Slitherine

Hi there,
here is the battlereport of the battles between my first Alexander's mighty army and Guglielmo's Undoubltly Early Romans. I know the second version of the rules is on the run, but I'd like to share my toughts. As always, sorry for my written English and if these considerations are not news, but the leisure time is scarce and I couldn't read all posts/reply.

- Choice of the army.
I think that some troop types are pointed out in different ways thru the rules. Sometimes is difficult to understand what the rules are referring to when they speak about Heavy Infantry/armoured etc. However, I think that logic helps. The same for Skirmisher: are Cretans Skirmisher?

- Set up.
I didn't find any reference to Aggressive Value and terrain types for each armies.

- The Game
Without a deep knowledge of the rules, and the advantages each troop has, we run a very simple mass fight, where the two heavy centres fought each others, while on the wings we saw a massive skirmishers fight on the right, and some Indian litteraly massacre the poor Roman Cavalry on the Left.

- The general feeling
The feeling of the game is to be in tactical control of the troops, but being incapable to do anything decesive except to run across the table and be the first to charge. Obviously we didn't have the same experience we have now of DBM, but we both had the feeling that the one who charges first has a little advantage. And, after having played and read the rules, we didn't understand what is really good: for example, I don't really know if to shoot with Bow Vs Cavalry is good or not, of if Pk vs Bd is a winning bet. Maybe it's not a bad thing, since now in DBM you already know from before the battle stars which enemy troops you're going to target and which ones you'd better .

In general, I liked the possibility to fully control the army, and to be able to move any BG at least twice. Since we both had IC C-in-C and trained troops, we always moved twice until we reached tactical proximity, so no really "smart" moves were done (IE going on the flank or trap some skirmishers).

For the combat, in general we noticed that the first impact is really important. on the right, my LH charged a vastly bigger formation of PS (sorry if I use DBx terms) and completly wiped them out with "ordinary" dices (no series of 6-6-6-6-6 opposed to 1-1-1-1-1, I mean).

However, the fights are always too complicated. even for a simple engagement, with two or three units in total involed, we had to throw dices to see who "hits", then reroll, then roll to see if somebody was killed, then roll again to see if the formation was going to be shaken or broken. I think that if this part of the rules will remain the same, you should do a cristalline clear table to make the people understand and follow the "flux" of the rolls, otherwise will happen too often to forget something - even a single POA or Death roll can change the course of the resolution.

and the situation worsen when we had three or four units per part. This happens - I think - quite often if the two players have different approaches to the army list. I chose relatively few big BG, Guglielmo much more, but smaller. when the centres collided, we have a long line of Pk fighting a long lines of Bd/Sp, and the opposing units often hit different enemies units.

(Maybe its' not clear: I mean that if you have 8 Bd units each with a frontage of 3, and 4 Pk units with a frontage of 5, you'll have each roman units fighting with at least two Alexander ones).

This leads to an incredible confusion - surely since this one is one of our first games, but I fear it will not change dramaticly at the 10th or 30th game. Any time we got to a fighting phase, we began mourning agains the difficult to understand which unit was fighting with who.

now, some questions for who understands better the rules

1) can a LH unit break off from a enemy in contact, if they have an enemy unit slightly on the side? I mean, can the retiring unit move lateraly as stated in the rules?

2) LH broke enmy Skirmisher. They have to follow since they failed the test. however, while the skirmisher went thru Roman Sp, Lh had to charge them. is this avoidable? I dont' think is too realistic to have LH charging a solid wall of Infantry only because they destroyed some Skirmisher.

3) Can an Undrilled unit that attempts to do a Complex move and fail, do the simple one instead?

4) Kn Vs Cv. The Cv flee broken. The Kn follows impetuosly, and its letfmost element touch slightly Sp on the right. can they evade, or they have to fight in this odd way (we had a situation like this:

Sp Sp Sp
Kn Kn Kn

5) Is it possible to expand in contact after Melee?

6) if we have a very big engament like:

Bd Bd Bd Sp Sp Sp Sp Bd Bd LH LH
Pk Pk El Pk Pk El Kn Kn Ps Ps Ps

each Pk unit is a different Bg. The Bd are from three different Bg

Do we need to roll for kills and for morale change for different units? I mean, each Sub-combat situation is resolved separetely?

