Initial thoughts from 2 new playtesters

[petedalby]

Hello there,

This is the first report from Pete Dalby and Lance Flint regarding AOW version 3.07, very much first impressions based largely upon our initial test session.

1. Fantastic that MU`s have been metricated, but with the success of the 40mm "movement unit" in DBR, why not carry it over? A change to 40mm would match the frontage of a base at whatever scale was in use. The benefit would not be as significant as with DBR over DBM but makes it far easier for a player to judge ranges by eye and creates a certain uniformity within the game?

2. Use of the term Battle Group - sounds far too modern and German to fit in with ancient warfare. What about Battle Unit or Unit of Battle maybe? Or even just Unit?

3. P59 - If say pike in the same BG are in one place 2 deep and in the rest 3 deep are the Melee POA`s calculated separately or does the whole BG have the same POA`s for rank support? Having read through the explanation we believe it to mean the former?

4. Points values - our initial concern is that for what you get in combat, Elite and possibly Superior troops are too cheap. 6 bases of Elite early Legionaries at 84 points appear far better value than 12 bases of Average, protected Pikeman for the same cost? With the results from the combats that we were finding the better quality troops were worth every point in re-rolls, and then some!

5. Quality Troops - as above, the power of re-rolls was constantly decisive in nearly all of the combats that we staged for Hellenistic period scraps, it was delivering much more than just an edge. Should such troops be harder to kill, be able to inflict more kills or simply be more resilient in combat situations? At the moment they receive benefits in all 3 areas which, although early days for myself and Pete, seems too powerful.

6. Why on a melee draw, not shooting, regarding Deathrolls (P. 70,) does the +2 cut in to reduce the chances of casualties? The violence of the combat could cause the potential for huge casualties upon either side and seems to take away the advantage that large units have to absorb slightly more casualties, i.e. warband units that seem to struggle with many combat situations.

7. There seems to be no advantage anywhere for forcing your opponent backwards in a melee? I do not believe that it justifies the full weight of a POA +, or therefore -, but it would be easy to implement other options to reduce the damage on a unit going forward slightly or increase it upon a unit on the back foot? An extra layer of detail which you may be wanting to avoid but maybe something that adds to the all important detail of the combats?

8. P.67 Autobreaks,, at first glance seems a little clumsy and to favour certain sized BG`s, maybe a chart cross-referencing exact unit size and quality to show when a unit breaks would work better?


9. Most of the combats that we tried out for classic Legionary / Pike / Warband / Cataphract / Spear combinations at the Impact Phase, where the number of dice rolls were equal seemed to give the protagonists a 50/50 chance of initial success, maybe too much of a lottery or is the intention for weaker units to have a chance to gain the upper hand early on?

10. P74 Rear Support. Generally well defined, however maybe the supporting unit, as defined, should be within 2 or max.3 actual moves of the troops that it is supporting, for the terrain that it has to move through?

11. We cannot find any extra cost incurred to have an army made up of lots, lists permitting, of little units. This would seem to have the major game problem that a lot of rabble could sit at the back of the battlefield whilst the nobility get themselves hacked to pieces with no serious damage to army morale. The death of the top class units/nobility would have a shattering effect on the levy/rabble/conscripts, whereas the destruction of the latter would be largely ignored by the former? An over statement probably but that is the `gist of it.

Although our combats were very much all isolated test situations we were pleased with how quick they were to calculate and resolve and how easily the mechanism flowed. We did have several rounds of extreme good fortune for hits but they tended to allow weaker POA units to hang around longer rather than shred potentially stronger enemies. However a lot of the Cohesion tests seemed open to huge swings of luck, usually the losing kind! We appreciate the overall need to keep the tally of factors down to a minimum for the sake of playing ease and speed, but the loss of cohesion, rightly so, is desperately crucial to the results of the melees and therefore of course to the game result.

Next step will be a 800 point Punic Wars game, hopefully next week.

[shall]

Thanks for the feedback Pete. Just finishing a session but I will go through it all tomorrow am.

Si

[nikgaukroger]

Hope the development team don't mind but I'll chip in a few thoughts here.

1. I'm going to guess but I'd bet that the 40mm MU has been avoided because it is being used in DBMM and they are trying to put clear water between AoW and DBx where possible/sensible. I have a personal dislike for nthe 40mm base move distance (15mm of course) used in DBR in that it makes the game feel more loike a skirmish than a battle - noth that this can't be fixed by fiddling around with the move rates, of course. BTW don't 25mm figs get based on a 60mm frontage so you couldn't use a 40mm MU for them following your reasoning could you? Or are you suggesting the MU is 1 base width?

