Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[joncleaves]

In a message dated 4/18/2004 21:10:15 Central Daylight Time,
ewan.mcnay@... writes:
Congrats to Dave, the
tournamentÕs top dog (and winner of a very cute trophy for such Ð although
the real contest was for last place and possession of the ÔpuppyÕ
trophy!).>>

Yes, Dave - congrats. I am glad to see Ewan kept to his word and didn't
blame the dice...lol


I noted two rules Qs but only recall one - I'll find the other later. The
one I recall is to do with the order of prompts. Rules state 'priority
order' but what is this? It was ruled to be in the same order from left
or right as charges/combats, but the argument was made that this was not
defined and 'priority' meant *player's* priority. Jon?>>

Priority means the player does each prompt in the order of importance to him.

Jon


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

[Ewan McNay]

First and most important, thanks to Ed Bernhard for the great organisation
and time that went into this (as well as to Kevin Santos and his wife Ð
whose name I didnÕt get, alas) Ð for also providing food. Maybe next
year we can make the event a potluck, with each army having to bring an
apppropriate local dish? J)
We had a pretty decent turnout Ð fourteen players, including two
novices, and folks from PA, NJ, NY and CT. A fun time for all.
The format was "Dogs of War": 1200 points of 15mm, of which at
least 420 points had to be spent on D class troops. Moreover, that 420
did *not* include command points! Made for some interesting armies (and,
moreover, the NJ group had thought that it was permitted to downgrade to D
class troops not usually allowed such an option in order to meet this
requirement Ð so we had a Midianite with mostly D class camels, and a
close-order, largely D-class Viking! 3 hour rounds, and 3 games during
the day, on a 6Õ by 4Õ table (which was also not expected by a couple of
players).

My first game, on the basis of close-to-historical matchups, was
against Rob Turnball and his Hutchby/Clark Later Cathaginians. Seeing
that, I was very glad that I had not brought the Seleucids! In fact I was
running Ð for the first time ever Ð Late Romans, heavy on light infantry
in lots of small regular units, and my general pre-tournament plan was to
win either by out-flanking and manouvre, or by running the two legions
into anything that could not get out of their way. Against Robert, after
he deployed his army largely on the centre-line, it was mostly Plan B Ð
using the LI to take away first-charge options (more important than usual
with armies containing lots of D class, and most folk only having one
general for prompts) from his Celtiberians, delay where I wanted to, and
trying to shoot at least one unit to the halt with darts and javelins
before charging. Essentially, this worked, helped by fairly poor dice on
RobertÕs part and one heroic performance by my centre legion: in order to
save his MI LTS, Sh while the reserve Spanish came up, Rob threw an
elephant unit into the end of the legion. After +2 in both support
shooting and hth, that was one routing elephant unit and after the MI
shook, the elephants swept them away also. Oops.

That brought me to a second game against Kevin SantosÕ Huns. HeÕd
been playing on the table next to me in the morning, so I knew that he had
brought along two units of Frankish foot, and it seemed that they would be
the easiest thing to pick on Ð throw the LHI auxilia in from 120p,
preferably to both units, to pin, then follow up with legions. In
contrast to the first game, this was not how things went at all. Kevin
did not have any LI, and chose not to force march, so that I was able to
keep the Huns pinned back in their half of the table, and constrained by a
large wood filling the right flank sector. In turn, that allowed me to
chose a couple of matchups, and I combined my one unit of LC B with a
small unit of LC JLS, Sh to shoot up and then flank-charge the Hun LC
units on my furthest right, opening a gap in the line even though no-one
cared about the rout. To help, my flank march of 4 LI came on early, and
walked behind the centre of the Hun line, pinning a couple of units. With
the Hun advantages of speed and manouvre largely neutralised, the larger
number of Roman foot (and especially some of the missile power) came into
play as the Hun line was pressured from from both front and side while
being hindered from behind.
Both of these had been pretty good matchups for the Romans Ð IÕd
had superior light troops in terms of being regular and numerous, and
neiter had had anything to frontally threaten the legions. Unfortunately,
the third game brought Dave Markowitz Ð always an extremely dangerous
opponent, and also with two max wins in the first two games Ð and Teutonic
knights with the new list. In particular, as well as knights which can
potentially walk through all of the Roman foot, the Teuts had 6x16 regular
Prussian LMI, a mix of B and JLS with some double-armed, and a bunch of
regular LC. This would not be a problem for many armies, but against my
Romans the combination was a challenge, as only my auxilia stood even a
hope of catching the Prussians, yet had to be very wary of the SHK. On
the flip side, the Prussian LMI could blow through my LI screen with
impunity. Not all was bad Ð the Teuts had no LI at all, and only one more
LC unit than the Romans, and fewer units in total Ð but the risk (and as
it turned out, the actuality) was that I would have few targets while
losing LI and perhaps some of the line foot also. I promised Dave that
you would not Ôread on the internet that he won only by rolling 6sÕ Ð and
after all, blaming dice is what we all do after losing, no? So I will
ignore all of the many wavers with uneasy D class that he passed J. And
in truth, this was a really good game which also demonstrated how much my
lack of regular Warrior is rusting my skills and knowledge. On the plus
side: my auxilia destroyed a Prussian LMI JLS unit, shaking the one along
side it, and my LC B had blown away a Prussian LC unit, while on the same
flank DaveÕs knights had managed to catch some LI in the brush and convert
into a 4-man LC unit; that shook the HC unit next in line, which then got
hit by knights in turn. A small win to Dave, potentially allowing someone
else to creep up from the second-place table [not possible, as it turned
out, given the scores Ð no-one else was close]. So, trying for the win,
my other LHI auxilia came out of the brush to threaten a Prussian unit,
supported by a 24-man auxilia bow unit but opposed by some lurking 6-man
SHK (against whom the bows were lined up). I knew the knights would come
in, and it looked as though I could suurvive and then win provded that I
passed the waver for being charged. Not to be: the knights charged the
auxilia as expected, but my shooting rolld down in both prep from the bow
block and support with the auxilia D so that the knights hit with 5@4
(which would be 15 fatigues on my 16-man unit, still ok) but then both
rolled up and proved to be IrrA, so recoiled me disordered Ð curtains.
The bow block still came in on the knightsÕ flank, but now the knights got
to fight 6 against disordered foot rather than 3 against steady foot, as
well as receiving much less damage from the auxilia, and so survived.
When the auxilia went (after the Prussians came in on *their* flank) and
the bow block shook, that was the army. Congrats to Dave, the
tournamentÕs top dog (and winner of a very cute trophy for such Ð although
the real contest was for last place and possession of the ÔpuppyÕ
trophy!).

I noted two rules Qs but only recall one - I'll find the other later. The
one I recall is to do with the order of prompts. Rules state 'priority
order' but what is this? It was ruled to be in the same order from left
or right as charges/combats, but the argument was made that this was not
defined and 'priority' meant *player's* priority. Jon?

Enough for one night's typing. Thanks, again, to Ed, and to
Rob/Kevin/Dave for very pleasant games.