Slitherine

AoW: First impressions ??“ Clive Vaughan

Wargaming background
Late 1960s started with Donald Featherstone rules
WRG 3rd, 5th, 6th & 7th editions
Migrated to DBM
Liked early DBR but not since latest amendments
At Peterborough club play WAB and Warhammer Fantasy (full circle back to Featherstone?)
Also play Fire & Fury ACW and occasionally Principles of War

First read-through
God, there??™s a lot of it!! 95 pages is a hefty tome (and that??™s without the pictures and illustrations). It??™s very wordy supplemented by massive tables, still at least it has contents pages at the front. The play examples you give to illustrate points should be 1-2 paras and contained within boxes.

Seems to be a lot of testing ??“ more than 7th, more than WAB. Seems to be more detailed and more complex than 7th.

A max of 5 terrain pieces sounds a lot.

Deployment of a camp ??“ how big?

Disorder etc ??“ will require some counter system as used in eg Fire & Fury. Rather than this perhaps show disorder by stepping forward every other element, severe disorder by breaking up the BG so that elements aren??™t in side edge contact??

Alexander may well have been a brilliant commander but can you explain why in the fog of war he??™d be three times as visible (12MUs) as Darius (4MUs)? On the subject of generals when fighting ??“ they never get any dice for themselves ??“ they improve the effectiveness of the BG they are motivating. Fine for Caesar joining the front rank of the 10th but what about your barbarian king surrounded by his picked household troops using a boarshead to disrupt the opposing formation by piercing the shieldwall? I understand that wedges are difficult to portray (and were far too effective in 7th) but were a more commonly used formation than orbs).

A battle line cannot combine foot and mounted troops. Is there sufficient historical evidence for such a sweeping prohibition? Egyptian chariots moving forward with supporting archers? At Crecy the Italian crossbowmen may have been moving with the knights who were immediately behind them.

In a mixed BG of war wagons and other foot, the other foot can turn 90 degrees to face the war wagons???????????? If an enemy attacks the side of a WW won??™t these other foot have their backs to this attack?

There doesn??™t seem to be a countercharge option cf Pharsalus when Caesar was surprised when Pompey??™s foot didn??™t countercharge. You also don??™t provide a feigned flight option to tempt the enemy away from a strong position (eg Hastings) or to tire them out (eg Manzikurt).

Interception moves ??“ can swordsmen behind archers charge through these to intercept an enemy charging the bows when they enter the swordsmen??™s ZoI?

I do like the get elements stuck into combat without DBM??™s inclining of lines and intersecting ZoCs. AoW doesn??™t have the element fragility, which has them shattering in DBM if they push into one another.

In the impact phase it isn??™t clear how the BG that has been charged fights.

Shooting ??“ no troops can shoot if they charged or evaded this bound ??“ any shooting taking place is assumed to have insignificant effect. So why was the Parthian shoot so feared by contemporaries? Also shooting at a moving target ??“ why go to all the bother of training light cavalry in a cantabrian circle?

DBM stressed playability over historical realism ??“ AoW seems to want to reverse this. There seems to now be a point to having quality drilled elite/superior troops. In DBM the big battalions of crap troops all too often won.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating so next step is to get some battle practice with these rules to see how well they play.

AoW: First impressions ??“ Clive Vaughan

Wargaming background
Late 1960s started with Donald Featherstone rules
WRG 3rd, 5th, 6th & 7th editions
Migrated to DBM
Liked early DBR but not since latest amendments
At Peterborough club play WAB and Warhammer Fantasy (full circle back to Featherstone?)
Also play Fire & Fury ACW and occasionally Principles of War

Not dissimilar to me except napoleonics rather than ACW and an early 7-0s start. Good old Don. Charles Grants 7yrs war rules my very first IIRC. Ah nostalgia .

First read-through
God, there??™s a lot of it!! 95 pages is a hefty tome (and that??™s without the pictures and illustrations). It??™s very wordy supplemented by massive tables, still at least it has contents pages at the front. The play examples you give to illustrate points should be 1-2 paras and contained within boxes.

One of the reasons we are trying to limit additional items. We have tried to err on the side of more words that are simple and clear. Not sure how big it is by comarison with GW stuff. Its a big font sixe with lots of space at present as a workign document.

Seems to be a lot of testing ??“ more than 7th, more than WAB. Seems to be more detailed and more complex than 7th.

We have aimed towards having several things that are all in themselves easy to remember and do. One to try out a fair bit. Seems much easier than 7th from testers so far.

A max of 5 terrain pieces sounds a lot.

Note they get moved around and even removed by opponent.

Deployment of a camp ??“ how big?

6 bases as DBM to avoid any rebasing.

Disorder etc ??“ will require some counter system as used in eg Fire & Fury. Rather than this perhaps show disorder by stepping forward every other element, severe disorder by breaking up the BG so that elements aren??™t in side edge contact??

Disrupted will need counters. We have tried figure based versions and are incluidng this for general games. Terry and I have used such a figure based system in every game we have played. Many people prefer counters. Disorder is a terrain effect and needs no marking - the terrain does it for you.

Alexander may well have been a brilliant commander but can you explain why in the fog of war he??™d be three times as visible (12MUs) as Darius (4MUs)? On the subject of generals when fighting ??“ they never get any dice for themselves ??“ they improve the effectiveness of the BG they are motivating. Fine for Caesar joining the front rank of the 10th but what about your barbarian king surrounded by his picked household troops using a boarshead to disrupt the opposing formation by piercing the shieldwall? I understand that wedges are difficult to portray (and were far too effective in 7th) but were a more commonly used formation than orbs).