2. I agree, but you can't use "unit" as they are not necessarily units they can be representing historical units combined to make a larger whole - in the way late Roman auxilia were paired. How would "Combat Groups" sound?

[shall]

Pete,

Herewith first thoughts. Great to get the report from you and your questions/ideas. Keep them coming.

1. Fantastic that MU`s have been metricated, but with the success of the 40mm "movement unit" in DBR, why not carry it over? A change to 40mm would match the frontage of a base at whatever scale was in use. The benefit would not be as significant as with DBR over DBM but makes it far easier for a player to judge ranges by eye and creates a certain uniformity within the game?

Nick is correct in his coments, but I would also add that base widths makes it harder for have the range of movement we wanted as ratios. LH moving 7 base widths is a bit much for a 6x4 table perhaps. The 3 to 4 ratio for HF vs MF is important to us too. We therefore felt it better to stick with MUs. Also we have aimed ot have 25mm work with the same movement scale.

2. Use of the term Battle Group - sounds far too modern and German to fit in with ancient warfare. What about Battle Unit or Unit of Battle maybe? Or even just Unit?

A rare occasion where there is a firm view on part of the answer. It is crucial to avoid unit as it conflict with the basis of the army level rule design - see design philosphy for full reasoning. In essence we found that all battles had battlegroups made of similar units. That said any name that implies a group of units joined together for the purposes of a major battle would be ok. Nicks Combat Unit is a possible. Any other ideas we are happy to consider - as long as they don't contain the word unit. Please feel fre to suggest any other names with that sole restriction. We wonder about the BG and BL - whether the similarity is helpful or not? Views welcome.

3. P59 - If say pike in the same BG are in one place 2 deep and in the rest 3 deep are the Melee POA`s calculated separately or does the whole BG have the same POA`s for rank support? Having read through the explanation we believe it to mean the former?

Sorry we do need to specify this. Each file is spearate so if you have 2 files 2 deep they get no POA and 2 3 deep would get a +.

4. Points values - our initial concern is that for what you get in combat, Elite and possibly Superior troops are too cheap. 6 bases of Elite early Legionaries at 84 points appear far better value than 12 bases of Average, protected Pikeman for the same cost? With the results from the combats that we were finding the better quality troops were worth every point in re-rolls, and then some!

Keep the feedback coming as the games go by. Points notede for now -if you'll excuse the pun! We'll be rebalancing the points system from time to time and I will put up a sort of survey on this at some point to get the general feelings prior to doing so.

[shall]

5. Quality Troops - as above, the power of re-rolls was constantly decisive in nearly all of the combats that we staged for Hellenistic period scraps, it was delivering much more than just an edge. Should such troops be harder to kill, be able to inflict more kills or simply be more resilient in combat situations? At the moment they receive benefits in all 3 areas which, although early days for myself and Pete, seems too powerful.

Keep an update going for us on this after each game so we can see how your view changes - if at all - with more combats. How many combats would you say were fought Pete?

FWIW we ran the whole system through 1000-combat-a-time simulations. There's a lot going on. Raw, a re-roll of 1s is about 1/2 as valuable as a POA in terms of its effect in terms of winning or losing a combat. E.g. with 12 dice needing 5s an average unit expects 4 hits and a superior 4 + 1/3rd of 2 (the 1s) for 4.67. If the average unit has a POA and needs fours it expects to get 6. Size matters as it reduces the -s for CTs and can give more dice in MELEE with overlaps.

However no "model" can match the feel of real games so we are keen to get to stage where we lots of testers who have got through the initial stages and played 4 or 5 games each. This would then be great team to poll on such matters. We'll return to it all later to rebalance the points.

6. Why on a melee draw, not shooting, regarding Deathrolls (P. 70,) does the +2 cut in to reduce the chances of casualties? The violence of the combat could cause the potential for huge casualties upon either side and seems to take away the advantage that large units have to absorb slightly more casualties, i.e. warband units that seem to struggle with many combat situations.

