Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[QBeamus]

Isn't anyone else worried about the effect that all the freebies handed out to various troop types (e.g. Roman), and, more importantly, to certain weapon classes, has had on play balance? I'm especially referring to all the rules that have let troops fight 2d rank figures that previously didn't fight.

And, of course, the real loosers are the troops that used to get that benefit anyway. I always rather liked phalanxes, personally. They were never the best troops for an offensively minded commander, even compared to other close order foot. But that -2 at first contact, and the ability to fight a second rank, made them a good way to hold a patch of ground. Wow, is that ever not true any more.

Now, I confess, I was pleased when they let half the second rank of charging cav w/ lance fight. That, I felt, anway, gave cav a shock capability that more accurately reflected their historical abilities. It should be noted, of course, that that was done in conjunction with the removal of the wedge formation, which already gave certain armies exactly that "freebie." And part of the justification for the rule change was that there wasn't really good evidence to support the proposition that cav in wedge hit 66% harder than cav in block. (Though I did like the fact that wedge hit harder, at the cost of becoming disordered if they didn't smash through their opponent.)

I also confess that I'm happy to see some effort to make certain armies that have traditionally sucked beyond any reasonable justification into at least a plausibly playable list--e.g. the Japanese. Frankly, I thought they were always worse than they deserved because the rules weren't built to recognize the oddities of their style. (They wear some of the most effective armor ever invented, but they don't fight shoulder to shoulder like the rest of the world's heavy foot...)

But surely someone has noticed that virtually every troop type on every list has now been improved, with the exception of Jls, LTS, and Pike. And that strikes me as a real shame, since historically those troop types were actually quite serviceable--indeed, as has been noted in the thread on close order foot more generally, the Greek phalanx was an innovation that dominated the battlefield, to the point where an entire civilization rose to dominate that part of the world.

[martymagnificent]

in my humble opinion you have rteally got the wrong end of the stick here (ha ha). Phalanxes are as powerful as ever. Its quite amazing to see someone interested in these troops complaining about list rules. Have you read classical warrior? I cant think of an army with as many list rules as alexandrian imperial.

A quick look at recent competition results would suggest pike armies are the top choice at the moment if winning comps is your thing. Hoplites also benefit from a number of list rules. It is true they are not as popular as the pike based armies but I feel this has more to do with the lack of adequate strike troops (ie elephants or lance armed cav, etc) in hoplite armies than a problem with the hoplite troop type as such.

Lts and pike armed foot have always been popular and will continue to be so for the simple reason that at the same time as they fight well against opposing foot they are virtually impervious to most mounted.

Martin

[Todd Kaeser]

Well stated Martin,

I also agree that pike units are even better now w/ the rules changes. Almost impossible to shoot up anymore (now needing 3 cpf to halt them) they only fear "moogs" (Spanish and such). Even hoplites are tough now and are being seen in 25mm with some regularity.

I do have to say there is the excellent point that almost every troop has improved - now the dark age barbarians have been given a little taste of the steroids Dave Markowitz excellently described in one of his earlier posts. They are not permanent at this time, but are being playtested at Cold Wars.

On the other hand, many armies are now able to use the historical abilities they did have - Swiss, Romans, Greek hoplites, Pikemen, lance armed cavalry, Mongols. It is a double edged sword. Many would agree that armies are fighting more like they did historically, but the game dynamics have also changed. You can't win if you do change and you can't win if you don't change. There will always be someone who is unhappy - myself included at times.

IMO once again it will come down, not to the choice of army, but the general that wins the day.

Sincerely,

Todd K

[QBeamus]

Actually, the very thing that prompted me to take the time to write my complaint was the smattering of posts I'd seen talking up the Alexandrian list. And the reason it's not a satisfactory answer, in my humble opinion, is precisely that it's MORE Monty Hall giveaways on an army list. I'm developing the nasty suspicion that my lovely historical ancients game has been hijacked by the guys who play Warhammer...ever few months, a new list comes out with new cheezy rules changes, luring people into buying all those new figures so they can pwn people with troops that were the best last year...

For example, consider the spearmen on the Medieval Spanish list. A popular list, but mostly because of the new lance rules and all those LMI w/ LTS, Jls, 1/2 Sh. Sure, those are fun troops. But what about the old HI, LTS, Sh? They're basically an old fashioned phalanx--8 ranks of LTS. But they don't fight like them any more.

I could go on down the list, pointing out all the cases where the troops on a list have been made into a flat-out bad buy, purely because so many other troops have been upgraded by all the Monty Hall. And the result is that I've lost any confidence that we've got an engine that does a decent job of simulating ancient conflicts, because it's become so riddled with all these special cases in the list rules. At the risk of repeating myself, this is oh-to-similar to decidedly more juvenile miniatures games.

