Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

--- On January 24 Michael Bard said: ---

>
> In Warrior by and large this doesn't work. Bodies move very independly and,
> as long as their are friendly bodies within 120 paces, are completely happy.
> Note that 120 paces is wide enough for enemy bodies to advance through.
> Many times close order infantry operate as largely independent bodies that
> move around like ancient tanks. Flanks are secondary. Mutual body support
> in a single line is relatively worthless. Kills are gained by, in my
> opinion, sending other bodies (typically cavalry or barbarians) between the
> blocks of infantry to either flank the enemy, or break through locally. I
> can't recall any classical battle in which heavy troops advanced inside
> lines of close order infantry as a matter of course.
>

I've said in a previous message that I think Mike overstates the problem here,
but let me respond to what's right about his comment.

It is true that there are many times in Warrior when units seem to be moving
independently of each other to the point where any sense of a battle line has
dissolved. I've had the experience several times, and I think we all have, of
having a spectator unfamiliar with the game system walk by a tournament game
and be utterly unable to determine which units are on which side of the battle.

That's not a good thing, and detracts from the "marketability" of Warrior. If
the casual observer can, without knowing the rules, get a sense of the game and
what's generally happening in a particular battle, then they're more likely to
be drawn in and want to know more. If the casual observer can't even make sense
of the battle, they're much more likely to regard the rules system as too
esoteric and complicated to be worth bothering with.

All of this, however, overlooks what I think is the greatest strength of
Warrior. Are we playing a simulation, or are we playing a game? I'll argue that
fundamentally we are and should be playing a game.

This may seem paradoxical. Many of us were drawn to wargaming in general and
miniatures in particular by the desire to engage in some level of historical
re-enactment. But I think you learn, often the hard way, and often over years,
what aspects of history you can capture and what aspects you can't.

Let me give an example out of our period. We've all seen Civ War mini players
attempt time after time to re-fight the Battle of Gettysburg. The battle is
meticulously documented, the terrain is well known, enabling orders of battle
and initial line ups that closely recreate the conditions of the original
battle. Yet all of this misses, and indeed works against, the most important
historical fact about the battle: that this was a chance engagement where
neither side knew the exact strength or position of the enemy, and indeed
neither side had very detailed knowledge of the countryside around them. Those
"fog of war" elements are what make the battle what it was, and it is in
watching historical commanders come to terms with that "fog" that the
historical record comes alive in such gripping fashion.

Thus carefully recreating the details of the battle does nothing to recreate the
experience of the battle, and indeed is quite counter to capturing that
experience.

I see this time after time in wargaming, and miniatures in particular. The
Napoleonics guys are, in my opinion, notorious for this: Napoleonic warfare was
all about the fog of war, dealing with the unknown, and working it tactically to
your advantage. To meticulously recreate a particular battle guarantees you miss
the whole "feel" of that period of warfare. Why anyone would want to engage in
such an exercise is completely baffling to me.

Simulation in the ancient/medieval period has all of these problems, and more.
Few generals in our period had much capacity to affect change once the battle
had begun. Forms of communication and unit organization were simply not
sufficiently sophisticated to allow detailed management of the battlefield.
Some rules sets do a fairly good job of reflecting this limitation. I'm thinking
in particular of "Tactica" or the old "Shock of Impact" rules for medievals.

The problem is, those games aren't much fun to play. They feel more like
watching a battle than playing a game. The outcome is pretty much decided once
setup is complete, and playing the game is more like discovering the outcome
than determining the outcome. Probably fairly realistic, but not very
enjoyable.

Warrior comes at these problems from a completely different approach. Think
about this question: "Who are you, the player, supposed to be in game terms?"
Most games answer would be "The C-in-C". Warrior, however, has a "telescoping"
system where you move up and down the chain of command in terms of whose
decisions you're making. Sometimes it's the C-in-C's decisions. Sometimes it is
a subordinate general. Sometimes it's the decisions of a unit commander.

The down side is that armies behave with a Borg-like synchronicity, where every
decision-maker knows the facts and thoughts of every other decision-maker. The
up side is that you have a game this is both tremendously fun and tremendously
complex. That's a difficult combination to achieve, but Warrior does it
beautifully.

Does it make Warrior a good simulation? No.

But based on what I said earlier, I don't think a good simulation is something
you can achieve. We know both too much and too little about history to
recapture the moment through simulation. What Warrior does do, and superbly, is
give you a strong sense, at an abstract level, for the complexities of command.
Here are some things that are vital to success in Warrior:
- protecting your flanks, both unit by unit and for the battle line as a whole;
- keeping units within effective communication range of each other, so that you
don't need to expend more effort on prompting than you actually have;
- knowing who to make your reserve troops, and knowing when and where to commit
them;
- recognizing what kind of terrain works to your advantage and disadvantage, and
knowing how to respond to both situations;
- knowing who your decisive troops are in any given matchup, and getting them to
the right place at the right time to take decisive action;
- know what will be an effective line against your opponent's decisive troops,
and knowing how to delay them appropriately.

