Tax Collection

[arnimlueck]

Date: 2007-02-04

Rules version 4.04
List version 1.09

Tax Collection
==============

Yesterday evening Pharao Arnimton wanted to go collecting taxes in
Hungary. Unfortunately it took him some centuries to get there so he
encountered an uneducated people who did not know about their duties.

With the Pharao there was 798 point of ambitious tax collectors. Two
BG of 6 light egyptian chriots, one of 4 syrian chariots, two BG of
chariot runners, two of heavy close fighting foot, two BGs of
archers, some canaanite javelinmen and some lybian Javelinmen. 11 BG
in total. Two field commanders and two troop commanders led this
force.

We where curious to see how they would stand up to heavy hungarian
knights, the renowned light cavalry and supported foot commanded by
king Viktor Juergenyi.

Here come mixed observations and questions:

1) We used the full setup procedure assuming agricultural area. This
gave us some hills and fields and vineyards to my right mostly in my
halve of the board but also a field on Juergens side. I like the
principle of the setup procedure but with open spaces to block space
for open terrain and shifting of terrain it is easy to reserve huge
areas for an open battle field. I feel this is ok, maybe to be
finetuned a bit versus keeping terrain also in the centre.

So we ended up with light chariots facing light cavalry and hungarian
knights on my left. On my right medium and light Bow and heavy
Infantry faced hungarian infantry, more knights, more light cavalry
and Bow.

2) Juergen had his light cavalry and his knights mostly in BGs of
four. This was to cost him dearly throughout the game. First
impression of this was the Chariots shooting versus the light cavalry
so effectively that I was able to fragment one BG on the first
shootout. Later in the game I autobroke two light Cavalry BGs and one
knight BGs that had started the game with four Bases. I know that I
seem fighting windmills here but five bases per BG would have given
the expected stability to these troops without costing Juergen his
concept of an hungarian force. Oh did I mention that most of these BG
spend the majority of bounds in one row...
Oh and of course we repeated the mistake of autobreaking such a unit
after loosing two elements (=50%) instead of reading ">50%" so
autobreaking at 3 bases lost. Please put such a sample for dummies in
the text.

3) Mentioning the Rally Test on the play-aid table for reasons to
Cohesion test would have saved us 5 minutes searching if there where
any special rules for the rally test in a moment of rules confusion

4) Did you talk to people who cannot distinguish colours (whatever is
farbenblind in English) on your movement tables. Try discussing GREEN
advances...

5) I believe this one has been clarified before but I forgot the
solution: Two BGs of impact shock troops next to each other, the right
one declares a charge, the left one does not charge. The right BG is
intercepted very close to its originally position by a BG that is
much wider than itself. Now the friends to the left stand in a
ultimative brilliant position to charge the unit that has
intercepted... Did we play this correctly that they must wait until
THEIR next impact phase to do so? Or could they have declared their
charge after the position of the intercepted charge was established?

6) Another Charge question, hoping for the photos made by Juergen to
explain. In the impact phase the unstoppable hungarian knights contact
three bases of one unit and the flank of an overeager BG that advanced
too far forward. Now what happens in the movement phase? Do the
knights go back fighting the unit with the most contact bases to their
front giving up their promising flank-grip on the advanced unit? That
is how I read the rules but it would be damn stupid by the
hungarians. So we rules that the BG would split into two parts to
fight both enemy BGs.

7) A charge against l Chariots armed with Bow question: we did not
find that the Bow armed chariots had any bonus for their "stand and
shoot" with bows in the impact phase when recieving a charge. We only
found such a bonus for foot supported by bow. Now apart from the
stupidity of having ones chariot being charged by knights (that was an
outcome of a typical DBM maneuver that does not work anymore in AoW)
did we overlook an advantage for the chariots having bows?

Just one bound later: does a hedge that outlines a field give cover
against shooting (like TF ...) for a BG hiding in that field?
Personally I was looking for a rule against cowards hiding behind
hedges but lets first clarify the cover issue.

9) why can't my ferrari tuned light 2hp chariots not break off from
stupid super heavy tin cans with lances in open ground. Ok,ok I hear ye
"why haven't you simply evaded that charge?"I will not! answer that
one it is a state secret.

10) just to re-assure us: if one side lost the impact phase combat
than the reason to cohesion-test "lost the combat" applies as reason
for testing. Maybe adding "bloody nose after impact phase" helps

11) Also this one I believe has already been discussed but I don't
know in which thread: Skirmishers (light horse) charge light foot. The
light foot evade and end up BEHIND their big brothers who are heavy
foot (up on a hill, evil grin in their face). What happens? The light
horse make their variable move and would reach the heavy foot. If this
charge would have been declared at the beginning the LH would need to
test - actually they do not want to charge the heavy guys. Must they
charge into the heavy Infantry or may the break before and stay out of
combat?

