Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[scott holder]

NICT

1) Rob Turnball, Seleucid, 39.2
2) Ewan McNay, Sassanid Persian, 37.6
3) Dan Wokye, Inca, 33.9
4) Frank Gilson, Ghaznavid, 33.5
5) Jake Kovel, Medieval Irish, 30.9
6) Dave Markowitz, Swiss, 29.5
7) Dennis Shorthouse, Neo-Assyrian Empire, 29.2
8) Scott McDonald, Timurid, 29
9) Tim Grimmett, Granadine, 26.1
10) Derek Downs, Later Tang Dynasty, 23.6
11) Rick Parrish, Later Tang Dynasty, 17.8
12) Steve Rawls, Early Byzantine, 13.6
13) Todd Kaeser, Knights of St John, 4
14) Fred Stratton, Alexandrian Imperial, 3
15) Rich Kroupa, Viking, 2
16) Chris Richardson, Feudal Japanese, 1


Mini (15mm only)

1) Sean Scott, Italian Condotta, 19.5
2) Dave Dietrich, Maccabean Jewish, 17
3) Bill Low, New Kingdom Egyptian, 12.4
4) Matt Koller, Neo-Babylonian, 11.2
5) Scott McCoppin, Indian, 5.1
6) Matt McCoppin, Alexandrian Imperial, 5


Theme (25mm)

1) Scott McDonald, Catalan Company, 23.2
2) Dan Woyke, Georgian, 19.7
3) Scott Holder, Early Byzantine, 18.9
4) Frank Gilson, Nikephorian Byzantine, 18.4
5) Rob Turnball, Komnenan Byzantine, 17.9
6) Matt Kollmer, Nikephorian Byzantine, 15
7) Dave Markowitz, Rus, 14.5
8) Craig Scott, Sassanid Persian, 14
9) Rich Kroupa, Georgian, 13.1
10) Jamie White, Early Byzantine, 11.7
11) Sean Scott, Italo/Siculo Norman, 11.5
12) Chris Richardson, Moldavian, 11
13) Rob Richardson, Early Byzantine, 9.7
Bill Low, Nikephorian Byzantine, 9.7
15) Mike Kelly, Moldavian, 9
16) Greg Croyle, Komnenan Byzantine, 5.6

Theme (15mm)

1) Ewan McNay, Early Palaeologan Byzantine, 13
2) Todd Kaeser, Arab Conquest, 12
3) Derek Downs, Later Ottoman Turk, 10
4) Don Carter, Nikephorian Byzantine, 3

Open (25mm)

1) Sean Scott, Italian Condotta, 28.1
2) Jamie White, Early Byzantine, 24.7
3) Rich Kroupa, Viking, 23.3
4) Mike Kelly, Ayyubid Egyptian, 21.1
5) Chris Richardson, Feudal Japanese, 18.3
6) Rob Richardson, Early Byzantine, 13.3
7) Phil Gardocki, Anglo-Irish, 12.9
8) Todd Kaeser, Knights of St John, 11.4
9) Bill Low, Tepanec, 9.2
10) Matt Kollmer and Ted Greenspan, Moldavian, 7.2
11) Greg Croyle, Komnenan Byzantine, 7
12) Jim Bisigani, Feudal Japanese, 6

Open (15mm)

1) Dave Dietrich, Maccabean Jewish, 12
2) Don Carter, Later Carthaginian, 10
3) Matt McCoppin, Spanish, 9
4) Scott McCoppin, Later Achaemenid Persian, 5

Sportsman: Fred Stratton (also nominated Ewan McNay, Jake Kovel, Frank Gilson, Sean Scott)
Best Camp: Rich Kroupa (actually his Viking Longboat)

Greg Hauser donated another painted element of one's choice as a prize. Steve Rawls did yoeman's duty umping the Theme. In fact he ended up playing in the first round to prevent a bye but then Mike Kelly came in and played out the rest of the day. And Eric Turner graciously floated for the NICT (he was qualified) and the 15mm Mini and ended up umping the NICT for a good chunk of Thursday as I was running (and playing in) of all things, a DBA tourney on the other side of the room.