I think should be this way, but this means that the single Bd unit

Bd Bd Bd
Pk Pk El Pk Pk

could test even if the won against left Pk and tied with El, if the right Pk Wins.

and this would mean that with a long line of pk Vs Bd, some could run away or suffer losses even if they won.

cheers.
Paolo P.

and this is Gugliemo's comment on the game. he doesn't have access to this forum
cheers
P

--------------------------

Hello everybody,
I'm writing this just after our first test of "A.o.W", Romans vs.
Macedonians.
Paolo will prepare a report and go deeper into those details we were not
very sure about.
As for my comments, I'd say that it's definitely too early for us to
give any judgement on the rules in general.
My first impressions (for what they are worth) are:
- Rules do give an historical look at the battle;
- Mechanisms for combat and morale are well known and -pending some
possible touch-ups- should not give major problems;
- As for playability, I found the rules in need of less tables and of
being made simpler overall.
In fact I happened to wonder what would be the average player reaction
to going throu so many tables/tests/rolls just to get the outcome of a
simple combat between 2 units.
He'll ask probably for quicker and simpler systems. As with some
succesfull "glossy" rulesets recently published.
My conclusion is that today we are spoiled and expect a new set of rules
to be a major improvement on the existing ones.
This is for now.
I will try to complete more tests and revert to you with further
comments as soon as possible.
Best regards/Guglielmo

Paolo/Gugliemo

Thanks for the battle report and for persevering with the vs1 - it was never going to be that easy in a different language. We will very much look forward to your reactions to vs2 which does hopefully go a long way in the right directions. I shall see what I can do about the items below one by one.

- Choice of the army.
I think that some troop types are pointed out in different ways thru the rules. Sometimes is difficult to understand what the rules are referring to when they speak about Heavy Infantry/armoured etc. However, I think that logic helps. The same for Skirmisher: are Cretans Skirmisher?

All the definitions are a lot tighter now and should work well with the provided lists. So a Cretan Skirmisher will typically be LF,bw, Unp, Sup.

- Set up.
I didn't find any reference to Aggressive Value and terrain types for each armies.

There is no aggreesion concept so that all armies have the same chance of attacking all other armies - we felt this gave more variety of game. The territory types will be added to the lists later. For now please use some general knowledge. Most armies will have agri/hilly as a start.

- The general feeling
The feeling of the game is to be in tactical control of the troops, but being incapable to do anything decesive except to run across the table and be the first to charge. Obviously we didn't have the same experience we have now of DBM, but we both had the feeling that the one who charges first has a little advantage.

As with DBM it takes a little time to get subtle I suspect. Good to try a straight slog for starters.

And, after having played and read the rules, we didn't understand what is really good: for example, I don't really know if to shoot with Bow Vs Cavalry is good or not, of if Pk vs Bd is a winning bet. Maybe it's not a bad thing, since now in DBM you already know from before the battle stars which enemy troops you're going to target and which ones you'd better .

One gets a feeling of what will work well and what won't from the POAs and quality levels - but you certainly cannot say you have a 12% chance of a kill so easily. This is something we all found rather attractive about the mechanism - it relies more on experience of games than maths to figure out what works well. Some will prefer that, others not.

In general, I liked the possibility to fully control the army, and to be able to move any BG at least twice. Since we both had IC C-in-C and trained troops, we always moved twice until we reached tactical proximity, so no really "smart" moves were done (IE going on the flank or trap some skirmishers).

We have tried very much to avoid having units stalled doing nothing. vs 2 is simpler in the early moves in the game - see battle lines for marching mechanism that no longer needs any dice.

For the combat, in general we noticed that the first impact is really important. on the right, my LH charged a vastly bigger formation of PS (sorry if I use DBx terms) and completly wiped them out with "ordinary" dices (no series of 6-6-6-6-6 opposed to 1-1-1-1-1, I mean).

Certainly IMPACT is reflected directly and therefore the initial thump does matter quite a bit. On the other hand on average you fight more MELEE rounds than impact rounds as troops stay in combat beyond a single bound.