I see your point and with big hit combats perhaps we should reflect it more - although with big hits the loser still has a good chance of losig a base. The logic was to make the focus on the game on 2 things : winning combats and fosing CT failures. Also we felt that DRs for draws without the +2 was a bit random on smaller units - e.g. take 4 bases hitting each other who draw on 2-2. As is, there is no DR danger. Without the +2 both sides have a 1/3rd chance at random to kill a base. If you lose a base from a 4 base hed to head it a big loss. So it would make a lot of smaller combats random in their outcome rather than determined by who actually won the fight.

Now whether that's a good thing or not is for you guys to tell us....but that's the reasoning so far.

7. There seems to be no advantage anywhere for forcing your opponent backwards in a melee? I do not believe that it justifies the full weight of a POA +, or therefore -, but it would be easy to implement other options to reduce the damage on a unit going forward slightly or increase it upon a unit on the back foot? An extra layer of detail which you may be wanting to avoid but maybe something that adds to the all important detail of the combats?

Another area where I am happy to put the reasoning do far down and invite comment......

Its been on the fence a few times and we think of putting something in and not. As you say not worth a + and therefore needs a different way. Also we did wonder if a large effect of being "pushed back" might be a bit of myth largely generated by wargamers.......troops being pushed back may be just suffering a battering and losing troops or on the verge of breaking, which is alrady reflected. 2 pike blocks pushing each other around a bit in good order is perhaps not too much of an issue - its when the order breaks down that it matters. We reflect this with DISR. Otherwise perhaps just a general tussle. If we added something it would increase the value further of winning the IMPACT phase. It also creates legacies - a need to recall what happened the previous bound - which we have been trying to avoid.

But to say again its been on the fence several times so we'll keep it in mind as more feedback comes in thanks.

8. P.67 Autobreaks,, at first glance seems a little clumsy and to favour certain sized BG`s, maybe a chart cross-referencing exact unit size and quality to show when a unit breaks would work better?

Thanks for the idea. We'll add it to our list and see if its worth the added complexity or not. Has anyone had any odd results from this?

[shall]

10. P74 Rear Support. Generally well defined, however maybe the supporting unit, as defined, should be within 2 or max.3 actual moves of the troops that it is supporting, for the terrain that it has to move through?

This might be a good idea and we'll put it on our dicsussion list.

11. We cannot find any extra cost incurred to have an army made up of lots, lists permitting, of little units. This would seem to have the major game problem that a lot of rabble could sit at the back of the battlefield whilst the nobility get themselves hacked to pieces with no serious damage to army morale. The death of the top class units/nobility would have a shattering effect on the levy/rabble/conscripts, whereas the destruction of the latter would be largely ignored by the former? An over statement probably but that is the `gist of it.

We are keen to avoid any type of indestructable army (or should I be more bold and say we are going to avoid)...and also to have the rules make people use their BGs in the main rather than doing a squirrel nutkin and storing them for later. The first fix should be in each list and then second via the rules. Could you provide a couple of examples so rbs and the list team can pick them up as a first step.

On Victory Conditions - the other way to fix this in the rules - we are waiting to get a good sample of players to poll on this. At present each unit is worth 2 AP lost. This does encouratge careful and sensible use of skirmish units. However it doesn't have the nobility effect you mention, which might ber rather nice.

Rest assured this topic is one of the ones constantly under monitoring by the authors.

Although our combats were very much all isolated test situations we were pleased with how quick they were to calculate and resolve and how easily the mechanism flowed. We did have several rounds of extreme good fortune for hits but they tended to allow weaker POA units to hang around longer rather than shred potentially stronger enemies.

We hope that the multi-roll of a few rounds tends to give troops some chance to fight back adn creates and exciting ebb and flow of battle to respond to.

However a lot of the Cohesion tests seemed open to huge swings of luck, usually the losing kind! We appreciate the overall need to keep the tally of factors down to a minimum for the sake of playing ease and speed, but the loss of cohesion, rightly so, is desperately crucial to the results of the melees and therefore of course to the game result.

Open to any and all specific ideas. CTs are the centrepiece of the game really.

Next step will be a 800 point Punic Wars game, hopefully next week.

Great stuff. The more people we can get through the initial entry barrier the better. I recall learning DBM and I had an immedaite impression and after about 4 games I felt I had got the hang of it.

We'll look forward to the next report and to hearing how your views develop with more games.

Keep it coming and thanks for the invaluable help. We'll try to keep the feedback quick and with enough content to keep a good debate/discussion going.

I am off to give Terry a game with my Greeks against his Skythians.

Si