Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Ewan McNay]

--- In WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com, "Greg Regets" <gar@t...> wrote:
> Who won the NICT and with what army?

As I left (~12.30 Sun) that was still unclear. Contenders were Rob
Turnbull (Berber) and Ted Furey (HYW English), who had just fought to
a 3-3 on top table (both coming in with 15 points) and Derek Downs
(Sulla Korean) (who appeared to be defeating Sean Scott (Italian
Condotta, what else?) on table 2, and was 2-3 points behind the top
table going in); maybe Todd Kaeser (Khmer) who beat Dave Markowitz
(Gupta) 4-3 on what I think was table 3.

Other than Derek, who had the most troops I have seen in an army in a
long time, the rest were all pretty small and elite forces with some
lights to hold up the rest of the terrain. I am especially impressed
with Ted's HYW beating Khmer in the first game.

My NICT... well, you'll note that I am not mentioned above . I
ended up taking Seleucids, pretty much by default, and was happy when
I saw the army selection in the field. Only two armies that I didn't
want to fight - Late Romans (Rich Kroupa) and a Carthaginian list
from
the Hutchby & Clark book, which contained a million IrrB Celtiberians
with HTW, JLS, Sh (Tim Brown). Both of those lists are just
optimised
for taking out elephants, and either taking out or matching up well
against pike - I took 10 elephants (one-list tournament) and a bunch
of pike.

So, round 1, I get Rich's Romans. No problem - he's a tremendously
nice guy (and had lent me lead for both NICT and Theme!) - but I just
figured on losing or failing to win big, and so ending contention.
It
was actually a very good game for the first two hours or so .
Terrain was a pretty open center, with a large wood on my right and
steep hills on my left center, right center baseline, and Rich's
right
center baseline (wooded). I refused my right, as did Rich, and we
ended up with the main line of battle at about 45 degrees to the
center line, basically between the two baseline steep hills. I sent
my sub on a big flank march (on the right, aiming to come in behind
Rich's lines) with the scythed chariots, an elephant unit, a peltast
unit, and a LC unit, which didn't come on until it was all irrelevant.
On my left, Rich's RegB failed their counter bound 2 and so got blown
away (11 cpf) by my bow block and a LC JLS, Sh unit, but in the
process rolled up on their shooting to make my LC recall, and so
no-one else was close enough to take advantage; the LC made every
counter after that to avoid getting ever shot again, as did the 4-man
LI unit also holding up that flank. Similarly, my 4-man LI unit on
the right made every counter to move back in front of a large peltast
force coming out of the wood. I caught a LI unit between my LC and
LI
in front of 'my' steep hill on the right, and routed that off with
the
LC. Then Rich made what we agreed was a mistake: he charged his LC
JLS, Sh through the routing LI into my LC JLs, Sh. If I had lost,
OK,
I would have had wavers on a LI unit. As it was, he lost, was caught
in the break-off, and caused wavers on a bunch of units on that end
of
his main line just as the two main lines (legions against pike and
elephants, mostly, with me having worse matchups but a few overlaps
as Rich had got stretched) : a legion failed, as did the second LC
unit in the vicinity, but the legion was the killer. Now I could go
after that legion while the LC routed back toward Rich's cart-mounted
boltshooters and woods forces. All of them passed their wavers, but
the routing units got in the way and next bound the legion routed,
which was pretty much game over. On my left, things were just
getting
a little dicey - Rich had a large auxilia unit in the wooded hill,
which was threatening to come out behind my flank as I pushed
forward,
and so his legion there hit my pikes; another legion got one element
into a peltast unit that failed its counter, but was then hit in the
flank (because that flank had been protected by the now-routing
legion). Anyway, the LC mess basically gave me the win, and
eventually my flank march showed up, so we called it.

Game 2, then, I get Tim Brown, of course. Ack. The Celtiberians
rout
my pike on contact, and are superb against my elephants (coming in
with 5@6 against my 5@3 plus crew, one factor away from routing them
on contact also). And he has a *lot* of them possible - like,
hundreds. Because they're IrrB, they're not even made uneasy by my
elephants. He also has to have some MI LTS guys, who I can happily
kill, and I expect him to have some bad elephants, ditto, but he is
basically on a good thing. So, I make what everyone thinks (quite
possibly rightly) was a major mistake: I take a minor water feature,
which ends up running across Tim's forward zone. I figured that he
would either force march across it (in which case I at least have a
shot at getting some good matchups, and/or fighting him a bit tired),
or send his masses of loose order across (in which case I can try to
fight only them, at least). He doesn't do either, though, and so we
end up facing across a river. He also failed to get any terrain rols
that would allow him to put brush down in my center sector, so I'm on
a favourable field - perhaps too favourable.