However, the fights are always too complicated. even for a simple engagement, with two or three units in total involed, we had to throw dices to see who "hits", then reroll, then roll to see if somebody was killed, then roll again to see if the formation was going to be shaken or broken. I think that if this part of the rules will remain the same, you should do a cristalline clear table to make the people understand and follow the "flux" of the rolls, otherwise will happen too often to forget something - even a single POA or Death roll can change the course of the resolution.

Good to get another view on this. Certainly combat seems t take the main amount of time. It will be interesting to see how it looks after a few games when the familiarity is higher. An are of particular interest to us. WE are consious of the multiple dice rolls and keen to knwo if the speed that they can be done - as they are all individually pretty simple - works given a bit of experience.

and the situation worsen when we had three or four units per part. This happens - I think - quite often if the two players have different approaches to the army list. I chose relatively few big BG, Guglielmo much more, but smaller. when the centres collided, we have a long line of Pk fighting a long lines of Bd/Sp, and the opposing units often hit different enemies units.

(Maybe its' not clear: I mean that if you have 8 Bd units each with a frontage of 3, and 4 Pk units with a frontage of 5, you'll have each roman units fighting with at least two Alexander ones).

This leads to an incredible confusion - surely since this one is one of our first games, but I fear it will not change dramaticly at the 10th or 30th game. Any time we got to a fighting phase, we began mourning agains the difficult to understand which unit was fighting with who.

This is a lot clearer under vs 2. The way we work it is to split the combat down into individual bits so that its one partial BG against another partial BG and roll for each of these. There is a diagram of Seleucids in the rules. In my own games we use green dice to record the hits received in each section. Once a whole unit is done you can see whether it has received more hits than it created by adding the dice behind and opposite. Its a matter of getting into the habit but once there it seems to be OK. We didn't explain it too well in vs 1. Hopefully it will speed up greatly after a few games but if not we will give it some hard thought. Keep the feedback coming and see how you get on. Sounds like you may have started at the deeper end with a big long line of troops.

now, some questions for who understands better the rules

1) can a LH unit break off from a enemy in contact, if they have an enemy unit slightly on the side? I mean, can the retiring unit move lateraly as stated in the rules?

I would need a bit more to understand the question Paolo but its a bit redundant as we have altered in vs 2 to having mtd break off from foot etc. but we have removed any voluntary break-offs. Speeds combat./game resolution to do so.

2) LH broke enmy Skirmisher. They have to follow since they failed the test. however, while the skirmisher went thru Roman Sp, Lh had to charge them. is this avoidable? I dont' think is too realistic to have LH charging a solid wall of Infantry only because they destroyed some Skirmisher.

A good point that one. Our principle is that pursuing troops charge any unit they woud normally charge so I think in vs 2 its pursuing shock troops that would charge but I will need to check. I'll get back to you when I have had a look. Its certainly a good point and I agree not too realistic t have LH run on into Spartans.

3) Can an Undrilled unit that attempts to do a Complex move and fail, do the simple one instead?

Yes. If you fail a CMT you can always do a simple move instead but you must do it now before you move any other units. So no testing and storing up all the fails and then deciding what to do. One of the decisions to make that is important is the order in which you move sometimes. I have made a few good mistakes in games by testing for a unit and then having to make a decision before I had moved some other troops, and then wished I had tested the other ones first.

4) Kn Vs Cv. The Cv flee broken. The Kn follows impetuosly, and its letfmost element touch slightly Sp on the right. can they evade, or they have to fight in this odd way (we had a situation like this:

Sp Sp Sp
Kn Kn Kn

All troops who pursue in melee at present charge enemy they woudl contact. Such combat is resolved as a charge in the next IMPACT phase. WE are debating whether to restrict this to shock troops or to limit it in some toher way. I was a bit ahead of myself there.....SAH

5) Is it possible to expand in contact after Melee?

Troops in melee can expand on one side in vs 2. All this is now much better specified.

