Slitherine

Hi,

I??™ve just finished a first reading of the rules (beta 4.02) and offer the following comment. Overall I'd say the standard of work and presentation is very high.

Generally the rules read well and are easy to ???get into???. My initial impression after the first reading is that I want to go ahead and try a game. I liked the example of the Roman & Carthaginian army to whet the appetite. On the minus sided, the rules seem very long.

For me, the rules ???feel??™ like a cross between 7th edition and WAB. That can be both good and bad. I??™m not particularly enamoured with 7th so have no wish to go back to that style of rule. OTOH, WAB has been popular at drawing people into the hobby and is regarded as ???fun???, so a more "serious" version of WAB isn??™t a bad thing.

My comments are split between typos, comments, clarification (i.e. ambiguous wording), comprehension (i.e. sentence structure is awkward to read, etc), layout. Most of the comments are fairly minor in nature, overall the rules look good. The proof will be in the playing!

P1. Title ??“ date range is missing (e.g. to 1500 AD)

P6 comment: Key Concepts ??“ Battle Groups. Battle Groups? Why not use the term units? I find the term clumsy in the rules and I thing ???unit??? is more intuitive that the BG abbreviation. Besides, ???unit??? is a commonly used and understood term. If you insist on BG, then shouldn??™t the definition read ???The basic formations, consisting of several BASES (not ???units??™) under a single leader who is not represented in the game????

P10 typo: Terrain Selection 1st para ?????¦including 1 OF the compulsory pieces???

P10 comprehension: Placing Terrain, 2nd sentence is awkward.

P18 layout: Movement Rates table, colour contrast between table cells needs to be greater for low light situations.

P18 clarification: first bullet ???Troops in column can move through any terrain??¦???. Do you mean one element wide column? Is column defined anywhere?

P20 clarification: Simple & Comlex Moves ??“ Scythed chariots can only make a move in the ???Advance??™ box. Does that mean they can??™t use Charge?

P20 comprehension: Simple & Comlex Moves last bullet, IC, FC, TC doesn??™t get defined until quite late in the rules and was quite confusing ??“ put a xref to where the terms are defined?

P20 & p21 comprehension ??“ sometimes you refer to ???box??? when referring to the movement table, sometimes you refer to ???are of the table???. I suggest you use ???row??? or ???line??? or column rather than ???box??? or ???area???.

P21 Clarification to Simple & Comlex Moves table: perhaps it??™s me but the table isn??™t easy to follow. For example, what??™s a GREEN ???advance??™? And why has the 2nd table, Special CMTs, got holes in it? The layout on the Ref sheet is better (e.g. consistent use of grey cells.

P25 Charging comment ??“ WWg cannot charge. So can light artillery?

P27 Missile-armed foot & charging comment: shouldn??™t a reference to bows etc requiring a CMT to charge be placed in the Simple & Complex Moves table?

P27 Charging into flank & rear comment: Should Artillery turn if contacted in flank or rear?

P28 I like the ZOI idea.

P32 comment: Exchanging positions ??“ shouldn??™t Republican Romans & EIRs be allowed to exchange positions?

P32 typo on Movement when in Combat: ?????¦troops already IN close combat other than??¦.???. IN missing

P33 Moving into Contact with Enemy ??“ WWg mentioned, what about Art?

P35 comment on Initial Pursuits: shouldn??™t a reference to some foot choosing not to pursue requiring a CMT to charge be placed in the Simple & Complex Moves table?

P40. LOS & Visibility comment: Why bother with half a base gap? Just make it a base gap.

P41. Shooting Table comment: It took me a while to figure out what Bow* are! I kept looking for a missing reference at the bottom of the table.

P42. Overhead Shooting clarification. Who needs to be on the higher ground? Is it the shooters or the friendly troops?

P45. Impact Phase Dice table. The comment that DISRUPTION, DISORDER, etc are not cumulative is repeated within the table. Given that the comment is repeated on the same page you can take out the bullet as it's redundant.

Ditto on P46 for Melee Phase Dice.

P47 Impact POAs table comment: not sure of the significance of the asterisk in "*Net POA regardless of other factors"?

P52 top of page where the Romans are required to take a cohesion test. I make the total modifiers -2, not -1 as you state: -1 for 3HP Base and -1 for losing to impact foot. Note sure why the -1 for losing by 2 or more hits is mentioned as its not relevant.