What about the overall game flow and feel?
- Movement of BL/BG felt quite ok
- the distinction between the field commander and troop commander was
neglectable
- both had several failed rally tests, so maybe a fine tuning in
generals abilities is needed, so one can send a super boss to the
critical spot
- single commanders speeding over the field to catch BGs in need looks
strange to me, I remember hating it in GWs Warmaster too
- superior light chariot staying in (hopeless) combat for 5 bounds
versus superior and elite heavy knights until breaking was a bit
strange. It saved a** but still I would like to see them flee earlier
and go back to shooting little wooden sticks towards the knights
- one knight BG autobroke while issuing a massacer versus my
cheerleader BG that stood behind the chariots. Now I discovered at
first need that the cheerleaders where not good enough to give rear
support but had no time to move them away. So when they got caught
they inflicted a single casuality on the proud knights - guess on
Juergens dice... So this combat left some lybians wonder how they
deserved such a lucky fate, staying alive (though disrupted or
fragmented, I do not remember) with only one loss even
though they suffered some 8 hits.
- personally I still miss the feeling for my army's state. I do grasp
those units broken or routing. But to calculate the influence of
fragmented BGs I still need to force myself to do the calculation
because they are not so visible on the board. Adding a note to check
at the beginning of the interbound activities to check might help
beginners here

Juergen please add your views and pictures

[arnimlueck]

Oh and one thing I forgot to highlight:

While the hungarian infantry approached the egypt bow and close fighting infantry one BG of clipeati was fragmented by egyptian archers at the first volley. Juergen was not really confident charging in this state. Several rally tests failed. Here the effect of archery seemed a bit too strong.

Then he lost one element due to a death roll. Which element must be removed, a supporting shooter or a clipeati. I assume clipeati as they where the nearest base to the shooters, right?

[j_e_bohn]

I have to admit that this was our first game and we did make several
mistakes:
- First of all Arnim picked up the wrong box and took with him his Ch'in
Chinese and not his Agyptian forces that's why there are only substitutes
for the light chariots on the photos.
- then we overlooked that there is no double drop of cohasion when shot at
- we missed out the POW for beeing better armoured in melee

But I think it was a fun game and we learned a lot of its mechanics.
Movement is very smooth and it worked as desired. shooting seemde to be too
strong but I think only due to the mistake we made.
The only thing I do not like whith shooting is that a whole BG can't shoot
while beeing in close combat. I don't like when troops stand around doing
less than they could. Look at this situation:
B beeing bows, A some heavy foot battle groop and K some knights for
example:

......BBBB
AAAA
..........KKKK

A and B are in close combat but B are now unable to shoot at K. Half the
unit is not involved in anything and can not respond on K though I think in
reality they would have shot at this threat.

But now the photos of the situation Arnim described in his post:

This was the situation in the impact phase. Arnim intercepted whith his l.
chariots (Cav) and I hit them frontally and the other BG in the side.

π

This is what we made of it in the melee phase:

π

Is it solved in this way?

Greetings,

Juergen

[shall]

Hi chaps,

Thanks for the report. I'll deal with the more complex issues tomorrow but a few quickly of the top of my haed:

Charging Skimrishers stop 1 MU from enemy non-skirmishers so they don't have to run into enemy when their target evades

The issue you don't like about shooting is alredy fixed. Bases that are busy may not shoot (i.e no shooting if youa re an ovelap) but if you hava 12 base BG that is 6 wide fighting a one end 4 base widths will be able to fire. Thisis alrready in our latest set but perhaps not circulaed yet.

The double drops for shooting has a huge effect - you will find shooting much more balanced without it.

You declare charges adn then intercepts - there are no oher declaratios so you cannot then add a charge into an inercepting unit - theyu charge them next time.

Cheers
and more tomorrow
Si

[arnimlueck]

Apart from those errors still made

the only thing that I found not satisfying during the game was the role of the generals. Maybe more games will help but presently our Generals do two things:

• Join the BL that need to move fast at deployment

• Hop off the BGs shortly before normal combats or move into first row if we want to provide an edge in combat

• jump from BG to BG behind the lines once the effects of combat and/or shooting are felt

• very strange: run after BGs that pursuit, catch them restore them to full force and try to move these back quickly to the main battle

Not bad but the effect that generals leave their Lines to help out in zones where ones own troops where a bit unlucky feels strange.

