Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

--- On August 25 John Murhpy said: ---

> Larry and others have said this is a good balanced beginner army. I
> was wondering some of the list gurus could post a good balanced 1-
> list tournament army list for LIR/Patsies/etc. that has a good mix
> of close, loose and open order mounted and foot, with some regulars
> and irregulars and a load of multi-armed missile capability. A good
> heterogeneous army list that a relatively inexperienced player could
> readily learn to play.

Let's see, you want a list with lots of different troop types, both regulars and
irregs, mounted and foot, missile capability... oh, and you want it to be easy
for a beginner to play. Right....

Sorry to rain on your parade, but in my opinion LIR is a _terrible_ army for a
beginner. It's way too much of a finesse army.

You have no shock cavalry to speak of. Your shock foot, such as it is, consists
of close order. You have a lot of missile troops, but they come in odd forms,
like guys with darts, or bolt shooters, that have to be coordinated with your
archers. You have an extensive menu of light troops to pick from, but they're
all pretty expensive. The "meat" of this army doesn't hold a lot of frontage,
really putting the burden on skirmishing troops to cover frontage, despite the
fact that they aren't backed up by meaningful cavalry.

Having said all that LIR is a devilish army to face in the hands of a seasoned
opponent. It presents no single overwhelming threat, but instead lots of small
threats any one of which you ignore at your peril. But for beginners? No, I
think not.

If you want to get a sense for how Roman armies work, and have something that's
quite playable but not overwhelmingly complicated, I'd recommend Marian Romans
(with Numidian allies).

Just my $.02 worth,
Mark Stone