[joncleaves]

We do not get any money from any figure manufacturers, so what would be the motivation to get people to buy new armies? Not that that is the most empty of the complaints in this thread, but it is the funniest...

You are obviously looking to pick a fight, not having read any of the design philosophy behind the decisions we made with OUR lovely historical ancients game.

If this is the style of your contribution, please feel free to play someone else's game system. I'll even buy you a copy.

[Kelly Wilkinson]

Qbeamus,

Whoever you are, you have obviously not been playing the game lately. Warrior with all of it's special list rules makes this a more flavorful experience and has made armies that SHOULD have succeeded in previous editions VIABLE. Please don't be upset when I mention that The Fourhorsemen basically breathed new life into a game engine that was on life support and much of what you have to complain about is minor compared to that. Had the rules remained the same, we would still be seeing the same old Powergame armies at tournaments(that is if it didn't die out first). The way it is now, with all of the great work that Jon, Scott, Bill, and Jake have put into this product, armies that were hopeless now have a chance. To be frank, I don't miss seeing legions of Late Romans, Teutonic Knights, Seleucids, etc. . . filling up the tournament entrys. Before list rules, I would have never considered playing Mongols at a tournament. Last year in the 25mm open(at Historicon), Scott McDonald did the unthinkable and took first place with a Mongol army, that's right, Mongols the terror of the Medieval period who weren't worth spit in your beloved 7.6 edition game. I applaud the fourhorsemen for all their efforts and hope they will keep their chins up and continue to find the time to to do what they do better than ANY wargame rules company which is to make game rules that are fun, full of historical flavor, and challenging. I would like to point out that you can always put on your own tournaments with your own special rules and additionally as Jon has said in the past, feel free to play the game any way you wish in your own basement.


Kelly Wilkinson

[Mark Stone]

Disclaimer: IANAH (I am not a Horseman)

The list rules in Warrior are one of the great innovations, but also one of the most controversial. They give the folks at FHE much more flexibility in presenting 5000 years of warfare with one rules system, but also provoke more griping than anything else FHE does. Here on the West Coast there's a lot of anxiety about what list rules do now, and what they might do in the future.

From my non-FHE, outsider's perspective, I think the perception of turbulence and change is greatly exaggerated. Here is what I suspect has been going on:

Step 1: Acquire WRG7 rights, and put out a quick addendum to fix the most egregious problems and point things in the new direction. Result: WRG7.6.
Step 2: Get a bonafide Warrior rules set out as quickly as possible, even if the language isn't perfect and not all the nuances of a complex system have been worked out yet. Result: Warrior "White Book".
Step 3: Crank out some army list books quickly, focusing on those that will involve the least complexity and the least tuning via list rules. Result: Holy Warrior, Dark Age Warrior (if I remember correctly).
Step 4: Finish the army list books, finally tackling the thorniest lists in terms of complexity and list rules. Result: the remaining army list books.
Step 5: Do a complete re-write of the rules, removing all Barker-esk obtuseness, and accomodating the results of years of game play to identify as many as possible of the remaining gray areas. Result: Warrior "Black Book".
Step 6: Look at the evolution in list rules not reflected in the early army list books, look at the "Black Book" clarifications not anticipated in the earlly army list books, and rewrite the army lists to get everything up to the same point in rules evolution. Result: Warrior Armies (all lists in one book; not yet released).

So here's my question: which step in this process do people object to? Did you want to wait longer between 7.6 and Warrior? Impossible: we would have lost too many players. Did you want to wait longer for the first army list books? Again, impossible for the same reason.

The challenge has been to build a new boat without ever putting the old one into dry dock. If that makes you feel like the decks have been shifting beneath your feet, I understand, but I ask you: what other choice did FHE have? The process above is a natural one under the circumstances, and maybe the only process that would have worked.

It also leads me to believe we are in the tail end of this transition process, and can look forward to some years of reasonable stability to come (though no rules system is, or should be, completely static). And I remind folks that this has happened with greater transparency and communication than any other rules set has ever offered.

So what exactly is the problem? I don't see it.


-Mark Stone

[joncleaves]

Good summary, Mark. Let me add some details.

7.6 was done by NASAMW and Phil together and done long before we at FHE owned the game system. 7.6 was the state of affairs when we bought it. Discussions, for example, of "changing the rules for Lance to a rank and a half" predate FHE and have nothing to do with us, really.

Biblical and Dark - and to a lesser extent Holy - were done to get lists out with the white book before we had entirely fleshed out the list rules system. This is why you are seeing some playtest list rules for those books. We knew we would probably have to do it, but as you point out, the players rightly wanted *something* while they waited. This is not a day job for any of us, and the black book - the one we wanted to make all along - was just going to take too long.

