Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

<<Its not historic Generalship, its merely terrain-rule based Gamesmanship.>>

Respectfully beg to differ. I've chosen ambush sites in the real world and in
the less "real" world of reenacting. I find that the Warrior Terrain system
thrills me because it adds that dimension and sticks me with the responsibility
for my own choices...

I tell new players that the terrain choosing is 1/4 of a warrior battle. (Army
list selection=1/4; terrain =1/4, set up = 1/4, playing of game =1/4) I admit I
tell new players this to get them to look at the whole game rather than just the
mechanics of combat, but I think there's an element of truth to it.

I'd say that a great many players lose at the point of terrian selection,
especially if they are facing Mark or Frank or a few others I can think of.
That's not "gamesmanship," unless you define thqat word to mean "knowing and
understanding the rules" in which case, okay, but...

And I think that's perfectly historical. Two points here; one is that some of
the most interesting battles happen when players are forced to fight in overly
restrictive terrain, which can easily happen if you and your opponent both think
you need 2 brush and 2 woods...

Second, from Xenophon to Montecucolli, or Sun Tzu to Mushashi for that matter,
there's an emphasis on choosing your battlefield that suggests to me that it was
an essential element of generalship. In a system that models (whether
intentionally or not!) every element of generalship from logistics and
recruiting (army list) to the instant of combat contact,(the game) it would be
odd not to have terrain be a subject of competative interaction.

And I'd mention in passing that the terrain system is one of the draws for new
players, who are tired of playing a GW system that sometimes places a firepower
army in a trench line by random chance, or forces an assault army to play on a
billiard table. The GW system isn't fair; but it's attractive to look at.

And finally, I'd like to back Mark's mild offence at the quality of minis
and etc comment. Three colours? At Games Day Baltimore, that was the GW
standard, sad to say; there were 40K armies with no paint at all (I realize
that's not supposed to happen, but it did). In our corner of the hobby, the bar
has been raised pretty consistently for 15 years. I don't own an army without
flocked, terrained bases, a diorama camp, shading, highlighting... and neither
does anyone else in our club (15 players and growing). Last year in the doubles,
I don't remember a single opponent that wasn't aesthetically pleasing. Mike
Bard's Greek army is superb...

Jon, I hate to suggest this, but perhaps the solution is to put army quality and
terrain quality into the scoring system, like GW. Have 3 judges who score the
aesthetics and average the results after a walk around. A 5 from all judges on
both would, for instance, be worth the same as a major victory; a great player
with a crappy army and terrain might lose overall to a merely good player with
great terrain and figs. Someone is bound to remind us how subjective this is;
sure, but in a myriad of 40K tournys, I've only thought the aesthetics/best
painted award went to the wrong guy once...
And why shouldn't Mike Bard collect a few points for his efforts?