I believe that these are the issues that real commanders have struggled with on
the battlefield throughout history, and that a game system that makes these
kinds of decisions prominent puts you intimately in touch with historical
problems of command. It is not, cannot, and should not be a simulation. But it
is a sytem that, even in a-historical matchups, gives you those moments of
tactical interraction when you really feel connected to the past.


-Mark Stone

[Kelly Wilkinson]

Well done and well thought out.

Mark Stone <mark@...> wrote:--- On January 24 Michael Bard said:
---

>
> In Warrior by and large this doesn't work. Bodies move very independly and,
> as long as their are friendly bodies within 120 paces, are completely happy.
> Note that 120 paces is wide enough for enemy bodies to advance through.
> Many times close order infantry operate as largely independent bodies that
> move around like ancient tanks. Flanks are secondary. Mutual body support
> in a single line is relatively worthless. Kills are gained by, in my
> opinion, sending other bodies (typically cavalry or barbarians) between the
> blocks of infantry to either flank the enemy, or break through locally. I
> can't recall any classical battle in which heavy troops advanced inside
> lines of close order infantry as a matter of course.
>

I've said in a previous message that I think Mike overstates the problem here,
but let me respond to what's right about his comment.

It is true that there are many times in Warrior when units seem to be moving
independently of each other to the point where any sense of a battle line has
dissolved. I've had the experience several times, and I think we all have, of
having a spectator unfamiliar with the game system walk by a tournament game
and be utterly unable to determine which units are on which side of the battle.

That's not a good thing, and detracts from the "marketability" of Warrior. If
the casual observer can, without knowing the rules, get a sense of the game and
what's generally happening in a particular battle, then they're more likely to
be drawn in and want to know more. If the casual observer can't even make sense
of the battle, they're much more likely to regard the rules system as too
esoteric and complicated to be worth bothering with.

All of this, however, overlooks what I think is the greatest strength of
Warrior. Are we playing a simulation, or are we playing a game? I'll argue that
fundamentally we are and should be playing a game.

This may seem paradoxical. Many of us were drawn to wargaming in general and
miniatures in particular by the desire to engage in some level of historical
re-enactment. But I think you learn, often the hard way, and often over years,
what aspects of history you can capture and what aspects you can't.

Let me give an example out of our period. We've all seen Civ War mini players
attempt time after time to re-fight the Battle of Gettysburg. The battle is
meticulously documented, the terrain is well known, enabling orders of battle
and initial line ups that closely recreate the conditions of the original
battle. Yet all of this misses, and indeed works against, the most important
historical fact about the battle: that this was a chance engagement where
neither side knew the exact strength or position of the enemy, and indeed
neither side had very detailed knowledge of the countryside around them. Those
"fog of war" elements are what make the battle what it was, and it is in
watching historical commanders come to terms with that "fog" that the
historical record comes alive in such gripping fashion.

Thus carefully recreating the details of the battle does nothing to recreate the
experience of the battle, and indeed is quite counter to capturing that
experience.

I see this time after time in wargaming, and miniatures in particular. The
Napoleonics guys are, in my opinion, notorious for this: Napoleonic warfare was
all about the fog of war, dealing with the unknown, and working it tactically to
your advantage. To meticulously recreate a particular battle guarantees you miss
the whole "feel" of that period of warfare. Why anyone would want to engage in
such an exercise is completely baffling to me.

Simulation in the ancient/medieval period has all of these problems, and more.
Few generals in our period had much capacity to affect change once the battle
had begun. Forms of communication and unit organization were simply not
sufficiently sophisticated to allow detailed management of the battlefield.
Some rules sets do a fairly good job of reflecting this limitation. I'm thinking
in particular of "Tactica" or the old "Shock of Impact" rules for medievals.

The problem is, those games aren't much fun to play. They feel more like
watching a battle than playing a game. The outcome is pretty much decided once
setup is complete, and playing the game is more like discovering the outcome
than determining the outcome. Probably fairly realistic, but not very
enjoyable.

Warrior comes at these problems from a completely different approach. Think
about this question: "Who are you, the player, supposed to be in game terms?"
Most games answer would be "The C-in-C". Warrior, however, has a "telescoping"
system where you move up and down the chain of command in terms of whose
decisions you're making. Sometimes it's the C-in-C's decisions. Sometimes it is
a subordinate general. Sometimes it's the decisions of a unit commander.