After a couple of months of brainstorming and making a few tweaks, the Cockamammie Deployment System was positively received. The usual suspects still play their games right up to the end and need time to "finish things up" so making some universal pronouncement about the system speeding up games is problematic. However, it enables close order foot (combined with marching on 3) to engage quickly if desired and combined with the two Irr close order charge tweaks we've instituted, I think we're onto something. Expect this at Fall In and we'll do it again next year, then re-evaluate.

Terrain, ah terrain. Eric was painting ground cloths Thursday morning. Our better-than-expected turnout meant we still needed 3 substitutes on Saturday but we're almost there. The feedback we received was fantastic! Everybody definitely liked the look of what was on the table and the overall consistency. As a reminder, what we have now has been the work of Rich Kroupa (the hills and the major water features), Eric (the ground cloths and some of the trees and "chips") and me (flocked terrain outlines, some "chips" and some trees). This is definitely a work in progress but in terms of display, I can honestly say we had the best overall look of anybody in our tourney area.

Preset terrain was also well received. I know not everybody likes it but Eric does put thought into the layouts and it relieves everybody of bringing (crappy) terrain. It's impossible to say at this point how preset will affect army selection and composition, it's still hard to run loose order foot armies in this game but picking one's terrain wasn't any more helpful in that regard either.

So, we'll be using preset terrain and the new deployment system for next year. Hopefully we'll have some more terrain features for next year that will enhance the visuals and provide a few more "challenges" for the players. Again, thank Eric and Rich for storing and hauling this stuff up to the shows. Good looking terrain ultimately comes down to people willing to do that storing and hauling so that everybody benefits from a better display.

We still need to "define" the hills better. I typically had at least one question per round about LOS on the hills. It should be easy, we either somehow tastefully paint lines on them or we define all of them as crested (with a plateau area) and let the rules handle LOS. More on that as it develops. But the hills rock! No stands falling over, they're sculpted and just look great. Again, thanks to Rich for the labor and the concept behind them.

We had tons, and I mean tons of room. I don't expect that to be the case next year given we won't be back at Valley Forge (nobody knows where Hcon will be as I type this). So, I waved buh bye to a place that, while loud, was a far better Hcon experience than just about any we've had at Lancaster for a good ten years.

The Byzantine Theme was simply outstanding! We had great turnout in 25mm and for once, we had a tourney built around certain armies and those armies were present! Everybody agreed that the handicapped system helped achieve this so expect the same next year (more on Themes in a separate post later).

What I loved was the engaged discussion many of us had over...darts. I'd worked with the FL guys for months leading up to this on an army list. I show up Wed night to ump two NICT games and get a pickup game in with Fred Stratton. Steve Rawls ambles in and we start discussing the use of darts with the Skutatoi. He made a good argument for dropping them...which I did for the Theme on Friday. OTOH, Jamie White still used them. Why? As he put it "habit". So, for the rest of the weekend, many of us would go back and forth on this subject. It was great!

From the Hcon events thread, you've read about how possibly eye raising the point system was this year. Heh heh, it started, kinda, in the Theme. I beat Dan 5-1 in the last round, had 11 base points to his 9 and yet look at the standings. In fact, I could trace my slight drop in the final standings to *one* die roll in my Round 2 game against Sean. All my own fault. I had some LI Psiloi unit twiddling its thumbs behind the lines since it had done what it needed to do. I had a unit that was going to rout, saw it coming miles away and such, had plenty of time to either counter or prompt a retirement to get the LI unit out of waver test range. I never did. Blew the eventual waver test, shaking the LI unit and causing that command to go into retreat. That changed a 5-2 win vs Sean into a 4-3 grind fest again Sean...and that was the difference between 2nd and 3rd, one waver test.

I actually like all of this. It's great trash talking Dan about his 2nd place finish knowing he got beat in the last round. The Early Byzantines are (now) a fascinating army to run. Yeah, no shock whatsoever but there's a subtlety of possibilities that has me hooked hard. And I typically suffer from "short attention span theater" when it comes to armies. Can't wait to play it again.