You're right about stability. I have no intent to change anything about the black book - probably ever. Maybe if we sold out all our copies, the new printing would incorporate errata, but nothing new is planned in the game system. With the publication of the black rule book, we have achieved what we originally set out to do - save the game engine for its players.

When we do Warrior Armies, all we plan for existing list rules is to clean up the language of some and streamline what they are called and how they are presented to make it easier for a player to refer to them and to determine with which armies they are associated. I for one have no plan to change any existing list rule in any significant way.

We do plan to look hard at some lists in Biblical and Dark for those armies that might not be performing historically. There might also be a such a change or two in mind for Holy, but off the top of my head none comes to mind.
This effort has just begun and Mark is one of those playtesting some of our concepts. This has always been our intent.

But for the main rules and those forces in Imperial, Classical, Feudal, Oriental and New World you are pretty much looking at the way things will be forever.

Warrior Battles can now be done because we have settled on the rules and list rules. This is while Scott leads the effort to do Warrior Armies. The intent for Warrior Armies is to make the lists easier for the player to use - not to change existing lists - with the exception of a few possible list rules for some Dark and Biblical forces.
Following those, we will do Siege Warrior, Fleet Warrior and Campaign Warrior in some order.

The ideas that we are doing what we do to generate more figure sales or to make tons of money at the expense of the player and the historical record are unworthy of further exposition or even of this forum, frankly.

Jon

[scott holder]

I had a response drafted that would have come after Todd's but before our guest's follow-up post. I decided not to post it since it was typically inflammatory rhertoric for which I'm known and loved.

It was tame compared to Jon's reply.

Lemme clarify a couple of things: WRG 7.6 was a Me deal. I discussed doing it with Phil, he said go right ahead and presto, 7.6. And yes, as Jon pointed out, the 1.5 ranks for L was in 7.6 and kept for Warrior.

I "love" the Monty Hall reference, clearly our guest remembers the old days of D&D and the perjorative "monty hall" label to certain campaigns. Nice.

Warhammer: I've never played the game so don't know much about it. As the lead list writer, it's absurd to imprint that philosophy on us given that little fact.

I've said this before (READ THE ARCHIVES!!!!!!) but I'll say it again, List Rules were a given when FHE was formed. We sat down over dinner and I said "one size fits all is an inherent problem with this system and in order to fix that, I feel that list rules will be needed.". All of us agreed on that basic, underlying, principle of Warrior.

If you don't agree that the 7th engine needed fixing beyond cleaning up the obtuse lanquage:

Go.
Play.
Another.
Game.

Thanks and have a nice day!

scott

[joncleaves]

Once again, Scott, I have lost track of which of us is supposed to be the 'good cop"...

[scott holder]

LOL.

I think in this case we decided to play bad cop/bad cop and let the satisfied customers be the good cop.

This is tough to keep straight.

[QBeamus]

To Mr. Cleaves,

I find your response rather ironic. You've obviously got a chip on your shoulder, and are harboring a great deal of insecurity, to have immediately launched into such an inflamatory attack on my character, rather than addressing the substance of my position. I trust you will forgive me if I decline your polite invitation to depart from your presence, and, instead, continue the discussion.

In fact, I was well aware that Four Horsemen did not make money from the sale of figures. Indeed, I thought that so self evident that it never occurred to me that anyone would misconstrue my comments as suggesting otherwise. Rather, my point was to demonstrate, by dint of my example, that I thought the present trend regarding gadget rules on army lists was a bad one.

To Mr. Wilkenson,

I appreciate that your response was generally substantive, but you undermine your position when you base it on facts about which you have no knowledge. In fact, it strikes me as odd that you would think that someone who hadn't been playing the game recently would somehow have found their way to such an obscure forum. I put quite a bit of effort into finding it, as it happens, precisely because I have been playing the game recently, on the whole I like it quite a bit, and therefore am interested in future developments.

And no, I don't mind at all you making the point that Four Horsemen breathed new life into the game. Perhaps it's unfortunate that, as typical in human relations, we tend to focus on the negative and controversial, and so I sought out this forum to voice my complaints, rather than my praise. But, since I appear to have given people the misimpression that I am an unreasonably hateful troll, let me assure the audience that I greatly appreciate several things Four Horsemen has done, not the least of which is sparking new interest in a system that had been waning to "de beerus and pretzelus," as it is known to my fellow fans of WRG. The "white" book may have had its problems, but the contrast between it and my old WRG book was marvelous. I also did specifically advert to the fact that the purpose of some of the "freebies" were for the laudible purpose of making otherwise unviable armies viable, e.g. the Japanese.

