Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

By far the gaming high point of the weekend was Ed Forbes' Marian Romans vs. John Bauman's Incans.

Ed took the list in an interesting way (which is to say, not the way I would have taken it): the minimum legionaries (which is still a lot), and abundance of LI and LC (80 scouting points roughly?), one unit of SHC, one unit of peltasts, one unit of elephants, and one unit of screaming Spanish loonies (Irr A/C LMI HTW,JLS,Sh).

John's army is a wall of Reg B LMI JLS,S,Sh with a few units of HTW and 2HCT thrown in to mix things up and give him some options. He has a couple of small LI units, and a 32 figure unit of LMI B,Sh that anchors one flank.

Ed spearheaded his attack with the Spanish, flanked by the SHC on one side and legionaries on the other side. The Spanish force marched, and approached straight towards the middle of the Incan line. John had lined up one of this HTW units opposite, and opted not to go into skirmish. He did 2 CPF in prep to the Spanish, forcing them to charge or waver. Ed happily charged home.

In the resulting conflagration both sides rolled up, but Ed rolled up big. He did something like 8 CPF to the Incans, and twice as many, causing a spectacular rout. Of course Ed took 5 CPF in return, which doubles to 10, plus 1 for the impetuous charge, plus 2 for the prep shot, plus 2 for force marching.... yep, you guessed it. When the dust had settled, the losing Incan unit was routed, and the winning Spanish unit was exhausted.

From there the game was headed towards a tense 2-2 draw. In the final bounds John deliberately left his subgeneral forward in a non-skirmishing position in an attempt to entice Ed's now tired SHC into a charge. As long as Ed didn't roll up John would be able to not rout at contact and then collapse in on the flanks of the SHC next bound. No such luck; Ed rolled up, and walked away with a 5-2 win.

Ed is the only person I've seen beat John since John started playing Incans last summer (I lost to John with Knights of Saint John in Monterey last November in the tourney there, and lost with my Shang in a pickup game last summer).

Bill Chamis, borrowing my Knights of Saint John army, did fight John to a close 1-1 draw, with Bill's 4 figure LC unit making 6 consecutive counters to not vaporize in the face of 32 figures of bowfire. Bill crushed a unit with his halberdiers, but couldn't get anyone to fail a waver test, and Bill had an LMI unit get caught in an evade, but passed all of his wavers. Elsewhere there was a lot of pushing back on both sides without either line budging much.

I played 10 Independent States for the first time since Historicon, and played Warrior for the first time since November. Between new baby and back surgery I just haven't been able to get in a game this spring.

I'm really pleased with the refinements I've made to the 10 Independent States list since Historicon. I think I finally have the army tuned the way I want it.

My first game was against Dale Shanek's Early Asiatic Successor army. Dale played a solid game, screening his wings with light troops and driving down the middle with pikes, elephants, and Hypaspists. The problem was that his light troops didn't last very long, and his Companions really had to hang back, given that I'm fielding 252 bows on 1600 points (300 total figures). Dale also suffered a bit from a numerical disadvantage. He had something like 15 or 16 units in his army, and I had 19 in mine.

He did manage to get a couple of pike units into my LTS,Bow units, but his elephants had been shot to a halt and his pike flanks were exposed. Nor did he roll up enough to disorder my LTS,B guys; we were recoiled, but not disordered. As a result I got an Irr A LMI JLS,Sh unit into his flank on one pike unit, and an HI LTS unit with firelance into his flank on another pike unit. In short order his pikes were routing back through the center of his army, and he failed enough of the ensuing waver tests to end up with a command in retirement. 5-1 for the Chinese.

My other game was against Ed Forbes' Romans. I really lucked out on the terrain picks, getting a hill on my flank and two "anywhere" hills in the middle of my line.

I'm not enthusiastic about using LTS, even with firelance, against Roman HI with HTW. My plan was to put most of my LTS,Bow guys up on the hills, and on my open wing use my LMI Bow, my elephants, my firelance foot, my EHC, and a prayer to make something happen. I naturally assumed, given the terrain disposition, that Ed would put his lights opposite my line of hills to screen off that area and make his big push to attack my open terrain flank.

In fact, Ed set up exactly the opposite, with all his light troops on the open wing and his pelts, Spanish, SHC, and wall of legionaries bearing down on my hills.

This caused me some momentary consternation as my deployment was not at all what I wanted. I spent a couple of bounds playing traffic cop and trying to redirect units, and trying to figure out what to do with units that could not be repositioned.

This led to an odd attack on Ed's skirmishers, with my ad hoc force composed of an LMI Bow unit, a unit of elephants, a unit of EHC, and one LTS, Bow unit. This actually worked quite well as the elephants would waddle up to LC and disorder them, and then the archers would shoot up the LC. My EHC kept his LI from closing in on the elephants. I ended up routing one LC unit, shaking the other, and routing an LI unit on that wing.

Ed wasn't prepared for his skirmishing wing to cave in quite so quickly, and he did not have his shock foot far enough across the table to reach me yet. The result was a cavalry charge up the hill into the LTS,B to get these guys in combat before their flank collapsed in on them. Ed rolled up 4 with his SHC, but against LTS halted higher even up 4 didn't save him.

A couple of cavalry routs and failed wavers later it was 5-1 for the Chinese.

I'm a long way from being in "game shape" for the NICT, but it was nice to get in a couple of friendly games, and I'm looking forward to more practice between now and July. Historicon should be a blast.


-Mark Stone

[Bill Chriss]