Also, on the Reference Sheet ver 4.09 the 4th -1 for losing to impact foot/lancers is missing in the ???Any one of??¦??? rows.

P56 Cohesion Test table: ???Extra for IC??? ??“ What??™s IC (I??™m being pedantic here)? But you have room to write it in full here but should abbreviate it on the Ref Sheet. Also, again being pedantic, if I score 3 or less, and I don??™t have one of the causes for dropping 2 levels, does that mean I don??™t drop any levels? There probably should be an ???otherwise drop 1 level??? clause added.

P61 2nd para ??“ remove the word purist as it sounds derogatory.

P67 Inspired commanders ??“ not totally convinced about the use of inspired vs crap commanders because you get into all sorts of subjective argument of who was and wasn??™t an inspired commender. But I can live with it.

As a general comment, some of the information appears quite late ??“ e.g. the points values, some of the definitions (eg IC, TC, FC, Bow*), troop types. I??™m finding myself having to hunt around to get some of these concepts ??“ e.g. where does impact foot differ from armour class and weapon type? Are Impact Foot a troop type or is it a reference to the Impact phase? Etc.

The tables in the reference sheet could probably do with a cross reference to the page where they appear in the rules.

Overall, well done!

Neil

Thanks for all of that Neil. We will go through the detail and pick them up in the next day or so.

As you say the proof is in the playing. It seems to take 2-3 games to get the hang of it well and 5-6 to have it sorted as far as epxerience of others goes. Hope you en enjoy it. Our hope it that it creates a nice balance of fun, realism and compettiiiveness.

This might be where you see the analogies as we are trying to get the fun of WAB with a competitive slant of WRG and more realism than either. Look forward to hearing how it goes.

Si

I guess the question I'd ask is that are you trying too hard at producing a set of rules that is "not DBM"? I ask because I recognise mechanisms from other rules sets, except perhaps DBM. Now, I wouldn't want A DBM varient, but there are some concepts from DBM that are good.

neilhammond wrote:I wouldn't want A DBM varient, but there are some concepts from DBM that are good.

True, but the basic concept of DBM includes the seeds of its own destruction - i.e. the dependence on element-on-element geometry that leads to all sorts of problems that are extremely hard to solve within the DBM paradigm. They proved impossible for Phil and I to solve in 13 years of trying, and Phil is still vainly trying to solve them in DBMM.

The AoW team decided that we preferred to move back down the branch to the previous fork, and then move out again along a new branch.

Hence we see the return of some concepts that were discarded in the development of DBM, but this does not mean that we have returned to the old mechanisms.

When you are in a cul-de-sac, you have to go back to the junction before you can move forward again. Obviously there are then several ways that you can move forward, but AoW has certainly moved forward. It is emphatically not a warming over of old WRG stuff. If it was, I would not want to be involved with it.

All I can suggest is that you ignore the superficial similarities to previous rules sets and try a couple of games. If you then still think AoW has a close resemblance to 7th I would be surprised.

rbodleyscott wrote:True, but the basic concept of DBM includes the seeds of its own destruction - i.e. the dependence on element-on-element geometry that leads to all sorts of problems that are extremely hard to solve within the DBM paradigm. They proved impossible for Phil and I to solve in 13 years of trying, and Phil is still vainly trying to solve them in DBMM.

The AoW team decided that we preferred to move back down the branch to the previous fork, and then move out again along a new branch.

Richard,

I accept that I can't make a balanced judgement without having played a few game. I'm throwing out my initial reaction.

And I agree DBMM is not the way forward. I don't have any nostalgia about DBM. The best thing I like about the DBM mechanism is the PIP mechanism, the move away from 7th micro mechansims for calculating combat, and no more single figure losses. But transfering the PIP mechanism across to a new set of rules wouldn't work, and I suspect that the CMT mechanism will probably work as well. The POA mechanism looks good, and no reintroduction of single figure losses is good.

Regards,
Neil

Hello to all the group of authors and testers,

I joined the team a few days ago. Let me introduce myself briefly:
Arnim Lueck, born 1968, Physicist, working in Telecom Industry
I have been playing Role Playing Games, and Warhammer Fantasy since the mid 1980s. Thus I gathered some experience with various Rulesets: Chronopia, Confrontation, Warmaster etc. I started playing historical tabletop in 2001. Trying Piquet, Armati but fucussing finally on DBM.

