Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[joncleaves]

Hmmm, take a couple days off and look what happens...lol

Todd, thanks for your kind words - but what you really meant to say was "Jon
is a
fanatic who can't complete a damn project and often gets beat by little
girls..."

Bob Hess - see my other mail. :)

Ok, so we have an orders compliance question, do we?

I am answering Mark's question, snipped below, but you need the diagram at

<A
HREF="http://digitalpilgrim.com/img/march.jpg">http://digitalpilgrim.com/img/mar\nch.jpg</A>

to follow it.

Here we go

> The Red Army has one general, and is under Probe orders. I don't care about
> orders for the Black Army. Note that if you were to draw a line straight
> ahead
> from bodies Red A and Red B, that the entire Black Army is to the right
> (Red's
> right) of these two bodies.

Got it.

>
> Here's my problem. A natural first bound's march would have Red G, H, I,
> and J
> hanging back as a reserve, while Red C, D, E, and F would move directly
> towards
> Black's front line in an attempt to pin those bodies, while Red A and B
> would
> move straight ahead as far and as fast as possible in an attempt to turn
> Black's
> flank. I might also point out that initial deployments roughly like this
> are
> _quite_ common, the desire to march like this is also quite common, and
> seems
> imminently realistic and sensible.

Ok, first things first - the rule isn't made for what a player considers a
'natural first bound's march.' That may sound harsh, but the rule is to
simulate the command and control of an ancient/medieval army and NOT to make
your Warrior army march the way you want it to nor the way it might under a
rules set with a different interpretation of reality.
Deployments like that WERE common in real life, though, so let's move on.

>
> The problem is this: that sequence doesn't appear to be legal under the
> requirements for Probe orders, or indeed under any other orders either.
> Here's why:
>
> Half the bodies must advance. Red G, H, I, and J won't count as advancing
> bodies
> because they will be stopped by friendly bodies rather than 'known enemy
> bodies.' Red C, D, E, and F will qualify, but that's only 4 out of 10. You
> need
> one more body.

If G, H, I and J don't max out their march moves and C, D, E and F head for
Black units, then you do need A or B to also or not be in compliance - that
is true.

>
> Thus one of A or B must qualify. And moving straight ahead doesn't qualify,
> because even though moving straight ahead is moving closer to an enemy
> body, it
> isn't moving in such a way as to "minimize" the distance. "Minimizing"
> would
> require moving at a slight angle towards, say, Black 1.

True.

>
> To me, this is awful. It smacks of the "uncontrolled advance" that is one
> of the
> main reasons I refuse to play DBM. It's going to lead to geometrical
> minutia I
> thought we were trying to avoid. But I don't know how else to read
> 'minimize.'
> It isn't an ambiguous word.

We are talking about you wanting to manipulate your army so that excatly one
unit's march moves matter to compliance with your orders and that is not a
level of command articulation consistent with our view of ancient/medieval
C2. You are reading the rule exactly right, Mark. But what *I* don't
understand is why this example bothers you. You are looking at the whole
thing backwards to my POV. If you want to have a few units 'hang back' and a
couple more make a 'flanking move' you should be making sure that total of
units is half or less of your army. It's that simple. YOU picked 10 units
in your (Red's) army. You are trying to use less than half of them as a
'screen' and are dismayed that you can't get one more unit doing what you
want due to 'the rules'. I submit to you that being able to use 5 of ten
units (which could be small/lightly armed/'inexpensive') to cover your
reserves and flanking move is a hell of a lot more flexibility than anything
in DBM and quite possibly a hell of a lot more than real life commanders had.
We feel that, if anything, Warrior errs on the side of flexibility in
command control.

>
> So as far as I can tell, there's no way to execute the very natural advance
> I've
> described above. Attack and Rush orders will suffer the same problem, and
> anything less than Probe won't get Red across the center line.

It is a very disingenuous technique to claim the advance as 'very natural'
and then complain that you can't do it. I appreciate its cleverness, but the
rule works, Mark. If it isn't working for a particular ten unit army of
yours, reorganization may be in order.

>
> So Jon, am I missing something here? Is there some other way to read
> 'minimize',
> or is there something else you were trying to mean?

I feel you have a perfect understanding of the rule and therefore must
disagree with us on how articulate ancient armies were. I also think that
your example is a lot of effort over the rules to get one more unit - a unit
the *player* builds and chooses to have in his army at a particular size and
composition - into the fight the way you want it. I have also heard the
argument that only needing to send half your army at the enemy in the opening
approach is not enough. Can't please everyone, so we went with what the four
of us felt was the right answer. It isn't perfect, but I think you'll find
it is damn good enough.

Jon


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

[Don Coon]

> > The problem is this: that sequence doesn't appear to be legal
under the
> > requirements for Probe orders, or indeed under any other orders
either.
> > Here's why:
> >
> > Half the bodies must advance. Red G, H, I, and J won't count as
advancing
> > bodies
> > because they will be stopped by friendly bodies rather
than 'known enemy
> > bodies.' Red C, D, E, and F will qualify, but that's only 4 out
of 10. You
> > need
> > one more body.
>
> If G, H, I and J don't max out their march moves and C, D, E and F
head for
> Black units, then you do need A or B to also or not be in
compliance - that
> is true.
>
> >
> > Thus one of A or B must qualify. And moving straight ahead
doesn't qualify,
> > because even though moving straight ahead is moving closer to an
enemy
> > body, it
> > isn't moving in such a way as to "minimize" the
distance. "Minimizing"
> > would
> > require moving at a slight angle towards, say, Black 1.
>
> True.


Thank you Jon for the CONSISTENT ruling. This is how you answered my
question 6 weeks ago. I refrained from jumping into this thread as I
wanted to make sure you got a chance to say your piece. You have
stayed the course and the written rule says exactly what you want
given the example Mark put forth.

Don