The only rules "surprise" had to do with counters. Ah, the internet. The convention center has a booming free wireless signal so I had various web pages up the entire weekend. Which helped since this thread:

http://www.fourhorsemenenterprises.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16836&highlight=counter+formation

had people changing what they thought they could do.

I always come back from these events energized. We had a great turnout (by recent standards and believe me, nobody else in ancients/medievals is drawing hordes of players), a great theme, great looking games and a dedicated player base.

scott

[Ewan McNay]

NICT

1) Rob Turnball, Alexandrian Imperial, 39.2

Congratulations again, Rob! [I am pretty sure that he ran Seleucid, though – we had a long discussion about Hypaspists and the available elephants and such.]

2) Ewan McNay, Sassanid Persian, 37.6
3) Dan Wokye, Inca, 33.9
4) Frank Gilson, Ghaznavid, 33.5
5) Jake Kovel, Medieval Irish, 30.9
6) Dave Markowitz, Swiss, 29.5
7) Dennis Shorthouse, Neo-Assyrian Empire, 29.2
8) Scott McDonald, Timurid, 29
9) Tim Grimmett, Granadine, 26.1
10) Derek Downs, Later Tang Dynasty, 23.6
11) Rick Parrish, Later Tang Dynasty, 17.8
12) Steve Rawls, Early Byzantine, 13.6
13) Todd Kaeser, Knights of St John, 4
14) Fred Stratton, Alexandrian Imperial, 3
15) Rich Kroupa, Viking, 2
16) Chris Richardson, Feudal Japanese, 1

And this list really is impressive. We have close foot, loose foot, knights, elephants, and even some cav. Neat set of armies.

Sportsman: Fred Stratton (also nominated Ewan McNay, Jake Kovel, Frank Gilson, Sean Scott)

Well, thanks, whomever! One of the really, *really* good things about the Warrior crowd over the past decade is that many of the rougher edges, to which I am and was no exception, seem to have been smoothed. Steve Rawls noted something similar in a recent post: over the weekend there was only one unpleasant interaction, and for a high-stress, competitive environment that’s not bad at all.

After a couple of months of brainstorming and making a few tweaks, the Cockamammie Deployment System was positively received.

Yeah, I didn’t really hear anyone disliking it. The *combination* of added utility to scouting and ability to deploy closer was interesting and I think a good thing; it’ll take a few comps for everyone to adjust, I suspect.

… combined with the two Irr close order charge tweaks we've instituted…

Uh-oh. What did I miss?

The Early Byzantines are (now) a fascinating army to run. Yeah, no shock whatsoever but there's a subtlety of possibilities that has me hooked hard. And I typically suffer from "short attention span theater" when it comes to armies. Can't wait to play it again.

Well, good; having some cav armies that are competitive is a good thing.

The only rules "surprise" had to do with counters. Ah, the internet. The convention center has a booming free wireless signal so I had various web pages up the entire weekend. Which helped since this thread:

http://www.fourhorsemenenterprises.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16836&highlight=counter+formation

had people changing what they thought they could do.

No kidding; and it was slightly chagrinning to find myself having asked a question (and received an answer) several years ago, yet not having retained it..

Thanks again, Scott.

[lilroblis]

Seluicid it is - I like the ability to skirmish with my peltasts - and feel it wins me more games than the failed waver tests cost me
Though Ewans win was partially facilitated by my C class troops shaking when charged
I also take a very expensive list all the extra armour etc - as it normally pays off

[scott holder]

Rob had an idea about the Theme that on the one hand I dismissed and the other sympathized with:

Changing your Theme army list after the first round.

Actually, I had to do it. I botched the cost of my ever-changing Skutatoi and had to rejigger the list to be legal for the second round. I didn't change the the essential character of the list. And I went back to Steve after the round and asked him to give Rob Richardson another point (we played 2-2 in the first round so that changed the score to 3-2) to account for the 5 times factor if your list is over 1600 points. My defense is I was using a slight variation of Jamie White's list and he had the Skuts costed incorrectly. I made that change for bound 2, dropped a 2E LI unit and combined two other LI units into 1 unit. Presto, legal.

