Visigoths in Usk

[hammy]

As some people may by now be aware the first Art of War 'tournament' was held last weekend as part of Richard Bodley Scott's Godendag competition in Usk. The competition was made up of a mixture of beta testers, the design team and one pair of players who were moved from the main DBM competition to balance the numbers.

I went with my regular DBM doubles partner Martin Wilkinson and after a fair bit of thought decided to take an Early Visigoth army. I did this partly because it involved using figures that I hadn't used much recently and partly because I was a bit concerned that cavalry armies could be a bit too powerful so thought that trying an anti-infantry foot army would be a good test.

There were a total of 12 teams in the competition and of those 12, 3 of the more experienced were using Arab cavalry armies which rather confirmed my concern and also filled me with trepidation. Of the other armies present the ones that concerned me were the two Roman armies (Principate and Dominate) and the Castilians which I thought would have a lot of kinghts and light troops.

Our army comprised of :
1 Field commander
2 Troop commanders
1 BG Nobles: Cavalry, Superior, Undrilled, Protected, -, Lancers, Swordsmen
5 BG's Warriors: Heavy foot, Average, Undrilled, Protected, -, Impact foot, Swordsmen
3 BG's Archers: Light foot, Average, Undrilled, Unprotected, Bow, -, -
1 BG Javelinmen: Light foot, Average, Undrilled, Unprotected, Javelins, Light spear, -
1 BG Huns: Cavalry, Superior, Undrilled, Protected, Bow, -, Swordsmen

With an allied contingent of Carpi (Dacians)
1 Carpi allied general: TC
1 Cavalry: Light horse, Average, Undrilled, Unprotected, Javelins, Light spear, -
1 Falxmen: Medium foot, Superior, Undrilled, Unprotected, -, Heavy weapon, Heavy weapon
1 Javelinmen: Medium foot, Average, Undrilled, Protected, -, Impact foot, Swordsmen
1 Archers: Light foot, Average, Undrilled, Unprotected, Bow, -, -

Game 1 - War of the Roses English

Our first game saw us drawn against Simon Hall's son Mathew who was using a War of the Roses army with Scots allies. Matt's army was made up of lots of small BG's of longbowmen with dissmounted men-at-arms interspersed either side of a solid centre of Scots spearmen. The battlefield was essentially open, the only significant terrain was some broken ground on our left flank. We chose to deploy our Carpi ally on the left to assault the broken ground, the mass of foot warriors to the right of them aimed squarely at the English right flank and the Scots while our Huns, the Visigoth nobles and a couple of BG's of light foot covered the right flank of our attack.

The Visigoth left surged forwards to meet the English line despite a valiant delating attempt by some border horse while the skirmishers on our right did their best to slow and disrupt the English left. In the first part of the game the left most English archer BG was broken by the combined shooting of two BG's of our foot skirmishers, the Huns fell back slowly suffering a few casualties from long range archery and the Visigoth left possitioned itself for a charge. The Archers on the English right were less numerous than on their left and the mass of approaching foot meant that their shooting was pretty much ineffective.

The next phase of the battle saw one BG of light foot archers stray rather too close to the next BG of longbowmen and an unfortunate evade saw them caught by a charge from the far better equiped English who made very short work of the archers. The Visigoth left hit the English right but the leftmost BG of warriors was late ariving because of the delay caused by the border horse. This meant that our warriors were overlapped at both ends of the battle. The first rounds of combat were inconclusive, the longbowmen held their ground remarkably well (OK, the rolled like heroes).
When the delayed BG of warriors hit the line the Carpi falxmen also threw themselves into the fray and this tipped the ballance on the left. The English line rapidly crumbled leaving one lone BG of men-at-arms vastly outnumbered trying to stem the flow. In the centre the battle raged back and forth and eventually the pressure from the English left (and some good dice) told and BG after BG of warriors turned and fled. On our right the commander of the skirmish wing managed to rally the broken foot archers but we were unable to slow the English advance enough to save our centre.

This left a situation where the Visigoth left needed to redeploy to fight the English centre before the English centre could do too much more damage. The undisciplined nature of our army menat that this redeployment coudln't be completed before time expired but our combined foot skirmishers BG's were able to slow the English advance and protect our camp.