The distance isn't visibility - I am sure your 30ft Pharoahs wins at that . It is reflecting a range of influence given command skill/aides/,messangers/banners etc. I guess my Ancient British leader with his elite warband is the example of your charge - they re-roll 1s,2s and 3s so usually get lots of hits. But there is only 1 such unit, so kind of an army wedge that is great if it wins.....

A battle line cannot combine foot and mounted troops. Is there sufficient historical evidence for such a sweeping prohibition? Egyptian chariots moving forward with supporting archers? At Crecy the Italian crossbowmen may have been moving with the knights who were immediately behind them.

I am not the epxert but there seems to be. Mounted can combine with LF so supporting LF archers can go with the chariots.

In a mixed BG of war wagons and other foot, the other foot can turn 90 degrees to face the war wagons???????????? If an enemy attacks the side of a WW won??™t these other foot have their backs to this attack?

That made my head spin too! I have just suggested a simpler idea. More anon.

There doesn??™t seem to be a countercharge option cf Pharsalus when Caesar was surprised when Pompey??™s foot didn??™t countercharge. You also don??™t provide a feigned flight option to tempt the enemy away from a strong position (eg Hastings) or to tire them out (eg Manzikurt).

Mix of shock troop rules and evade rules creates feighned flight. You'd need to try it to see if it fits your imagination of what happens. All countercharging is built into the factors and we don't in truth take acocunt of someone not countercharging who perhaps should - unless the Pompey example tells us that it didn't matter much whther they did or not and they are equal anyway.

Interception moves ??“ can swordsmen behind archers charge through these to intercept an enemy charging the bows when they enter the swordsmen??™s ZoI?

No this is not allowed as an interpenetration. However if you are thinking opf the NKE they are likely to get a new move called an exchange move that lets them exchange bows and swordsmen...again more anon.

I do like the get elements stuck into combat without DBM??™s inclining of lines and intersecting ZoCs. AoW doesn??™t have the element fragility, which has them shattering in DBM if they push into one another.

In the impact phase it isn??™t clear how the BG that has been charged fights.

Ok could you say in what way as a new first read is helpful on this. I agree its one are that could do with a reword or two.

Shooting ??“ no troops can shoot if they charged or evaded this bound ??“ any shooting taking place is assumed to have insignificant effect. So why was the Parthian shoot so feared by contemporaries? Also shooting at a moving target ??“ why go to all the bother of training light cavalry in a cantabrian circle?

It was more for the cantabrian/mobile circle which is just part of normal shooting. We ummed and aahed about making it represented explcitily but it didn't add alot so left it out. They didn't shoot much while running away at full pelt en-masse as far as I know. The overall balance of LH with bow is what we have aimed for without the need to model the details. They and Light Ch are allowed to shoot backwards if not evading.

DBM stressed playability over historical realism ??“ AoW seems to want to reverse this. There seems to now be a point to having quality drilled elite/superior troops. In DBM the big battalions of crap troops all too often won.

We are aiming to get a set of rules that:

Are a very good representation of history fopr a game of this type
Is very playable and needs little refernec (siumple mechanisms that are easy to remember after a few games)
Is easy to pickup and read
Is great fun to play (not much cheese, fiddly details, or situations wheere troops get stuck doing nothing due a rule problem)
Not much room to argue over the rules

Hopefully we are doing well on 1 and 2. 3 is hard and it will be itneresting to see how your first impression feel after 3 or 4 games, which seems to be the break through time.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating so next step is to get some battle practice with these rules to see how well they play.

Look forwad to the recipe review

Si

shall wrote:

First read-through
God, there??™s a lot of it!! 95 pages is a hefty tome (and that??™s without the pictures and illustrations). It??™s very wordy supplemented by massive tables, still at least it has contents pages at the front. The play examples you give to illustrate points should be 1-2 paras and contained within boxes.

One of the reasons we are trying to limit additional items. We have tried to err on the side of more words that are simple and clear. Not sure how big it is by comarison with GW stuff. Its a big font sixe with lots of space at present as a workign document.

My feeling is that overall, its not terribly more complex than WHFB or WH40k. I've been playing WHFB on and off for 20 something years, so can't really give too much of adirect comparison.

But I read through 40k when the latest edition came out, having never played it before. I don't feel any more overwhelmed by AoW than I did by 40k, and I suspect that the length of the rules is roughly the same - though it's hard to tell, becuse there's so much fluff n GW books.

Phil
Is the fluff a plus or a minus in GW products?

Regards
JDM

IMO a lot of the people who play mainly GW products like the fluff whilst others think too much gets in the way.

Mind you depends on what you consider fluff I guess

JD,

Short answer: a plus.

Long answer:


To my mind, the GW fluff is too much.

The thing with GW is that they need to provide background to their fantasy setting ('The Old World') in order to grab the imagination of the younger, or more fantasy inclined older, players.

For me, their rule book could be 96 pages long, and half the price, with the fluff available in supplements. Of course, they do have further supplements (via Black Library mostly), and the volume of fluff they produce is rapidly approaching the annual consumption of the worlds teddy bear factories.

In AoW, I feel I'd like to see some fluff. At least (and here we get to Niks point) what I would call fluff. Some examples of how troop types were used in real life, in a narative fashion (simplistic reports of famous battles), and some background in the army lists. That's what I'd call fluff. Adds nothing to the rules, possibly gives tactical hints, but adds greatly to the 'colour' of the game. Also, I was pleased to see the heading 'Painting your Minis' (or whatever it was) in the rules...it would be nice if that got filled in before publishing