[Side entertainment. Tim rolls a 6 for fordability. This leaves my
scythed chariots with only the bridge as a route to the enemy. The
first one makes it to the bridge, is shot by Tim's LI S, (who roll +2
or +3 for _every_ one of their first six shots), and fails a waver.
So now it's sitting blocking the bridge. We ask Scott what my other
chariot, with absolutely no way to get to the enemy, should do .
Tim resolves the issue with his next shot, however, as my chariot
fails a second waver and routs off. The other chariot makes it to
the
bridge, gets yet another +3 shot, and first shakes then is made
exhausted. We figure that with all the depleted uranium slingshots
Tim has been issuing, there is no bridge left!]

[Side note two. I hate complaining about dice. In the long run, I
know, they will even out. This game was not the long run. Tim will
attest that it got to the stage where it was clear that not just one
but several gods were sitting on Tim's shoulder, blessing his dice
and
cursing mine. Thankfully Tim is a great guy to play - and so the
game
was fun, even comical, despite this.]

Back on the main battle, eventually Tim changes to Attack (from
Wait),
and a couple of bounds later so do I. But, nothing goes well. I
charge cav into disordered foot - the foot roll +4, bounce me, and
then become undisordered because they were cessation-caused, rather
than being pushed back and hit by my supporting troops next bound. I
charge LHI peltasts into disordered MI LTS - a contact rout on even
dice - and don't win. I consistently roll -2 to avoid causing wavers
for 2cpf shooting on his Irr LMI. Granted, on my left he manages to
fail to catch my LI with his LC, and his IrrA ally general is getting
very tired from repeatedly charging at my evading LC.

Eventually, I catch some LI with my elephants in the center, and am
set up so that when they rout I am able to convert into some other
LI;
Tim's elephants bounce off my pike and are sitting unable to react
in front of my pikes and peltasts; and the spearmen on Tim's
center-left do eventually fail (despite rolling +3!) - but no-one
fails a waver test, despite being uneasy C class, and the time runs
out before I can exploit any of this. 1-1, with a slight edge to me.
As Tim notes, he could have just stopped playing after gunning down
the chariots, won 1-0, and done just as well; kudos to him for not
doing so. So, probably, I could have not put down the river, lost
5-1
(let us assume I would have got at least 1 point), and done better
than I did. Mea culpa... but if the dice had been a little more
even,
everything would have worked out fine. The lament of failure, huh?

Game 3 I get Frank Gilson; hardly the easiest of the large number of
players now sitting on 6-7 points (and including many of the usual
suspects - Dave Stiers, who dropped out after not winning his second
game, which caused an unfortunate bye situation; Todd Kaeser; Dave
Markowitz; Chris Damour; Tim and I; etc.). He's running Delhi
Sultanate - fine, I am happyish, although it would have been nice to
see a single knight or cav army from the many available, sometime
during the tourney . Other than his elephants, which are good, he
turns out to have nothing of which I am afraid, and so I can push
forward en masse (my battleline ends up about 240 paces from his base
edge before time runs out). And I have a plan. Frank puts down a
2-visible-unit command on my left, where there is a large wood in his
deployment area on the table edge: some LI and an elephant general.
I
strongly suspect that there are some LMI in the wood and this is
confirmed when they march, in column of necessity. They stop at the
edge of the wood when they see out and hence have known troops within
240; I am able to march right up to 40p before they are known to me,
with some peltasts. So, I can charge him while he is sitting in
column, with more figures fighting, and in the second round he'll
have
only 5 fighting to my 14 or so. The LI are facing a bunch of LC and
a
bow block, and do indeed shake pretty fast, so that would have sent
the command off table and the line would have been not too difficult
to roll up. The ability to charge comes as a surprise to Frank, and
I'm smiling.

The gods still hate me.

Frank's LMI roll up. I roll down. He gets to move forward and
expand
out. Bound 2, he rolls +4 and routs me.

Ack.

No-one cares - no-one is within 120 - and the LMI are never coming
off
the hill they're now sitting on, but that saves Frank's flank and
puts
him ahead.

The rest of the battle is good for me, for a while - I catch some
shieldless LI with my 4-man LI, and roll the +1 I need to do 1cpf and
force the break-off/rout; I shoot up his elephant general on my right
with some peltasts, and he shakes; I kill off some more LI on my left
and center; I bounce some elephants off a pike block and catch them
with two units of my own elephants, recoiling him disordered and
having overlaps. None of this matters - I keep rolling down in
melee,
Frank passes all his waver tests from then on, and in the center he
rolls up with his other two elephant units in combat (when I finally
get there) against pikes and peltasts to win the first bound. Me,
bitter? There's no more time for me to continue pushing to the
baseline, so in the end it's a 2-1 win to me, and we're both out of
the running.

Maybe next year . I am actually pretty happy with everything
except
maybe the river placement - but even there, I still think it was
maybe
the right thing to do against a player as good as Tim with the given
army matchup, and it got me to a point where on even vaguely sensible
dice everything is fine. Other than that, I don't think that I made
any egregious tactical mistakes (my opponents can now point out all
of
the ones that I didn't even notice!) and had a clear plan in 2 of the
3 games , which I executed.

The theme went a lot better, but I've typed enough for one day!