The final score was a marginal victory for the Visigoths. We felt that we havd over commited to the left but equally that could be considered to be due to a clever ploy by Matt who carefully selecte plenty of broken terrain and then ignored it which effectively took our Carpi ally out of the game as he had nobody to fight.

Game 2 Dominate Roman

This time we were up against a 2nd century Roman army. Legionaries are very tough and we were less than keen to fight them which meant that our warriors turned from being a strike force into almost a liability (or at least bait). This time there was a lot of terrain on the battlefield. We were fighting in agricultural lands and a good portion of the right flank was covered with scattered fields and broken areas. A couple more large fields gave us something to hide our warriors behind.

We deployed our light foot and the Carpi on the right and most of our wariors on the left behind one of the fields while the open space in the middle of the table was screened by the Huns and the Carpi light horse. A couple of BG's of warriors were left of centre behind the field wehre they could possibly push through in support of the Carpi and lights.

Facing us on our left was a mass of Axuilia, in the centre were four BG's of legionaries (not nice) and on our right our massed light and medium troops faced several BG's of light horse. Another group of Romans seemed to be hiding near the Roman camp, the hiding had something to do with them being poor quality.

The Romans began with a general advance but their right was slowed a little by a long steepish hill. The Legoinaries confident in their might advanced rapidly, the light horse went to screen the Roman left and the less than enthusiastic bunch at the rear wheeled and started to move to the centre aiming to get behind the Legions.

We advanced with our cental mounted and pushed as hard as we could on the right. The first significant action was in the centre where the Huns and the Carpi light horse started engaging the Legions. The initial exchange was ineffective and the Romans charged our mounted who evaded. The Roman charge resulted in one BG of legionaries ending significantly further forwards than the others and we were able to concentrate the missile fire of the Huns and Carpi horse on them. The extra volume of missiles told and the Romans became disrupted. The Romans continued to advance but did not dress their line and some more rounds of shooting and some poor rolling by the Roman general resulted in this BG of legionaries becomming fragmented then breaking!! The BG nect to the broken legion was rather taken aback by the rout of thier friends and when the Huns poured more arrows into them they too became fragmented. By now the Huns were feeling like gods and decided to charge. Unfortunatley for the Huns the Roman nerve held and once in close combat it was a different story. Shortly after their charge the Huns were broken.

On the right we had a numerical advantage and were able to force our way through the bits of terrain and using light foot and medium foot in conjunction the horse archers facing us were pushed back and in some instances disrupted by foot archery. We decided to try to get the two BG's of warriors forward to help and they advanced as fast as they could through the field. The Romans tried to delay this advance with light horse javelinmen and also detached one legion to try to threaten the flank of the warriors. The next key moment was when the warriors charged the javelin light horse who evaded clear but the warriors enthusiasm (a big variable move) caried them just far enough forwards to leave their open flank too far from the threatening legion and right in the face of a group of poor quality archers who had rather rashly advanced towards the field. The warriors made short work of the archers but the other Romans in the vicinity were unperturbed.

As the game progressed the Carpi javelinmen headed straight for the Roman camp and eventually got to a point where two BG's of skirmishers and the Roman camp were in their direct line of charge. The Romans responded by massing their various skirmishers and trying to shoot the problem away. This partially worked in that the Carpi javelinmen became disrupted. The Carpi then charged the troops to their front. In a deperate attempt to save the camp (and the skirmishers) light horse charged both flanks of the Carpi but this only reduced the effect of the charge rather than stopping it dead. The wild melee that ensued was relatively even as there were a lot of Carpi javelinemen and they were protected (as opposed to the skirmishers being unarmoured) and also swordsmen. The skill and armour of the Carpi effectively offset their tactical dissadvantage and they held everywhere and even won some of the combats. The real problem now for the Romans was that the Carpi were not steady, in AoW mounted who are facing steady troops break off and regroup but if facing disrupted or fragmented oppoenents they have to stand and fight (this is the main reason the Huns were broken).

We advanced some light foot to look to join in the combat and help the Carpi, the Romans brought two more BG's of skirmishers to help with overlaps and still the Carpi held. Eventually one of the poor quality light horse BG's broke and this combined with the damage caused by the Carpi resulted in three more skirmisher BG's breaking. The way to the camp was open but it was late in the day....

