Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Ewan McNay]

Having actually had a moment's time yesterday to think about lists for this , I'm impressed with the wide selection of viable armies, with several different army types available. This should not - unless I'm missing something - turn into a repeat of the Sassanid-dominated Theme of last year.

Now, I do think that there are better choices, of course; my initial perusal suggests that the best might include HYW English (I think that the LB are going to be in their element in the Theme environment) and Late Hohenstaufen (the combination of decent knights, superb regular Muslim support troops, and some Almughavars if desired.

Of course, I have figures for neither of these .

I expect KoSJ to be a reasonably popular choice, but to have a slightly hard time dealing with the possibility of massed enemy knights. Other contenders include Med Spanish, of course, but I never overcame my antipathy to the compulsory, poor, light troops; an IrrA French knight mob if you want the 20-minute version of Warrior; or perhaps WotR (especially Lancastrian with Scots allies). But one might also be facing a massed LC army, an irregular LMI fanatic Scot (unlikely, I admit), or massed pikemen. Good stuff.

[Frank Gilson]

This year's theme should be a fairly varied and interesting event. Also of interest is how many people will play the same army in the theme as they do in the NICT or the Open.

Using the same army makes it easier to practice and to transport the minis you need.

[Ewan McNay]

I wondered about dual-use armies; HYW is again a possibility, as is Hohenstaufen, as are the Spanish.

On the other hand, I gather from secret sources that there may be a rather different theme to this year's NICT armies...

[Ewan McNay]

Before anyone else points it out, I'll note: I was utterly wrong about almost all of this (at least in 15mm; I didn't have time to look at the 25mm event). There were far more LC armies than I expected, and fewer English, and more Condotta, and - well, basically, I was wrong .

On the other hand, I enjoyed my Condotta list more than I expected; I'll try to post a recap shortly-ish.

[Ewan McNay]

Figured I should post the AAR for this, too. Thanks, while I am here, to Scott McDonald and Eric Turner, for allowing Scott H to play in the Theme and for fielding questions amicably and efficiently. And to my opponents, of course; it's really a pretty good bunch of guys.

High Medieval is about the only Theme I can actually provide my own lead for - and even then, I turned to the Low Lead Supply Service for some augmentation in the pike department (once again, thanks to Bill). It’s also the period I enjoy most; so this was a treat for me. My affinity for truly high medieval also limited my list thoughts - I knew that I wanted one of the Western European armies; which one?

HYW English was probably the ‘best’ contender, in my view, especially with the available SHK/HK units. Hohenstaufen get *great* support troops in the Muslims, but they’re a little over-used and didn’t really interest me. Then I started playing with Condotta, and realised that I could make a pretty decent combined arms force while still meeting some of my personal needs: regular light troops (albeit pretty useless) and nothing compulsory I didn’t want to buy. I thought that the shielded pikemen were a very good bet, especially as they could have one element of C class in otherwise Reg D units for the most part, and if I went Neapolitan I could also get two units of Almughavars to help deal with anyone else’s close foot - OK, deal. So I ended up with 3 8E pike blocks, fronted by HI; the moogs, a unit of reg LMI 1HCW/CB/Sh sword-and-buckler men (the real heroes of the army as my only missile unit), 4 units of Reg B/C SHK and a couple of regular LI CB or B support units to go with the Italian reg LC CB (now there’s a dubious troop type!). I expected to face a lot of other SHK, and thought that the pike would be a good way to slow them down if everything went roughly to plan.

Almost all of this pre-planning was wrong: I fought 3 LC armies of four games, few opposing SHK, and dearly missed having missile troops. On the other hand, the combined-arms approach and the very good terrain troops really worked out well.

Game 1 brought John Garlic - an extremely pleasant opponent - and post-Mongol Russian. Huh? This is a knight theme! Well, no: he had well over 100 scouting points. I decided to throw down steep hills to clutter the field, and got all four; one on each flank and two in John’s backfield. So far, so good; then he started deploying *masses* of foot bowmen - double that ‘huh?’! John is still a relatively new player, though, and got caught out by the impact of steep slopes on both mounted (a couple of his LC units got hung up in the left-hand hill) and close formation foot (two 24-man MI archer blocks deployed on a steep hill, which would not have been so bad if there had been anything in front of them to prevent their being pinned there my by LI pickets marching forward). John also chose to place one piece of brush, which ended in the central gap and started out with a Russian LI in it and the majority of the Russian H/MC behind aiming to push through, but I refused to charge the LI away and they clogged up the advance there long enough for my sword-and-buckler men to make it to the brush, where they were more than a match for the HC. In the remainder of the central gap, the pike line slowly pushed, and made it to the opposing MI B while they were still disordered, at the same time as a Moog unit caught some evading LC; pretty much game over, with John’s poor initial terrain dice digging him a very difficult hole from the start.

