Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Ewan McNay]

Two themes for the year: close foot with pointy sticks (as predicted, alas)
and elephants en masse (Derek Downs has 19 in his Khmer; there's a Burmese
with 12 also). Pointy sticks include a massed skut Byzantine, a Berber, a
Swiss, a Scots Common, and several pike armies.

Also some extremes of dice - those same Khmer elephants rolling +4 *twice*
against Todd Kaeser's Berber in round 1, then getting Mixtecs to roll 6 1s
with eager Irr Bs in round 2 (so yes, Derek is a strong contender to repeat),
among many others I've heard of.

After day 1, there are four players on 10, again I'm told this rather than
knowing. Some expected contenders were not game 1 winners, or at least not
big - Todd above, Dave Markowitz (Med Spanish) going down to Tim Brown
(Assyrian) inclusing having English longbowmen in the brush routed 1-on-1 by
Scythian HC at contact (yes, they rolled +4 also). My first game was going
fine - against Nik Byzantine with massed Skut (sigh) by bound 4 I had
elephants into his LC, cataphracts impetuously into his HI HTW, and two LC
units caught in front of his lines and going back through Varangians.
Unfortunately, that was where the game ended, as we never actually got to the
end of bound 4. And that's a 4-hour game.... so a 3-1 (just - almost 2-1) win
to me. Oh, yeah: I actually tried out Mark's terrain strategy, but as I
missed *all four* of my terrain rolls, it was kinda moot. That made for a fun
challenge, too!

I didn't get time (sorry, this really is a very quick and limited note) to see
all of what happened in round two, either. I was lucky really in my matchup,
against Mithridatic and massed peltasts. Again, though, I missed my first two
terrain rolls while Bill got his, placing a rough hill blocking off the right
flank and a max size brush on my left-centre (which he then seized with two 24-
man peltasts force-marched). Thankfully on terrain pick 7 I actually got an
open space . As well as those 24-man blocks, Bill had a third force-marched
to the rough hill, and two 8-man blocks as pickets in the centre open. Both
of those got shot-up and chased down on bounds 1 and 2, but no-one cared, and
the scythed chariots recoiled the LI who had been pursuing one of them (but
from the flank, so then evaporated). That left a big hole in the middle for
Bill to try to fill with only EHC to do it, and that was going to be difficult
against SHC and elephants - and so it proved, although on my left a HC unit
which had taken 9 cpf in prep charged a 12-man LC B unit which stood to
receive it - and rolled up big to just do 1 cpf, then caught me in the break-
off, shaking another LC and an elephant unit to give Bill some deserved
points. My real heroes were my LI B, who helped to shoot up the 2x24 peltasts
in the brush to some halts and even disordered halted before catching one in
the rear (shooting off the second which would have charged it) and routing it.

Anyway, the *real* real story is how cool my new Sassanids look, and how much
fun they are to play. So at least six more games with them is great!

And now it's 7.30 and I need to go drive in - more later .
E, no time to proof-read or check for blatant bias, apologies to anyone
slandered or misspelled.

[joncleaves]

Kudos to Ewan for getting a report out given that he had to play this am at
8:30.
Some additional info:
The four 10's going into saturday:
Derek Downs, Khmer
Frank Gilson, Seleucid
Rob Turnbull, Alex. Imperial
Jon Cleaves, Medieval Spanish

Of 26, 8 did not make the cut.
There are no 100YW English Armies

There are armies from every book in the tourney, including New World Warrior

Todd, I got every figure on your list... To all the dead generals who are nt
with us (there are 6 here...) we hope you can attend next year.

Jon.

[Ed Kollmer]

This is to Bill L. I was sorry I didn't get to talk to you more at Hcon but
could you send me your email address. My old address book is gone.
Thanks
Ed Kollmer