Units?

[hammy]

I have been mulling over the various announcments and comments so far and I realise that TAoW is going to be a unit based system and don't as such have any major issues with that. What does concern me slightly is the effect that unit based mechanics can have on the feel of a game. Once I started to play DBx it made the older sets of unit based rules I had played previously feel almost like one step up from skirmishes rather than big battles. I have noticed much the same effect when I watch people playing WAB and Armati.

Roughly how many units will be in an army in TAoW?
Does a normal sized game feel like a large battle (which is IMO one of the big plus points of DBx)?

Just curious

Hammy

[arnimlueck]

The BIG point of DBM was that an army could look very different in reasonable limits game per game. In one game skirmishers would support heavy Infantry in the next they would operate on their own.

This is not a 100% argument in contra of unit mechanisms, but it is one against defining the units in the army list. Flexible groupings are a good thing - maybe even better: defining units in a pre-game phase? Fixed units tend to limit tactical options like exchanging skirmishers with fighting troups through maneuver in a surprise action.

Conclusion: whatever the term 'unit' or 'group': the mechanisms should allow
1) to assign different tasks to troops battle per battle
2) elemnts of disguise by not amking the troop combinations that will fight in one place obvious from deployment on

The idea behind these arguments is:
- an army list (send to a tournament organizer) should be the equivalent of the troops available to a CinC in one fighting season
- the tactical combination of troops available should be done when preparing for a single battle
linits to this (like general to troops relation as in DBM) are perfectly acceptable, but maybe a trait of allied contigents?

Arnim