Slitherine

Not a hard one to promise not to do............."I declare a charge with my impetuous ziggly wiggly wedge .... on your wiggly yiggly rhomboid ..." Not my scene.

We definitely stop at Nijmegen!

Si

I think that any similarity between AoW and 7th edition WRG is slight. In 1st-7th you removed figures from shooting or combat (not elements) so each unit had to have some singly and doubly based figures (making movement more fiddly). Each figure represented 20 men so all casualties had to be recorded and every time to you got to 20 you removed a figure - lots of record keeping!! The WRG reaction test was more fiddly than AOW's CRT and took longer. In one edition (may have been 5th or 6th) you had to give each unit standing orders at the beginning (hold, advance etc) and they'd carry on doing this until a general changed orders. 7th (I think) intoduced fatigue, so if you charged you accumulated fatigue points. There was also wedges - 1 figure in front rank, 2 in second, 3 in third that had extra combat factors that escape my aged brain.

WRG gave a reasonably historic feel to a battle but made for slow paced games requiring a lot of book-keeping. I've played Don Featherstone rules, WRG 3rd, 5th, 6th & 7th, DBA, DBM, DBR, Shieldbearer (briefly) Warhammer Fantasy and WAB and can homestly say that I prefer Art of War - it's fast paced and gives a historic feel to the battle AND IT'S FUN!!! A bit like playing ACW Fire & Fury.

Cive

Would you be so kind as to post this to the open forum for us. Or just confirm here that you are happy for me to do so.

Will you make it to Leeds?

Thanks

Si

clivevaughan wrote:I'm happy for it go onto an open forum but don't know how to!

Please post it in the forum section called

The Art of War : Ancient & Medieval Era 3000 BC-1500 AD

which is the open forum.

I played a lot of 7th, as my first "competitive" ruleset and even though I have tried to forget it, the similarities are there, and this is A Bad Thing (for marketing AoW) for sure.

My take is there are 2 levels of similarity

On first read thru (Hammys list was spot on in fact) - units, in fact the same size units, something that looks like a waver test seems like it may be dead important, shooting by cavalry, and what looks / reads like going back (phrase deliberately chosen to sum up how it may be viewed) to a weapon/armour-driven troop classification system, rather than the "functional" DBx system

The real downer for 7th was however IMO not the recording of fatigue points (which I had forgotten) but the way in which elite units of skirmish-capable troops could survive waver tests with impunity, avoid combat as they gradually wear down enemy until the time is ripe to charge. This meant that 7th was a game that a player who knew the rules would always beat one who didnt - because the non-expert would try and move his troops around in a "historical" way, and the expert would play a "how many waver tests can I get you to take, and can I get you fatigued so I can charge in impetuous for the +2" game.

So, the 2nd level of similarity is that on playing AoW a few times - with these preconceptions in mind - I suspect the way it is written means that there is enough there to reinforce the initial "its 7th" preconceptions as it appears that the rules are set up so superior quality units can do what they like, and irregular/poor ones cant, and making the enemy fail the waver test, sorry CT, is what its all about. Whether this is actually true or not I cant say I have played enough to know, but the challenge is getting people to see it is different far sooner than us playtesters are prepared to stick it out for.

With this I'm not sure a "no, we didnt mean that" preamble is going to help much. Whether the solution lies in phrasing, or the initial presentation of troop types, or making the new "big ideas" more prominent/explicit, or something else I'm not sure.

Thanks Tim

There is a lot in there we are playing with.

Most people who played 7th a lot and play AOW several times form the view it is radically different...but not initially and this is our next challenge having got the rules to work well.

One observation is that if 7th was your first set you may see things from 6th/5th/4th as 7th. In fact everything you mention in that list is equally true of all the other sets too.

I worry much more about your second point and hopefully playtesters will find it isn't geared to the clever clogs with fancy armies. The Usk response was if anything the opposite - the guys with the mass Wb felt they had got the biggest benefits relative to other rules - they got them in and they did something (kill or be killed generally).

Certainly - despite being a bunch of resonably cunning tabeltopers - we set out to get a set of rules that would make competitions less easily dominated by a few top players or armies. SO there is a big skill factor but hiopefully with enough going on to make a single strandard army or tactic a winning proposition. My favroutie armies so far: Ancient Britons, Parthians, Hoplite Greek, Nukephorian Byzantine...FWIW.

Maybe I need to run over your LH army with my ancient britons sometime to give you more comfort.....I think in essence the 1" move has sorted that out a fair bit. Maybe you could get lithuanians out and get down here for a game sometime?

View from everyone on this much appreciated

Si
.

shall wrote: One observation is that if 7th was your first set you may see things from 6th/5th/4th as 7th. In fact everything you mention in that list is equally true of all the other sets too.
.

I did start with 6th, but played 7th much more. I think you are right in that people will see things from the previous sets - but this to me is more of a reason to emphasise the "different"/"new" things over ALL rulesets even more strongly - or it risks been seen as a step back from DBX - which for all its faults did contain more step-changes in mechanics and concepts than any previous - or subsequent - set IMO.

shall wrote:

One observation is that if 7th was your first set you may see things from 6th/5th/4th as 7th. In fact everything you mention in that list is equally true of all the other sets too.
.
I did start with 6th, but played 7th much more. I think you are right in that people will see things from the previous sets - but this to me is more of a reason to emphasise the "different"/"new" things over ALL rulesets even more strongly - or it risks been seen as a step back from DBX - which for all its faults did contain more step-changes in mechanics and concepts than any previous - or subsequent - set IMO.

Fully agree with you Tim and this week - now that the latest working set is issued - we are moving into presentation drafting to try to deal with this. Ths far we have still been mainly working on the rules themselves.

Not disagreeing with you...........if anything saying its more difficult still as almost every set has the basic mechanisms you listed - it was DBM that was the abstract cincept that broke the mould. IMHO this was a reaction to 7th's complexity.

So once we have had a crack at the presentation version we shall be wanting you to all see if you cna help us get the good bits through.

Si

Hi there

I have read this debate with great interest. Can I put in my twopennyworth?

For the comparison of AoW to 7th Edition to mean anything to anybody both the person describing and the person asking for the description need to know what 7th Edition is/was.

Those new to wargaming or leaving their first ruleset behind are unlikely to know or care what 7th is.

Those old enough to know about 7th will be delighted to learn that, although there may be similarities betwen the two sets, they do not have to sign up for the full three and a half hour argument when playing AoW. They will certainly play AoW and probably buy it anyway. The same goes for DBMM.

If it has the makings of a good competition set the probability of a purchase will rise to a certainty.

I think that it is probably inevitable that, when asked to describe something, people will seek a comparison with something already well known. People who have 7th Edition in common will probably be broad minded/experienced enough wargamers not to be put off the whole idea of AoW by what might be an unfortunate comparison.

In short I wouldn't worry too much about the comparisons. It is the product which counts.

Cheers

Stephen

sfinn wrote:In short I wouldn't worry too much about the comparisons. It is the product which counts.

Wise words indeed.

I played a lot of 7th and there are comparisons as others have noted - but once you've played a few games you will quickly find that AOW is much simpler and arguably much more representative.

I certainly haven't developed any headaches after playing AOW which was a regular feature of 7th - all those factors!

I had some reservations about the POAs - most troop types seem to have them giving somthing of a 50/50 lottery - but that should achieve the objectives of no super armies and no super players.

And yet there is still a skill element, particularly in deployment, manouevre and maintaining and committing a viable reserve.

I guess my concern now is that the competition season starts again soon and I'll need to remember how to play DBR after 10+ games of AOW.

Pete