Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

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

> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 13:23:00 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Todd Schneider <thresh1642@...>
> Subject: When Building a List...
>
> Work has been real slow, enough that I've been
> perusing the books and putting down on paper a few
> lists that appeal to me for different reasons...
>
> I tend approach list building from one of two angles:
> Theme and Open. Which is to say the Late Imperial
> List I put together for a theme Army would probably be
> different than a LIR list I put together for an open.
>
> Is this how most of you out there approach a List?
>

Most of us have a historical period that is our period of interest (mine:
Eastern Mediterranean, 1261-1453). Given that there are 7 army list books, and
some clearly span multiple themes, and given that Cold Wars and Historicon are
once a year each, that means you'll wait roughly six years for a national level
theme tournament in your period of interest.

So I don't spend a lot of time thinking about theme tournaments when buying lead
or putting together an army. I think almost exclusively in terms of open
tournaments.

I also fly 3000 miles to get to Lancaster, so I tend to think in terms of what
lists allowed in a theme tournament are going to overlap substantially with the
figures I'm bringing for the open tournament.

The ideal is to find a an army that is both viable in the theme you're
interested in, viable in open tournament format. For example, I'd expect to see
lots of Sassanid Persians at Historicon this year (I know of at least three
that are entered in the theme tournament).

Of course, even if an army works as both a theme and open tournament army, it's
unlikely that you'd buy it the same way for both. Sassanids are a perfect
example of this: in an open tournament where you may be facing knight armies,
you want all the elephants you can get. In a theme tournament where you'll be
facing lots of Romans, you probably want at most two elephants.

And of course I probably have a dozen spreadsheets lying around with armies
worked up at 1200, 1600, and 2000 points that I have no intention of ever
painting or playing, just because I think it's interesting to speculate and
look at some of the unusual troop combinations. And who knows? Maybe some day I
_will_ paint up Parthian camel cataphracts....


-Mark Stone

[joncleaves]

Given that there are 7 army list books, and
>some clearly span multiple themes, and given that Cold Wars and Historicon are
>once a year each, that means you'll wait roughly six years for a national level
>theme tournament in your period of interest.>>

I'm not tracking on the math...lol 2 'national' themes a year and 7 list books
means 3.5 years... but in any case..
I would submit that many more regional events should be themed. They broaden
the number of 'competitive' armies and provide a good look at public venues with
no need to explain why 100YWE are fighting Midianites... Also, list and rule
balance is tested among historical opponents, not in a completely open setting.
Personally, I'd like to see the day where themes are the norm. I would never
want opens to go away entirely, of course, as there are many armies with too
small or too homogenous a set of historical opponents, but the continuing fight
to increase the number of theme events is a good thing to me.
We do at least one theme event in the KC area a year and our 100 Years War theme
last fall was a great success. Regional themes can also be tailored to the
preferences (in terms of next theme played) of the gamers most likely to attend.

J

[Ewan McNay]

Mark Stone wrote:
> The ideal is to find a an army that is both viable in the theme you're
> interested in, viable in open tournament format. For example, I'd expect to
see
> lots of Sassanid Persians at Historicon this year (I know of at least three
> that are entered in the theme tournament).

Right. Although I don't think that it works the other way around, at
the top level - I don't expect to see many EIR in the NICT, regardless
of the Theme.

> And of course I probably have a dozen spreadsheets lying around with armies
> worked up at 1200, 1600, and 2000 points that I have no intention of ever
> painting or playing, just because I think it's interesting to speculate and
> look at some of the unusual troop combinations. And who knows? Maybe some day
I
> _will_ paint up Parthian camel cataphracts....

Yeah, I suspect that army-building on paper is a popular pasttime.
Those SHCm are my recent candidate for 'most over-priced troop,'
though .

Another reason/prerequisite for army-building is that there should bee
some morphability: buying one army is fine, but it would be nice if it
can become a couple of others, preferably without looking too silly,
and with enough difference between the armies to be interesting.