On our left the Romans had taken advantage of breaking the Huns and their legionaries hit one of our BG's of warriors. The Romans this time showed that they are not feared for nothing and they quickly cut through our troops. Fortunately the neighbouring troops were steadied by a general and not adversely affected by the rout. The Huns were just rallied before they fled the field but we never managed to fully steady them and in the centre the warriors who broke the archers were eventually forced to charge the now rallied Roman legion that had been routed by the Huns, this time the Romans got it right and just as time ran down they broke the warriors which meant that instead of a moderate victory we only managed a second minor victory.

I felt really rather happy with the way this game had gone. The Carpi javelinment were a revalation (OK, they might have been a touch fortunate but...)

After the second game all the players and designers got together for a couple of beers and a discussion of points learned and issues arrising. Comments from testers were gratefully accepted and addressed. All in all this was one of the most enjoyable days wargaming I have had for a long while.

Yours

James "Hammy" Hamilton

[babyshark]

Hammy:

Thank you for this report. I have been waiting eagerly for some notion of how the game is coming along for a while now. It seems, from your report, that the game is pretty good.

How does AoW compare to DBM in terms of the flow of play during the game?

Interested,

Marc

[hammy]

How does AoW compare to DBM in terms of the flow of play during the game?

OK, Art of War is not like DBM, it does allow you to use DBM based armies and most DBM armies will be able to be shifted without any difficulty to AoW.

Assuming you have read the design principles on the game entry you should have a bit of an idea about how the game will work, if not that is a good place to get a lot of information.

Comaring AoW to DBM at first glance it seems that you can do anything you want because there is no PIP mechanism. There is however the complex maneuver test (CMT) failing one of which will limit what your troops can do to one degree or another. As a result you often have to plan further ahead than you would normally do in a DBM game which is IMO a good thing.

Many troop types have missile capabilities in AoW unlike DBM where very few do. Consider light foot (Ps in DBM), DBM gives light foot a chance to destroy an elephant in combat but that is because the light foot if they win are actually shooting at the elephants and dodging the big stompy feet. In Art of War the light foot actually shoot at the elephants and will probably run away if the elephants charge them. Should the light foot be unfortunate enough to actually have to fight elephants in close combat expect a broken battlegroup of light foot.

Making sure your generals are in the right place is important in AoW wheras in DBM as long as they are roughly in the middle of their command they are fine. DBM allows a general to command effectively 24 inches (60cm) from his troops so they could be spread over twice that distance. AoW genrals are effective a 4, 8 and 12 inches (10, 20 and 30 cm) but can move around more freely. Making sure your generals are in the right place matters.

Combat can be short and sharp or a long drawn out slog, it depends on what is fighting and the dice. Yes a battlegroup can rout in one turn but a fight can also end up lasting four or five.

Setup is quicker than DBM, games develop faster than DBM and in the test comp the majority of the games completed despite the relative inexperience of all the players.

AoW has certainly brought a fresh interest to my ancients wargaming and I am busy considering further new armies to add to my collection on the back of it.

Hope that helps

Hammy

[babyshark]

I have read the design principles, and they seem to me to be an excellent underpinning for a game. There is a long way between first principles and application, however, and I am trying to get a feel for whether the promise of the principles plays out in practice.

How many bounds (or turns, or whatever) do AoW games usually last?

Are the terrain and deployment systems up to snuff?

Do the results of combats (and of games as a whole) feel right?

Thanks,

Marc

[hammy]

How many bounds (or turns, or whatever) do AoW games usually last?

Where the games at Usk were unfinished I think we were managing about 12 os so turns a game.

Are the terrain and deployment systems up to snuff?

Well considering it was a first run out in competiton it was noticable that all the games started quickly (quicker than a lot of the DBM games) and we also saw some pretty varied terrain. On that basis I would say yes but I think that more stress testing is required to be sure. The speed of startup on all the games was a huge change from the sluggish start of a lot of DBM doubles games.

Do the results of combats (and of games as a whole) feel right?

Some combats went a different way to what would be expected but these were generally due to some wild dice fluctuations (read DBM 6-1's). Perhaps the most difficult ones for DBM players are light troops. DBM players are used to being able to throw light in to a lot of situations and expect them to be safe. In Art of War the lights have to work with short range missiles, if they actually engage in close combat with real troops expect trouble for the lights.

I think it boils down to "AoW is not DBM", you will have to learn a few interactions again.

Yours

Hammy