But I won't try to recite everything that has been done right. I'm content to let the hundreds of dollars I'm spending on their products do that speaking for me. My intent here is to offer what I consider to be valid critism, in the hope that even more can be done right.

And so let me try to express my concerns a different way. I'm sure that we are all in agreement that we would like at least the majority of army lists to offer playable armies. I'm also sure we'd all like 100 points of one troop type to have roughly the same overall value as 100 points of any other troop type. It is, therefore, distrubing to have precisely the same sort of troop on two different lists, with precisely the same price, but to have the troops on one list perform RADICALLY better than those on the other. If there is to be a radical difference in the performance of those troops, it should be (1) historically supportable, and (2) reflected in a difference in the type of troop. To re-use my previous example, if the medieval Spanish close order LTS troops were decidely inferior to the Greek phalanxes of 1500 years earlier, they they shouldn't be depicted as being the same kind of troop.

Finally, I think someone raised a useful issue when they mentioned "stability." It is a flaw of a certain type when two lists offer identical troop types for identical costs with decidedly different effectivenesses. It is a problem of a completely different sort when someone invests hundreds of dollars, or, worse, hundreds of hours purchasing and painting troops, only to later discover that Monty Hall has given exactly the same type of troop--but not the figures you've bought and painted and based--a radical improvement in their effectiveness. If the concensus is that people's reaction to having this happen to them is overheated, I submit it is understandibly so.

[Mark Stone]

[joncleaves]

QB

You are forgiven for not knowing who you are talking to....Clearly someone who calls me insecure is operating on less than the facts....lol

I am a little hard on the anonymous poster, tis true. Deal with it, or identify yourself.

You will have a difficult time demonstrating that "the present trend regarding gadget rules on army lists [is] a bad one." No one in a position to change anything at FHE believes they are "gadget rules". No one at FHE reacts to the words "gadget rules" or "monty hall" with the thought that the speaker is truly engaged in a useful discussion. No part of any of your posts has proven that the list rule concept is a bad one, while to the contrary, sales and feedback have provided us with much data that we are doing it right.

But heck, you've stuck in there, so maybe its possible to engage in an actual discussion about Warrior lists with you - despite the pejorative manner in which you introduced the topic. In that vein let's look at the simple issue of money spent on figures for Warrior armies, since that seems to be the biggest area of your concern. Personally, I'd be more interested in discussing where you think we might have gotten the history wrong, but that does not seem to be an issue here as you have provided no insight into the possibility that we have and no part of your posts disputes an FHE decision on historical terms.

Before we start, let me summarize some things you may not know.

1. The point system does not perfectly reflect pure tournament combat value, but is rather a hybrid system primarily concerned with matching combat value to 'effort' required by the army in question to field the troop in question.

2. Warrior armies are balanced in-period against historical opponents and not troop element by troop element across all periods.

3. No list rule was written to make a list "more viable". All list rules were written to make their troop type perform as we believe it did historically and where the basic game engine fails to reproduce the correct effect.

So, let me get this straight - you bought a bunch of figures. Sometime after you bought those figures another army list book is published and in that book a list rule gives abilities to a troop type that has a morale/training/type/weapon equivalent in your list and now - what? You wish you had bought those figures instead? Does that mean you bought the original figures thinking they were good in an open tourney setting but found others you now want more - meaning you have no historical attachment to the originally purchased figures? And were not planning to play them primarily in historical matchups? Do I have the issue right?

If I do, what exactly has that got to do with us?

You are correct in one area for certain. We have no real desire to worry about whether the point value of medieval spanish spearmen is precisely correct with respect to open-tourney combat value of hoplites.

What we care about is if hoplites perform against historical opponents the way we think they should perform. If you have evidence we got *that* wrong - PLEASE share it.

But whether the points system produces anomalies in cross-period gaming is not an important issue to us.

Welcome aboard.
Jon

[Terry Dix]

Q,
Your general assesment of value is flawed, 100 points can't equal 100 points on a specific match up. Only by looking across the full spectrum of matchups can you evaluate its combat value. Combat value is only part of the equasion, a unit of LI doesn't have the same combat value as a unit of HI, but its value to its army can make it worth more to a general.

Jon has stated he will look at any complete point system, I have put about 100 hours developing a spreadsheet to do a complete survey of the combat values to see how good the system is. The list rules are there to make troops preform closer to their historical record. The list rules that are given to the various lists help balance the scales where the troops consistantly under preform vs their historical opp. There isn't a tournament effect in consideration, FHE wants the troops that get list rules to preform closer to their record and that is what matters. Your specific example holds no merit as the list rules in place make the Greeks out preform the later LS troops. I would be happy to give a breakdown this evening when I get home to my PC.