern is that statements of the sort: 'X troop type sucks - I would
never waste my time on it' are very dangerous statements. There are times to
pay for morale, times to pay for armor and times not to pay for shields.
Blanket statements like those that permeate Ewan's otherwise extremely useful
posting can be very misleading. His army choices suit a certain style of play -
very different from other styles. But statements like these have deterred newer
players from taking certain troop choices that otherwise suit their developing
style very well, until they can be dissuaded from trying capture other's success
secrets - a trap I am just as guilty of, albeit at a younger age.

Ewan is a great player. It is his skill at seeing impending matchups and making
them happen his way that gets him wins, not the choice of C-class pike or LMI Sh
over shieldless LHI...

Jon, the people's advocate.

[scott holder]

My biggest concern is that statements of the sort: 'X troop type sucks -
I would never waste my time on it' are very dangerous statements. There
are times to pay for morale, times to pay for armor and times not to pay
for shields. Blanket statements like those that permeate Ewan's
otherwise extremely useful posting can be very misleading. His army
choices suit a certain style of play - very different from other styles.
But statements like these have deterred newer players from taking
certain troop choices that otherwise suit their developing style very
well, until they can be dissuaded from trying capture other's success
secrets - a trap I am just as guilty of, albeit at a younger age.

>Another cautionary note: I have two "power gamers" on the unofficial
review staff of army lists. Ewan is one, Frank Gilson is the other. I
want their opinions on the draft lists for precisely the reasons you'd
imagine: they're power gamers with little regard for history and given
the context of Warrior as a game, I feel it's important to get their
perspectives. And both can give quite different perspectives on the
same draft list which goes to show you that there is quite a bit of
"wide openness" to how one approaches army list concoction. That's
another reason why *this* game stays fresh for so long, as opposed to
other games I won't mention:):)

Ewan is a great player. It is his skill at seeing impending matchups
and making them happen his way that gets him wins, not the choice of
C-class pike or LMI Sh over shieldless LHI...

>Ewan's playing style is very *english*, I saw it time and time again
when I played against people in/from the UK in TOG and watching them
participate in tourneys over here. And of course I see a derivative of
it now since they've moved onto another gaming system published by the
same company as TOG. Because his playing style is *english*, it's
better to watch him play as opposed to me trying to describe it. It
differs significantly from the 'merkin style of play and the best way to
have seen that would have been to watch Ewan and Dave Stier play many
years ago in the NICT final. Two *totally* contrasting playing styles
and army compositional philosophy. So what Jon says is correct, be vewy
vewy caweful in trying to see "what's successful" in Ewan's approach and
blanket templating it for you own. I mean if it works for you, great
but always understand that it might not. This always reminds me of the
early days of TOG and LIR. LIR was always considered *the* killer army
and loads of players attempted to use it only to find out it was/is a
complicated list to run and often didn't suit the player's "developing
style". Said players would then scratch their heads wondering why
they'd spent all this time and money on an army they simply couldn't run
well. My own example is Yuan Chinese. Love the list, love it in 25mm.
Whenever I play it, I almost always lose 3-2 or 2-1. I simply cannot
work the list in such a way that enables me to hammer at my opponent in
any meaningful way. Of course if it had nothing but those wonderful Reg
D Korean foot, well, that's a different story:):)

Scott