Game 2 was more what I had expected - Kelly Wilkinson running Knights of St. John. I counted myself lucky that he had only one unit of the superb Turcopole LC, and even more so that they started as a force-march unit opposite some of my LI B. We were again fighting in a central clear space between flank terrain - this time woods and a steep hill - and it took a long time for anything much to happen: my regular LMI and a Moog unit were pushing forward against evading Oarsmen in the right-hand terrain while my LI were falling back on the left, and the pike line had just made it to close range when a unit of Kelly’s SHK rolled a critical 1 for a counter and had to charge a pike unit 4-deep; he escaped temporarily by rolling +3 and pushing back the pikemen, but there was no support available that could not be screened off and a unit of pavisiers into the SHK flank eventually arrived, causing wavers to fail all around just as an Oarsman unit failed a counter and got hit by impetuous almughavars for a second rout; game over. [My other unit of pavisiers - reg D HI LTS, Pa or Sh; compulsory to buy 4 elements, so I took them as 2 2E units intending them to suck up incoming missile fire - had led the advance; these units also stood out as superb anti-LC troops against the post-Mongols. Not what I had expected to be game-winning units!]

So far, so good; I had also managed to avoid fighting any critical melees with my own SHK, which was a good thing given my ability to kill off generals with -3 rolls at almost any time. I was a little peeved to look at the pairings for game 3 and find myself fighting the *other* Post-Mongol Russian, though. Things got (a lot) worse when I proceeded to roll 3 1s for my first 3 terrain picks, leaving us with only one piece of terrain on the board, a wood on the far left just across the half-way line. Outscouted again, I set up basically behind this wood, with the pikes and pavisiers on my left planning to form a line between the wood and the table edge. Mike Mallamacci had taken the Mongol Ally, which was facing my army, and then had a mass of LC and HC over on the right. The pike line formed, facing off against mounted Russians for maybe a little over two feet of inactivity for essentially the whole game; the couple of LI units sent out (possibly foolishly) to allow time for the line to form were duly disposed of. On the left was where we fought, with the Mongol Ally facing all of my non-close-foot troops. Two critical events: a LI unit made it through the wood to emerge behind the 2-element LC unit on the end of Mike’s line, preventing it from evading and hence dooming it; this was made worse for Mike when he charged in with a unit of HC to try to clear an evade path, stuck, and got hit in the flank by almughavars from the wood. Second, Mike - who was distracted by a work crisis hitting at the same time, making it difficult for him to concentrate - forgot that my LMI CB unit also had 1HCW, and sent a 12-man unit of Mongol HC into them; I passed the waver (key!) and even though I rolled down on the support shot, he had to break off disordered and sit waiting for impetuous SHK. That was all that happened, though; I had miscounted and thought that the Mongol command was 5 units when in fact it was 7, and Mike managed to pass the relatively few wavers caused, so not much prospect of further points on either side. 3-1 brought me to 13, matching Dan Woyke’s Moldavians and we would have a final game on Sunday morning.

…insert, here, too little sleep and many other games: Sunday morning found both Dan and I a little bleary and - especially me - sleep-deprived. But my Condotta are a terrible match for the Moldavians: his mass of HK cannot even think about taking on pike frontally, even with the IrrA random factor, and would do very poorly against CB fire. That would all be OK except that it was now my turn to get excellent terrain with maximum-size woods on both flanks, and the 50-odd Moldavian scouts did not quite outscout me so I could get to the gap between them. Initial skirmishes saw my LI B passing wavers for Viteji charges and rapidly hiding behind the advancing pike wall, while the LC attempted to pass through the left-hand wood, found it to contain Slavs, and redeployed across the table to march through the right-hand wood! As we cam to contact, I was able to charge impetuously into Dan’s one close-foot unit by coming from the left-hand wood with almughavars, which routed that, and CB fire from the right-hand wood disposed of two HK units; I even caught a unit of Viteji with pikemen when they rolled short on an evade and also had to collapse from line into column! But: I also sent both of my single-unit-command subgenerals into units of IrrA HK; no problem except that they *both* rolled -3, and died on the spot when Dan managed not to roll down enough to fail to inflict 2 cpf each! I thought everything was about to go horribly wrong, especially when one of the units failing a waver was my lead pikeblock which had just been charged by Hungarian SHK. Fortunately, though, I only lost two more units to waver tests and the Moldavian losses were starting to send commands home; the sword-and-buckler men again passed a waver for HK charging, and exhausted them in one turn before exhausting a LC unit in the next to send that command onto retreat, my shaken pikemen passed their D-class waver for being pushed back by the SHK, and finally an IrrA unit had to charge some pikes and died to send the other Moldavian command home. Close, but the Italians took home the cigar.