The down side is that armies behave with a Borg-like synchronicity, where every
decision-maker knows the facts and thoughts of every other decision-maker. The
up side is that you have a game this is both tremendously fun and tremendously
complex. That's a difficult combination to achieve, but Warrior does it
beautifully.

Does it make Warrior a good simulation? No.

But based on what I said earlier, I don't think a good simulation is something
you can achieve. We know both too much and too little about history to
recapture the moment through simulation. What Warrior does do, and superbly, is
give you a strong sense, at an abstract level, for the complexities of command.
Here are some things that are vital to success in Warrior:
- protecting your flanks, both unit by unit and for the battle line as a whole;
- keeping units within effective communication range of each other, so that you
don't need to expend more effort on prompting than you actually have;
- knowing who to make your reserve troops, and knowing when and where to commit
them;
- recognizing what kind of terrain works to your advantage and disadvantage, and
knowing how to respond to both situations;
- knowing who your decisive troops are in any given matchup, and getting them to
the right place at the right time to take decisive action;
- know what will be an effective line against your opponent's decisive troops,
and knowing how to delay them appropriately.

I believe that these are the issues that real commanders have struggled with on
the battlefield throughout history, and that a game system that makes these
kinds of decisions prominent puts you intimately in touch with historical
problems of command. It is not, cannot, and should not be a simulation. But it
is a sytem that, even in a-historical matchups, gives you those moments of
tactical interraction when you really feel connected to the past.


-Mark Stone


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

Hello Mark,

An excellent analysis of tabletop wargaming in general and Warrior in
particular.

<---- big snip ---->


>
> Warrior comes at these problems from a completely different
approach. Think
> about this question: "Who are you, the player, supposed to be in
game terms?"
> Most games answer would be "The C-in-C". Warrior, however, has
a "telescoping"
> system where you move up and down the chain of command in terms of
whose
> decisions you're making. Sometimes it's the C-in-C's decisions.
Sometimes it is
> a subordinate general. Sometimes it's the decisions of a unit
commander.
>


For me, Warrior has the best Command and Control system (though I
haven't encountered "Tactica" or "Shock of Impact") of the various
games I've played. Which is why I enjoy Warrior so much: the
challenge of coming up with a battle plan to suit your troops, the
terrain and the enemy; issuing the requisite Orders (and maybe have
them misinterpreted - more fog of war); then trying to carry out your
plan and respond to enemy action within those limitations.


<---- snip ---->


> The down side is that armies behave with a Borg-like synchronicity,
where every
> decision-maker knows the facts and thoughts of every other decision-
maker.


The "helicopter view" works against most tabletop games anyway - I
think the Warrior Command system puts a reasonable brake upon it.

A second brake is the demoralisation rule, since the bad news
transmits faster than light - in this the "helicopter view" applies
to what's bad for the army as well as what is good.

A third brake are the waver tests, since risky choices at a unit
level can backfire - units will do what's best for them, not what's
best for the army.


Another way to overcome telepathy is to use one player per general.
If they want to discuss battle issues, they need to send messages
(communication time). Although, even without that restriction, I've
seen subordinates do pretty weird things with their commands (lol),
even after in-depth discussions with insistent CinCs!



<---- snip ---->


> Here are some things that are vital to success in Warrior:
> - protecting your flanks, both unit by unit and for the battle line
as a whole;
> - keeping units within effective communication range of each other,
so that you
> don't need to expend more effort on prompting than you actually
have;
> - knowing who to make your reserve troops, and knowing when and
where to commit
> them;
> - recognizing what kind of terrain works to your advantage and
disadvantage, and
> knowing how to respond to both situations;
> - knowing who your decisive troops are in any given matchup, and
getting them to
> the right place at the right time to take decisive action;
> - know what will be an effective line against your opponent's
decisive troops,
> and knowing how to delay them appropriately.
>


An excellent summary! I would add one other:
Understanding the damage cumulative waver tests can do. (Of course,
you have to be able to inflict them on your enemy...)

In the context of waver tests, being unsupported becomes quite
important, and having a battle line of supported formed infantry is a
good idea ;-)


<---- snip ---->


> I believe that these are the issues that real commanders have
struggled with on
> the battlefield throughout history, and that a game system that
makes these
> kinds of decisions prominent puts you intimately in touch with
historical
> problems of command. It is not, cannot, and should not be a
simulation. But it
> is a sytem that, even in a-historical matchups, gives you those
moments of
> tactical interraction when you really feel connected to the past.
>
>
> -Mark Stone




Ah yes, and seeing that old proverb proved true time and time again:
"No battle plan ever survived contact with the enemy" (lol)


Terry