My change wasn't significant but that's only because I'd been talking with the FL guys for months about Early Byzantines and we'd been swapping lists. Thus, I knew the ins and outs of the list despite only having played it once.

But then came my Wed night game against Fred and the resultant discussion with the FL guys about darts. So, in effect, I had a "first round game" in which I could evaluate the list again and make a few changes.

The FL guys have the good fortune of being able to play Warrior regularly and thus, they work out, or at least work thru, the various permutations of list development. Folks like me and Rob don't. It's not like the good old days when at worst you had a single regular opponent to try out things or at least work the kinks out of how you play an army built a certain way. For most of us, it's literally "build and hope for the best".

Another example is from an email I just received from Frank in which he said about his Nikephorian Byzantines "I had too much LC ...and one too many SHC...should have maxed out on Varangians as they are awesome."

So, I was far more receptive to Rob's than I would have been 15 years ago.

The idea would be if you wanted to change your list (Theme only) after the first round, you could. Change it any way you want. But then you'd hafta stick with that list for Rounds 2 and 3.

Something else for me to mull over for another 6 months or so.

scott

[Historian]

Remember when Rev 7 was still relatively new, and Tournaments were 1500 points? There was one at the Penn Harris that we were allowed 5 lists. I dutifully arrived with 3 copies of 5 differently tuned lists. I had them labeled “anti-pike”, “anti-knight” etc… In the end, I played the same list all three rounds anyway.

I am not against jiggering the lists for round 2, and keeping it for round 3. It will allow for correcting egregious errors. And it is an opportunity to make an on-the-fly gross-error-in-judgment that would be worth a story. (I needed more lights, so I switched my pike unit for a couple of LI’s, and the next two fights were against Scythians!)

The time will have to be allowed for. Are you going to know your second bound opponent before adjustment? I have been to tourneys where my opponent had an incomplete or missing list, it is not fun to sit there for half an hour while my he makes adjustments.

[Ewan McNay]

I remember the 'two-list' days vividly - it was a huge shock coming from the UK, and seemed to me to limit the viable armies a lot as you really wanted one that could have two different characters; Seleucids in the old book were a great example, as they could have either (i) 10 El and almost no cav, or (ii) 5 units of SHC and no El; a couple of others also had such flexibility.

I do think we're at the point where pre-made, pre-printed lists should be the norm, preferably with a copy to give to each opponent after the battle. Apart from speeding things up, avoids any possibility of error from the last-minute list generation. So if we were switching between rounds*, I'd think it would only be to one of the additional pre-prepared lists.

[*Initial reaction is to be opposed; I think that analysis of available armies - especially in Themes - and preparation of lists is an interesting and valid part of how one wins battles.]

[lilroblis]

I like the idea, but my theme list gets refined in a 10 hour drive to the convention, and maybe again after round 1- but the theme should just be fun

[srawls]

[Ewan McNay]

Steve - care to summarise the darts debate?

I hugely enjoy list discussions. As is probably obvious. Doesn't hurt that I won my first tournament 25 years ago (!!! gulp) after noticing a line in the 'X-rules' for the event that was totally broken and building a list around it that no-one else had thought of*; been hooked ever since. Tim Brown is the reigning and undefeated champ of this in my book in recent years.

[Where is Tim, anyway?]

{*This was the old Gush WRG Renaissance rules. 6th-edition ish morale checks. The tournament added a -1 for, I believe, both shooting cpf and a measure of ratio of unit size to closest enemy unit. Typical armies had used 5- or 6-figure heavy cav; I took a 50-man unit of Polish musket-armed E-class peasants with the CinC attached to bolster their own morale, and essentially any unit opposing it routed as soon as they opened fire. It was glorious . )

[srawls]

The discussion was whether Early Byzantine Scut really need to have darts or not. Scott had purchased darts for his and after much discussion I convinced him they were not required as he would never use them.

Steve

[Ewan McNay]

I got that much . I was interested in the thought process that led to that conclusion: my default - as apparently that of others - would have been to buy darts to increase ability to push away lights and assist adjacent units, I think.

[scott holder]

That's true if all you're relying on is the Scuts to do the pushing. But the way the army is constructed, you have all the tools to do that without Darted Skuts.