My interest in this community is to make the Art of War a good sellable product. Thus helping to design a product that can access a broader market. I will contribute to rules writing and playability but mostly I will focus on generating a text that makes the world of AOW accessible to newcomers and long-time gamers alike.

Now onto my first impressions reading version 4.04. it is just a glimpse after a one-time read through without any trials to do a game:




My comments after a first round of reading the rules & armylists
----------------------------------------------------------------

A) Overall Impression
good concept, focusses on the things that where meant to be
simulated, the rules are already pretty much playable,
but partially gave the impression to be complex at points that
are no key elements. We need to be careful not to install
mechanics too complex for a enjoyable game. AOW must generate
the "right" feel of a CinC seeing his army fight - crumble -
restore itself - overcome local crisis.


B) Philosophy, Principles, Key concepts
- I appreciate the set of key concepts put together
- I miss the 'attrition concept' to show the overall army status
to complete the set
- I will put forward some editorial proposals on the key concept
paragraphs later


C) Representing the armies on the tabletop
- At first glance I like the representation of the troops. Some
thoughts on simplicity of the rules came up
o is it worth to have HI, MI, LI troop types and armour category extra?
Or does this proove to be largely the same from a "functional" point
of view? We will see the differences during playtest.
o Do we need the distinction between Bow, Bow*, Longbow, XBow, and
Firearm? Or would it be sufficient to have Bow, XBow, Firearm?
If we want to make a division between Bow and Longbow, wouldn't it be
more effective to highlight all bow-type weopons which provided an
advantage against contemporary armour? (thus
emphasizing chin chinese archers, samurai, english longbowmen etc in
the same way as having a superior weapon relative to the standard of
their enemies?)
o The "skythed chariot" friends might dislike it but there was more than
one idea for disruptive shock troops in the relevant period of time.
It may be a detail but one that will upset several readers. Do not get
me wrong: we should keep these 'fire-and-forget' type of troops. They
where used, they are spectacular, and they make great tabletop models.
Just either put all of them (stampeding animals, herds, flaming pigs..)
or group them to one generic troop type. I would prefer option
2. Maybe the base size for "disruptive units" on page 47 is a light at
the end of the tunnel?
- I do like the concept for the generals. Though I would like to see some
limitations on generals wandering around as lonely figures. I need to try
out some extreme situations here.
- The text on how to build battle groups was a bit scarce. Actually one can
read all rules intended from the table in the points value section. But
I wondered for a pretty long time what was allowed to be combined in
one battle group. I advocate a clear section that defines strictly how
a BG (THE central element of the game!) may be constructed.
- The army organization gave me a bit an "advanced-armati" feel about it
during reading. If I compare to the relatively free group concept in DBM
(which is maybe too flexible) I feel a bit hindered by the fixed BG
definitions of an army list.
As size and composition of a BG seems to be a crucial thing in order to
adapt an army to a plan I wonder if we are not restricting the player too
much in a tournament environment. My plan might be very different against
different opponents. Thus maybe it is worth to add a section on tournament
recommandations including the possibility to enter the list of troops
(summing up to X00 points) plus 2 different BG assignments and marching
orders.
The example in my mind is a spear formation that MAY be supported
by some archers. Once I enter BG that show spears and archers in one BG I
loose the possibility to change my plan in the second game and deploy spear
and archers seperately. I like to think about a tournament as a military
expedition that happens to suffer from strongly differing opponents. As
Battle Lines do not allow for any fighting support an armys options to
react on opponents become limited.
- I have the suspicion that one can construct very weird Battle groups by
adding cheap troops in the rear ranks. I surely need to re-read but
army lists give min/max of a troop per troup type
- The whole army can basically still move without any generals, even a unit
stranded very far from any commander still moves. Never ever are any
soldiers left puzzled and wondering what happens and what they shall do
now. Even in the greatest confusion the players will moves all troops.
- applause for the simplistic dismounting concept!