And i would like to make you think about light Chariot that can evade even if not entirely one rank deep. My reasoning here is: they where usually fighting as a sort of mobile archer platforms. The situations where they where not one rank deep was mostly due to contracting to avoid opponents or to come aroung friends that they could not interpenetrate. But does this really prevent them from retreating from a charge they decide not to take? I know it is a point where one needs to generalize, some opponents (especially light/medium cavalry out of time) would have been mobile enough to catch them before they had their maneuver done. I suggest looking at the in-time situation: could they evade from heavy chariots (like Hatti) when in a deeper formation?

[shall]

Its been an intresting one generals...and we are giving it more thought.

All four of the things you mention are very much what generals spent a lot of time doing as far as we can tell. So whether it is odd due to all our predilictions from other games we have played, or from real history is a toughie.

What other effects would you like to see..don't worry about the "how" as we can deal with that (there are always lots f side effects that are had to spot without lots on knowledge of how everything works). More interested in the "what" if you get my drift.

Si

[arnimlueck]

here come my personal thought-list for generals:

• differenciate strongly between the various types of generals to give the army a personal look and feel
  items that come to mind:
  - fighting effect,
  - movement effect (maybe pure troop commanders do not allow a 2. move)
  - radius of issuing rally tests and giving bonus, maybe the bonus could be differnciated further between the types
  - maybe inspired commanders should be able to fight in the front rank AND rally troops,
  - which troops can be joined,
  - what differenciates an ally?
  - I still puzzle about the effect on complex maneuvers.

Other than that I believe we need to stress clearly in the rules text that moving to/from the front line of a BG can only be done in an movement or interbound when not in close combat.

My main point of confusion is one that gos sadly a bit beyond the tabletop scope. Looking at battle from the ancient up to late ancient period I believe we have many records of commanders that where regarded a strategically brilliant. BUT this does not reflect on the tabletop because here the player comes in and replaces the army list commander. It is not the army list commander that influences terrain layout (maybe a bonus on shifting terrain pieces comes to mind) or the initial deployment. This is done by the player. Also the various cultures had different customs on hoe to fight a battle. Actually much of a battle layout was agreed beforehand by negotiations in some cultures. The only trait of this is that our tables are only 180cm wide...

That is mainly the reason why I did not put my vote in the CMT poll. I rather look for some mechanism that you MUST have a brilliant (sorry folks) commander to use flank marches, ambushes etc. But to be honest I have difficulties deciding what is the players job and what should be part of the simulation.

[arnimlueck]

here come my personal thought-list for generals:

• differenciate strongly between the various types of generals to give the army a personal look and feel
  items that come to mind:
  - fighting effect,
  - movement effect (maybe pure troop commanders do not allow a 2. move)
  - radius of issuing rally tests and giving bonus, maybe the bonus could be differnciated further between the types
  - maybe inspired commanders should be able to fight in the front rank AND rally troops,
  - which troops can be joined,
  - what differenciates an ally?
  - I still puzzle about the effect on complex maneuvers.

Other than that I believe we need to stress clearly in the rules text that moving to/from the front line of a BG can only be done in an movement or interbound when not in close combat.

My main point of confusion is one that gos sadly a bit beyond the tabletop scope. Looking at battle from the ancient up to late ancient period I believe we have many records of commanders that where regarded a strategically brilliant. BUT this does not reflect on the tabletop because here the player comes in and replaces the army list commander. It is not the army list commander that influences terrain layout (maybe a bonus on shifting terrain pieces comes to mind) or the initial deployment. This is done by the player. Also the various cultures had different customs on hoe to fight a battle. Actually much of a battle layout was agreed beforehand by negotiations in some cultures. The only trait of this is that our tables are only 180cm wide...

That is mainly the reason why I did not put my vote in the CMT poll. I rather look for some mechanism that you MUST have a brilliant (sorry folks) commander to use flank marches, ambushes etc. But to be honest I have difficulties deciding what is the players job and what should be part of the simulation.

[shall]

That is mainly the reason why I did not put my vote in the CMT poll. I rather look for some mechanism that you MUST have a brilliant (sorry folks) commander to use flank marches, ambushes etc. But to be honest I have difficulties deciding what is the players job and what should be part of the simulation.

Yes that is the perennial problem. The less you make it the player the more at times you take the fun away too.

You will see that an IC for instance raises the chances of choosing the territory in a fight. They also affect flank march arrival rates etc. So some of this exists already. Thanks for the ideas - we'll add them to the boiling pot.

SI