In theory, you deploy all your lights well forward. Also keep avenues open for the glorious Kavallarioi. The idea is to blow the opponents skirmish screen back with those units. Steve can explain this better since he's tested it for months against Derek, et. al.

It works....of course it helps if your opponent actually has a screen. In my first game against Rob Richardson, he didn't have any screen to speak of. We ended up in a big Skut on Skut rugby scrum with a few Kavallarioi on Kavallarioi fights that were also equal die rolling exercises. Our light activity was confined mostly to the flanks.

My second game wasn't much different against Sean's Italo/Siculo Normans. I assumed he would have brought the Sicililan Muslim allies but he didn't, that's why the game was more of a slugfest than the rest.

Game three against Dan's Georgians *was* a slightly different story. He would skirmish his HC L, B units in front of the Skuts. Ah, but I'd position my Kavallarioi off to each supporting flank for charges. His only responses were evades because of the angle(s) and I had several chances to catch him on various up/down combos. Didn't happen but it kept his cav attack totally off balance on my center-left. And when I finally didn break thru a unit in the middle, it meant I could convert charge into a standing HC L, B unit which was, of course, death for it.

I joked that the only thing Darted Skuts did for me (in my pickup game vs Fred) was to make up for my atrocious HTH dice. I routed an El unit only because I managed to support shoot them enough to get a total of 3 CPF. But I should have routed them without that based solely on HTH that came close to being even.

All of this is why I've really taken to this list. It has a lot of things going on...which probably isn't good for a rusty player like me to try and handle.

This weekend was also odd for me in that I had an unusually long string of crappy dice. Typically I don't see that, the highs and lows and evens all seem pretty well spaced for me but not this weekend.

Finally, on the subject of tweaking lists after the first round, like I said, when Rob brought this up, my knee jerk attitude was "yeah, right". I've loved the pre-tourney list brainstorming I've been doing with Derek since the 2007 Rise of Rome tourney. It's been a blast and this year expanded over to Steve since he's been the one really putting the E Byzantine list thru its paces. Nonetheless, I do see a valid reason for allowing a post-Round 1 list tweak. Again, need to mull it over. Lemme stress, we're not talking any multi-list approach to tourneys anymore. Heh heh, those days are looooong gone.

scott

[lilroblis]

I thought the earlier conversations were great, but one thing I have learn't is that as much as the numbers indicate an army, just as important is knowing what you like to play.
So for example I would take Dart, because I dont run a heavy lights screen typically - and running darts is cheaper than running lights - with my play style. Plus with a back rank of bow I need an up 1 to halt other peoples skutatoi - or about even on frontage to disorder (and cause a waver test on almughvars - the biggest threat in theme to skutatoi.
16at 2 or 24 at 2 on 18 men needs a li sl or some bow armed cav and a waver test an up one with 5 additional figures - plus and its 3 CPF and those mughs are now just going to die.
Different thought process - different results - but I do not typically run a screen - I dont get value for it agains almost anyone .
Thoughts anyone?
note my list did not get the option of darts - so ran a 36 man Kontoratoi unit - has to be Irreg D/C and they consistantly did nothing but rout all tournament - including losing a face up battle with IrrC MI B, sh who recoiled them disordered and then did it again.

[scott holder]

This is a great discussion. It was similar to a running discussion we had all weekend. It was great after a game asking Steve (or Jamie or Rick) whether or not they "missed" darts or used em or whatever. That typically sucked in somebody else asking wtf we were talking about and the brainstorming was great. Very collegial all around.

One thing I need to point out in all of this is that we had a Theme tournament and we actually had "named" armies of the theme participating! Everyone agreed that the handicapping system worked really well. We had "just" two armies participating (Sassanid and Moldavian) that were handicapped. Believe me, we'll do this again next year so Derek, start looking at enemies of Classical Warrior lists 3 and 17. And those lists as well.

scott

[Ewan McNay]

The handicap worked fine to discourage army use. What it didn't seem to do was encourage use of the 'lesser' armies.

Might be worth considering non-points advantges to them - a re-roll, perhaps? - if their increased use is desired.