D) Gaming Mechanics
- Terrain Placement: good approach!
- Exhaustion of troops is not part of the AOW, only loss of cohesion. Good
for a general simulation, but some historical refights will need additional
rules.
- Deployment: pictures of tournament players measuring gaps between their
first deployed battle groups come to my mind. What a surprise if most
armies have the crap BGs in the first row. let's play and see...
- Movement:
o 'march moves' versus 'double moves': Admittedly there are many
mechanisms to speed up 'march moves' versus moves - I like almost none
of them. Now my Mongol Ally Battle Line including the general needs to
make the flanking move. Is that enough speed in a game where ALL BGs may
make one move per bound? Why should such a maneuvre not be made by a
lower level leader? I am a sceptic here.
o Complex Move concept seems a good approach to me
o I like the movement table. As soon as the 'skythed chariot' has evolved in
a real troop type for disruptive and mean inventions add a column for
this type. That should spare the 2 or three mentionings of their
movement limitation.
- Combat mechanism
o separating Impact from Melee is an excellent idea. But isn't Impact plus
Melee evaluation during the first bound of combat maybe too fast in
resolving the combat. I am thinking about the reasonable synchronization
between movement and combat.
o number of dice involved PLUS points of advantage comparison PLUS target
values to score PLUS death roll PLUS 'lose' result evaluation.
That is a lot mechanics!
But the DBx concept of "reasonable results" has been dropped. Needs testing
especially if the behaviour of skirmishers versus heavy infantry is ok.
Thinking about skirmishing LH riding slowly away from a phalanx shooting
backward...
o can Infantry try to break off for repeated charges? Not in AOW, right?
o could we drop the 'maximum range' bow shooting please? Simulating effective
shooting should be enough
- Representing 'disrupted', 'fragmented' or disordered
- how is a delaying action of a skirmisher BG/BL supposed to work? On the one hand
they cancel the second move just by standing in the way. But once the opponent
starts charging and the skirmishers evade it is only the variable move that slows
down the opponent. Is that enough to represent their effect?
- one cannot have a continous count on attrition as generals may revert hazardous
situations. Versus the end one needs to count/check attrition very often.


E) Things I miss
- edge of the world effects? limited deployment at the table border? do we need that
or am I just used to this stuff?
- Naval, at least naval landings, treated as flank marches, for additional colour
- Expendables other than Skythed Chariots

Arnim

Thanks for all the detail and support. I will go through everything and provide comments back early next week. Help packaging it for the broader market much appreciated.

I hope you will be able to get a few games in and let us know how it feels to you on the tabletop.

Thanks again and more back soon.

cheers

Si

P32 comment: Exchanging positions ??“ shouldn??™t Republican Romans & EIRs be allowed to exchange positions?

We originally had a large section of rules allowing certain BGs to join melee as 2nd ranks and exchange ranks - this was primarily to cover the early Romans.

It proved very complex, and we decided to remove the whole section as being inappropriate to a set of rules of this level of complexity.

The battle group (as opposed to unit) concept allows us to cover formations such as the manipular chquerboard (and cavalry globi/drungi) within a single battle group.

Thus there is no need for Romans to exchange BGs as the hastati and principes chequerboard is represented by a 2 deep battle group including units (maniples) of both hastati and principes.

The current (much simpler) exchanging mechanism is designed to cover troops of greatly different weaponry organised in separate bodies but closely cooperating historically - eg. WoR bows and bills. They could, alternatively, have been represented by mixed BGs, but we have chosen to do it the other way - as flexibility of deployment together or separately seems consistent with the history.

Hello to all the group of authors and testers,

I joined the team a few days ago. Let me introduce myself briefly:
Arnim Lueck, born 1968, Physicist, working in Telecom Industry
I have been playing Role Playing Games, and Warhammer Fantasy since the mid 1980s. Thus I gathered some experience with various Rulesets: Chronopia, Confrontation, Warmaster etc. I started playing historical tabletop in 2001. Trying Piquet, Armati but fucussing finally on DBM.

My interest in this community is to make the Art of War a good sellable product. Thus helping to design a product that can access a broader market. I will contribute to rules writing and playability but mostly I will focus on generating a text that makes the world of AOW accessible to newcomers and long-time gamers alike.

Thanks for the help

Now onto my first impressions reading version 4.04. it is just a glimpse after a one-time read through without any trials to do a game:

My comments after a first round of reading the rules & armylists
----------------------------------------------------------------

A) Overall Impression
good concept, focusses on the things that where meant to be
simulated, the rules are already pretty much playable,
but partially gave the impression to be complex at points that
are no key elements. We need to be careful not to install
mechanics too complex for a enjoyable game. AOW must generate
the "right" feel of a CinC seeing his army fight - crumble -
restore itself - overcome local crisis.

Best to give it a try a few times and see what you think. Good to hear that you felt good about them after and intitial run through.

