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Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules
A Four Horsemen Enterprises Rules Set
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scott holder
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Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 6035
Location: Bonnots Mill, MO
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 Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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Frank's comment on mastering deployment is crucial and something we oftentimes overlook here.
Both Phil and Jake are 6th Ed alumni and in that system, at least to me, deployment was *the* crucial part of the game. You blow deployment, why bother playing? Oftentimes, you could see on the 1st or 2nd turn that your deployment sucked and there was nothing you could do about it.
Deployment in Warrior *can* be more forgiving but as Frank alludes to, a lot of that depends on your army. But if you're a deployment wiz, then these armies are well worth your time.
scott
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These Rules Suck, Let's Paint! |
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jamiepwhite
Recruit
Joined: 21 Apr 2006
Posts: 213
Location: Florida
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| Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 7:31 pm Post subject: Deployment and galloglaich comments |
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I like the galloglaich troops, but I won't field them in 4 element units like you were showing in your list. At 16 guys, shieldless heavy infantry is too vulnerable to missile fire. 32 man blocks of galloglaich are less sensitive, and a 4 element detachment of skirmishing slingers is also possible. The other problem in this list is last time I used the list, the galloglaich were too slow to keep up with the lancers, bonnachts, and longbowmen. They had beaten the opposing command and the galloglaich were still trying to catch up to the enemy.
Deployment sensitivity does exist for this army in that there are several troops types marching at different speeds and different terrain sensitivity. The upside of this is somewhere in your army there will be unit that likes the terrain or space, you just have to carefully get it there! 
Thanks,
Jamie |
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Mark Stone
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 2102
Location: Buckley, WA
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| Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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| scott holder wrote: |
Frank's comment on mastering deployment is crucial and something we oftentimes overlook here.
Both Phil and Jake are 6th Ed alumni and in that system, at least to me, deployment was *the* crucial part of the game. You blow deployment, why bother playing? Oftentimes, you could see on the 1st or 2nd turn that your deployment sucked and there was nothing you could do about it.
Deployment in Warrior *can* be more forgiving but as Frank alludes to, a lot of that depends on your army. But if you're a deployment wiz, then these armies are well worth your time.
scott |
Bad deployment is not as precipitously disastrous in Warrior as it is in other games ("Armati" and the old "Shock of Impact" system come to mind). But in Warrior, in many ways bad deployment is the "silent killer". Things seem fine for a number of bounds, and then your battle plan goes south, and in the post mortem after the game you realize you were really screwed from the beginning because of your setup.
This problem is even worse for guys like me who learned WRG7 in 15mm on 1500 points with rules that allowed units to retire and march in the same bound. In the early days I routinely spent Bound 1 using march moves to send units zig-zagging back and forth to where they should have been positioned in the first place.
The swtich to 25mm, and some healthy tightening of the rules from WRG7 to Warrior revealed to me how poor I was at deployment. That hurt my game play more than anything else for several years.
The best cure, and I heartily recommend this to anyone struggling to master deployment, was to play an army that was routinely outscouted. My 10 Independent States list has 8 scouting points. I had to expect to be operating in very cramped quarters, and with little room for redeployment. It took me two years, but I got really good at deployment with that army, and now other armies feel positively spacious by comparison.
-Mark Stone |
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Frank Gilson
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 1553
Location: Orange County California
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| Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 12:05 am Post subject: force march... |
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Jamie mentions Galloglaich having substantial problems 'mattering'.
If your close order foot don't matter, consider force marching them.
If you need to lead with close order foot, but have them operate in conjunction with lancers, consider force marching them.
There are other things you can do to avoid having to force march, yet still get your close order foot to fight in conjunction with mounted troops...but I'll leave a description of that to Mark Stone, say...
Frank |
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Mark Stone
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 2102
Location: Buckley, WA
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 7:22 pm Post subject: Re: force march... |
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| Frank Gilson wrote: |
There are other things you can do to avoid having to force march, yet still get your close order foot to fight in conjunction with mounted troops...but I'll leave a description of that to Mark Stone, say...
Frank |
I spent two years playing an army composed largely of close order foot that was consistently outscouted. The "punch" to the army was the tandem of elephants charging together with HI LTS,Firelance. I had two such tandems at my disposal. The key was to get those to the decisve place in the battle at the right time. These tandems weren't always successful -- I had a rough time with Todd Kaeser's Knights of Saint John -- but they did always get in the fight, and with ample time to get to a decisive result.
There are some related ideas you have to work with to make this possible.
One is the idea of counterpunching: you have to let your opponent come to you, and then react aggressively once you think he has irrevocably committed his strike force. Many people look at defensive armies as purely that: they sit in a defensive position, the attacker picks his spot, and drives home his attack. If you play defensively that way, you will either (a) lose, or (b) run out of time before reaching a decisive result. Counter-punching means something quite different. It means having a reserve that will move aggressively on the enemy, but only after the enemy commits to a line of attack.
The other idea is what makes counterpunching work: interior lines of communication. This is an old idea in military history: the idea that an army deployed in a defensive arc can reploy along shorter lines inside that arc, while the attacking army, should it need to redeploy, has a longer distance to traverse along the outside of the arc.
Simple in principle, difficult in execution. Off the top of my head I can only think of a few cases where this has worked well in miltary history: Napoleon at Leipzig (I think), Stonewall Jackson at Chancelorsville. I'm sure there are others, but not many.
In Warrior this is hard to pull off as well, partly because march moves mitigate some of the disadvantage of exterior redeployment. But it can work in Warrior with some care. My Chinese threw up a small screen of four LI units which bought me enough room to do a little deployment and maneuver. My main battle line pretty much fought where it was standing. But behind the main line, in the center, I deployed the four units that made up my tandems. These would be under "Wait" orders, and would switch to "Attack" once the enemy had committed. From the center position I could use interior lines of communication to get where I was needed relatively quickly.
Sometimes I was meeting my opponent's attack head on. Sometimes I was exploiting an opportunity away from my opponent's attack. In the latter case, I had a reserve of 4 A-class units (guys intended to pass waver tests) who could shore up my line and provide a little counter punch if my opponent's attack began making headway.
And that's pretty much it: have a durable line with a little breathing room. Have a centrally deployed strike force awaiting your opponent's commitment. Find your best attack once your opponent commits, and move to that position along interior lines of communication. Have something in reserve in case your opponent's attack goes well.
I didn't come out on the winning side every time by any means. But there were no low scoring games. In five tournaments over two years, that army was never involved in a game where the winner had less than 4 points.
-Mark Stone |
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