6) if we have a very big engament like:

Bd Bd Bd Sp Sp Sp Sp Bd Bd LH LH
Pk Pk El Pk Pk El Kn Kn Ps Ps Ps

each Pk unit is a different Bg. The Bd are from three different Bg

Do we need to roll for kills and for morale change for different units? I mean, each Sub-combat situation is resolved separetely?

I think should be this way, but this means that the single Bd unit

Bd Bd Bd
Pk Pk El Pk Pk

could test even if the won against left Pk and tied with El, if the right Pk Wins.

and this would mean that with a long line of pk Vs Bd, some could run away or suffer losses even if they won.

You do half of the process by sub-group but always regroup by BG for CTs and DRs. This may be why it seemed so complx for you. We didn't spell it out too well in vs 1 but better in vs2 - see seleucid diagram of a multi-BG combat.

Ok this is where you need the specific mechanism. It goes as follows:
1. Split combat into sub-groups so its 1 sub-BG vs 1 sub-BG.
2. Roll for these and store the hits by putting a dice behind each sub-block
3. Then add up al the hits created adn recevied for each BG to decide if they have lost or not (units receiving more than inflicted have lost)
4. Do CTs and DRs for these units

Your example above is a little bit extreme as you wouldn't have single elements very often - 2 wide is about as low as you get in big combats in my experience. I don't think I've yet managed a combat quite so bitty. But to deal with it as written you would split as follows

Bd Bd / Bd / Sp Sp/ Sp/ Sp/ Bd/ Bd/ LH LH
P P / El / P P / El / Kn/ kn/ Ps/ Ps Ps

So you would have 8 sub-battles where you would roll hits and temporarily store the result (put a dice behind each bit). Then you would look BG by BG. So the first blade BG might have done 2H on the Pk and 1H on the El and received 1H from the PK and 2H fro the El. It has inflicted 3 and received 3 and has therefore DRAWN so does not need to test and takes DR on +2 so only loses a base on a 1. The Pk block has LOST as it inflicted 1 and received 2 and must take a CT test and a DR with no plus so loses a base on a 1 or 2. The El has WON and has no need to test and we now it need not roll a DR as with its +s it cannot lose a base Etc. down each line of BGs.

If you split it down to get the hits and then deal with the CTs and DRs this way it helps a lot. We may need to give a more specific example in the final rules. Hope that helps.

Thanks again for the great feedback and issues and we look forward to heargin what you think of vs2. Enjoy the next game.

Si

shall wrote:
Knights are defined as shock troops. Shock troops who pursue and hit another unit charge it and resolve the combats in the next IMPACT phase.

Hi Simon,
thanks for the answer. Actually, we played the game before receiving the new version of the rules, but I had no time to write it in a decent English before.

just one thing: in the example, the forum formattation system modified what I meant. the situation was:

..............sp sp sp
kn kn kn kn

(where ... is empty)

the kns charged directly in front of them, and only one touched the Sp block. Is that correct? have they to fight only in the segment, or they can adapt more logically? I don't think an horde of Kns would stay firm seeing some of them impaling or being impaled by some Sp - in DBM you can break the formation and close on the flank.

and, for the new release of rules: would be possible to have a summary of the changes? this because who is not involed in the writing (all betatesters, I suppose) can't imagine what change at first sight, except for the screenshots
cheers

P

Hi Simon,
thanks for the answer. Actually, we played the game before receiving the new version of the rules, but I had no time to write it in a decent English before.

just one thing: in the example, the forum formattation system modified what I meant. the situation was:

..............sp sp sp
kn kn kn kn

(where ... is empty)

the kns charged directly in front of them, and only one touched the Sp block. Is that correct? have they to fight only in the segment, or they can adapt more logically? I don't think an horde of Kns would stay firm seeing some of them impaling or being impaled by some Sp - in DBM you can break the formation and close on the flank.

OK at present you would charge the spears and even if we reduce the range of that as KN are shock troops I expect they would still charge. In vs 2 see expansion and contraction in combat for the relevant bit. In essence you can expand or contract one base width. So in the example you would contract the knights and expand them out the next time. Better of course to hit them more fully and still the most likely outcome is that the Kn break off and have another proper go later.

Hope that helps. See how it plays out and get back to us.

Si