B) Philosophy, Principles, Key concepts
- I appreciate the set of key concepts put together
- I miss the 'attrition concept' to show the overall army status
to complete the set
- I will put forward some editorial proposals on the key concept
paragraphs later

Ok not sure i follow you totally but I am sure it will become clear when you suggest something.

C

) Representing the armies on the tabletop
- At first glance I like the representation of the troops. Some
thoughts on simplicity of the rules came up
o is it worth to have HI, MI, LI troop types and armour category extra?
Or does this proove to be largely the same from a "functional" point
of view? We will see the differences during playtest.
o Do we need the distinction between Bow, Bow*, Longbow, XBow, and
Firearm? Or would it be sufficient to have Bow, XBow, Firearm?
If we want to make a division between Bow and Longbow, wouldn't it be
more effective to highlight all bow-type weopons which provided an
advantage against contemporary armour? (thus
emphasizing chin chinese archers, samurai, english longbowmen etc in
the same way as having a superior weapon relative to the standard of
their enemies?)

o

One of the issues we have found with rules is the attempt to bundle something into a category it really does not fit. We have trid to avoid this square peg in round hole problem by having th right natural characteristics but keeping how each of hem works simple. So far it ssems to allow us to reflect the true natre of lots of historical troop types that are hard to model other ways.

The "skythed chariot" friends might dislike it but there was more than
one idea for disruptive shock troops in the relevant period of time.
It may be a detail but one that will upset several readers. Do not get
me wrong: we should keep these 'fire-and-forget' type of troops. They
where used, they are spectacular, and they make great tabletop models.
Just either put all of them (stampeding animals, herds, flaming pigs..)
or group them to one generic troop type. I would prefer option

We have a good team of historical experts helping out. Most of the ones mentioned may be wargaming myths more than reality. if there are concrete examples of their use in battle we will include them.

2. Maybe the base size for "disruptive units" on page 47 is a light at
the end of the tunnel?
- I do like the concept for the generals. Though I would like to see some
limitations on generals wandering around as lonely figures. I need to try
out some extreme situations here.
- The text on how to build battle groups was a bit scarce. Actually one can
read all rules intended from the table in the points value section. But
I wondered for a pretty long time what was allowed to be combined in
one battle group. I advocate a clear section that defines strictly how
a BG (THE central element of the game!) may be constructed.
- The army organization gave me a bit an "advanced-armati" feel about it
during reading. If I compare to the relatively free group concept in DBM
(which is maybe too flexible) I feel a bit hindered by the fixed BG
definitions of an army list.
As size and composition of a BG seems to be a crucial thing in order to
adapt an army to a plan I wonder if we are not restricting the player too
much in a tournament environment. My plan might be very different against
different opponents. Thus maybe it is worth to add a section on tournament
recommandations including the possibility to enter the list of troops
(summing up to X00 points) plus 2 different BG assignments and marching
orders.
The example in my mind is a spear formation that MAY be supported
by some archers. Once I enter BG that show spears and archers in one BG I
loose the possibility to change my plan in the second game and deploy spear
and archers seperately. I like to think about a tournament as a military
expedition that happens to suffer from strongly differing opponents. As
Battle Lines do not allow for any fighting support an armys options to
react on opponents become limited.
- I have the suspicion that one can construct very weird Battle groups by
adding cheap troops in the rear ranks. I surely need to re-read but
army lists give min/max of a troop per troup type
- The whole army can basically still move without any generals, even a unit
stranded very far from any commander still moves. Never ever are any
soldiers left puzzled and wondering what happens and what they shall do
now. Even in the greatest confusion the players will moves all troops.
- applause for the simplistic dismounting concept!

ok

Comments othe bottom part soon - need to take the family out to dinner

shall wrote:

The "skythed chariot" friends might dislike it but there was more than
one idea for disruptive shock troops in the relevant period of time.
It may be a detail but one that will upset several readers. Do not get
me wrong: we should keep these 'fire-and-forget' type of troops. They
where used, they are spectacular, and they make great tabletop models.
Just either put all of them (stampeding animals, herds, flaming pigs..)
or group them to one generic troop type. I would prefer option

We have a good team of historical experts helping out. Most of the ones mentioned may be wargaming myths more than reality. if there are concrete examples of their use in battle we will include them.

If I can put in a comment here - we are not suggesting that any of the above are "wargaming myths". However, most of them were one-off stratagems rather than regular parts of the army's battle tactics.

We intend to cover stratagems (including ad hoc disruptive "units") in a future Campaign supplement rather than in the standard rules.