Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

Quoting "WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com" <WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com>:

> Message: 10
> Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 22:21:44 EDT
> From: JonCleaves@...
> Subject: Re: national champions
>
> In a message dated 4/27/2004 21:10:45 Central Daylight Time,
> DMarkowitz@... writes:
> IMO, this army was much more effective in 7th then it would be in Warrior.
> This is because of the changes in shooting arc between the two rules sets.
> Under 7th, my Regular LC could avoid most shooting for a turn or two --
> enough
> time to set up whatever I had cooking. Under Warrior, the invisible element
> arc
> (You know what I mean) creates enough firepower to push all the pesky LC
> units back. Don't get me wrong, I still love units of 4 LC as a support
> troop, I
> just don't think they can really form a viable core of an army anymore. >>
>
> Hmmm. I know Mark's thoughts on this rule and have been trying to recreate
> the issue, especially while working on possible Mongol list rules.
>

So, I think this is a terribly important issue, and I want to pause to make sure
I clarify to Jon and the group at large what I am concerned about and what I am
not concerned about.

Warrior differs from WRG 7 in a number of significant ways, and any significant
difference between two rules system inevitably leads to tactics that are
favorable in one rules system and not favorable in another. One should be
CONCERNED as a tactician to note and appreciate those differences, but that is
not "concern" in the sense of "there's something wrong here." It's just concern
in the sense of "I have to play differently now."

The definition of shooting arcs in Warrior is clearer and more realistic than in
WRG 7th. Period, end of story. It's just better. Kudos to Jon for making this
important change.

However, the change does have consequences. Mostly, those changes make shooting
more powerful, because mostly shooting arcs are expanded over what they were
before. (One exception to this is JLS-armed foot: a front element used to be in
range provided an adjacent element was in range; now it is in range only if it
is itself within range. Common sense, but limiting.)

There are also some more subtle effects, which bear on the "Belgian" question:
units vulnerable to shooting (LC) want to be in bigger units, whereas units
that are relatively durable in the face of shooting and are shooters themselves
(LHI LB) want to be in smaller units to (a) maximize shooting arcs, and (b)
minimize situations where many stands take a shooting CPF for a shot that only
a couple of stands are actually taking.

There is a separate issue, where I do have a concern in the sense of "something
is amiss." Let me be clear up front about this concern: I'm not suggesting that
now, or any time in the forseeable future we do anything about it, but I am
suggesting that we note and acknowledge the problem, and if possible at some
indeterminate point in the future when it wouldn't be too disruptive to do so,
to fix it.

Here's the problem: shooting in WRG 7th was just too powerful. I don't know any
simpler way to say it than that, and I don't have any very specific examples to
point to. I wouldn't say that shooting was way out of balance, but it was
somewhat out of balance and enough to make a difference. This was the result of
the confluence of several different rules: that shooting goes all the way out
to 240p; that there is such a thing as an evade move; that shieldless HC and
shieldless MI/LMI are both at a 5 from bow; that going from a 4 factor to a 5
factor is precisely where the casualty multiplier starts to ramp up on the
combat chart.

As I said, this didn't put things way out of balance, but it was enough to
notice. There was a time, when 15mm was the preferred scale, when I would
routinely run armies with 72 - 120 figures of LI B,Sh and win consistently just
because LI was so hard to get rid of and shooting was a powerful tactic.

Warrior fixes a clear problem with shooting arc. But a secondary consequence of
fixing that problem is that it enhances the overall power of shooting that was
already a bit out of line. Again, it is hard for me to give very specific
examples, or go on more than gut feel. But it is as if we have crossed a
transition from, say, Austerlitz to Borodino (moderate to massed artillery) or
perhaps from the Mexican-American War to the Civil War (musket to rifled
musket).

What could be done? I've thought about some radical steps. These include radical
steps like closely examining when mounted archers actually used bow as a
distance shooting weapon, and when they used more like a just-before-contact
hand-to-hand weapon. Hint: I think the latter was the norm and the former the
exception. It includes re-examining who can actually evade. Hint: At least in
the Medieval period, I think the number of non-light troops who can actually be
documented performing something that is clearly an evade is so small as to fall
within the scope of a list rule.

But in the end I don't think those radical steps are the right way to go. They
change too much about the feel of game play in Warrior. And that feel is a
delicate balance that for all its strengths and shortcomings, overall Warrior
miraculously gets right (and where 99% of games published fail).

There is a more subtle approach worthy of future consideration.

Some people recoil from the 7th/Warrior system when they see that everyone using
a particular weapon (say, HTW) is at the same factor. I've had people complain
that this is unrealistic given the vast differences in training between
different soldiers in different armies/periods. In fact, Warrior has a way of
bringing in some of those nuances: it's called morale class. Regulars roll more
"average" than irregulars; Ds detract 1 from an up roll; As and Bs get to
detract 1 from a down roll, etc. This means that not everyone armed with the
same weapon is going to perform the same because even though they start at the
same factor, they factor in die rolls differently.

Notice, however, that missile fire in Warrior has none of this subtle
differentiation. Everyone rolls as if regulars, whether they are reg or irreg.
Everyone rolls the same whether they are As or Es shooting. The result is a
fairly coarse-grained system that says that the scruffiest Livonian light
cavalryman ever to pick up a bow is exactly as good with it as the most highly
trained Mongol horse archer.

And this aspect of Warrior could indeed be changed, by changing the rules,
without breaking the whole gaming system.

It would be a rules change, yes. And therefore not something I see happening or
that I would recommend happening now or in the forseeable future. But there are
a handful of small nagging issues like this, some of which Jon has noted
publicly (movement distance for close order foot, for example). If an
accumulation of these issues ever reached a critical mass, and if the audience
of Warrior players were ever open enough to the idea to make Jon comfortable
with changing the rules (despite his promise never to do so), then this is a
change that could be put in place that would address what I see as a genuine
concern while not changing the basic feel of game play.


-Mark Stone