Slitherine

I was re-reading the sample army lists and trying to get my head around the notion of "points of advantage." Sometimes the points of advantage seem to be determined by the tactical doctrine of the troops. For instance, Hypaspists are listed as offensive spear and Thracian peltasts can be defensive spear. Other troops, though, seem to have their points of advantage listed by weapon type: light spear, swordsmen, lancers, etc. Then there are the troops who seem to be classified both ways: i.e. Hypaspists who are "offensive spearmen/light spear." Am I missing something?

Marc

There are no troops who get more than one POA in a given area so you might have:

-/Light spear/Swordsmen or Offensive spear/Spear but not Light spear & Offensive spear/Swordsmen.

It is mainly I think down to the way troops fought. The Hypaspists are a difficult one as there is a fair amount of doubt as to how they fought.

Helenistic thureophori are Offensive spear/spear despite the fact that some other rules class them as long spear and javelin.

Further to this, the sample draft lists may be out of date. There are no offensive spear/light spear combo troops in the current versions of the lists.

I'd also point out that where the PoA is desribed by a weapon type this is only a label for their function - so not all troops with swords are Swordmen for example.

rbodleyscott wrote:Further to this, the sample draft lists may be out of date. There are no offensive spear/light spear combo troops in the current versions of the lists.

Aha. That may be a source of some of my confusion.

So how does one tell which troops get the advantage when both sets in a particular fight have a PoA in the relevant category?

Marc

PS. I am pleased to see that my avatar has been promoted from "peasant" to "militia." I must be doing something right.

babyshark wrote:Aha. That may be a source of some of my confusion.

So how does one tell which troops get the advantage when both sets in a particular fight have a PoA in the relevant category?

If both sides in a close combat have one PoA they will nett out to an even combat.

If one has more PoA's it will have a nett PoA of the difference (maximum 2).

As an example:

At impact Celtic warriors are impact foot, Romans are also impact foot. Impact foot get ++ POA against foot but as both sides have ++ you end up with an even fight.

In the subsequent melee the Celts are protected swordsmen, the Romans are armoured skilled swordsmen. The Romans get one PoA for better armour and one for skilled swordsmen, the Celts get nothing. The Romans fight at ++.

IMO the major benefit of the PoA system is that unlike DBM where light horse combats (often known as the light horse lottery) are very quick and bloody but hoplites against hoplites can go on for ever both are even combats in AoW so they should both last a similar time.

Hope that helps

Hammy

hammy wrote:IMO the major benefit of the PoA system is that unlike DBM where light horse combats (often known as the light horse lottery) are very quick and bloody but hoplites against hoplites can go on for ever both are even combats in AoW so they should both last a similar time.

Interesting. In your experience do the fights tend toward the faster (Lh lottery) side or the slower (hoplite slog) side, relative to DBM?

Marc

babyshark wrote:

hammy wrote:IMO the major benefit of the PoA system is that unlike DBM where light horse combats (often known as the light horse lottery) are very quick and bloody but hoplites against hoplites can go on for ever both are even combats in AoW so they should both last a similar time.

Interesting. In your experience do the fights tend toward the faster (Lh lottery) side or the slower (hoplite slog) side, relative to DBM?

Marc

Another good question but one that is hard to answer.

Sometimes a fight between essentially even troops will rapidly swing one way and end very fast but it takes some radical dice to get that to happen. Most of the time fights are not truly even and the side with a slight advantage generally pulls ahead. The key is the first disruption, whichever side gets dirsupted first is at a significant but not insurmountable dissadvantage.

A truly even fight could go on for turn upon turn but will eventually go one way, or the other. The question is how long it is in the ballance because once the ballance goes things speed up.

I am not sure that helps much

Sorry

Hammy

My first post here.
The battle reports have really shed some light on AoW. It looks very promising I wish the developers the best in success with it.

I'd like to comment on the nomenclature of the troops as illustrated in this thread.
Can't they be called something simpler?
I was a fairly regular tournament player of DBM and I organised a few tournaments too. My experiance with players who play only occasionally is that even Irregular Blade Ordinary was too much for people when they also were trying to remember all the other rules in a tournament setting. I think the long troop names I'm seeing in AoW will be offputting in the same way.
Is there any shorthand in AoW yet for troops like DBM's Irr WB(o) for instance?
What are the rules for troop naming. In DBM it's Ordinary or Irregular, then troop type, then grade. Always 3 descriptors. In AoW I've seen 3 and 4 word nomenclature.

Unfortunately, I don't have any helpful suggestions at this time but I hope that these rules (or any for that matter) would hope to draw these "marginal" players into the ancients fold. I think hard to remember classifications are a deterrant to those people. It's a detail but all details are important.

Thanks Bryan

Two thoughts:

1. There are some standard troop types in AOW. So your classic warband is always going to be the same mix of parameters. So people are starting to say things like - these are standard warband, or these guys differ in being elites but otherwise are standard warband. We may be able to do something more with this to address your idea.

2. The parameters are crucial in the rules. What we have done is to have several simple classifications so that we can accurately model all sorts of diffferent troop types that we have seen hard to replicate in the past. This has tended to give lots of troops theit true character. So even my favroutie - the Samurai - can be modelled in true samurai style.

The individual parameter areas - drilled/undrilled, Cv/Kn, etc are all easy. But the price of such nice variety is several parameters - hence the above. So we are sort of doing 3 x 3 x3 x3 = every one is simple but lots of variety possible in total.

Then there are lots of troops that are a-b-b-c who are classic warband, a-c-a-a might be a classic legionary, c-c-b-a- a classic samurai etc.

In fact this theme of taking several simple mechanisms to get a very varied and subtle game is one of the themes of the AOW design and we hope it wil, be much liked (so far so good )

Hope that makes some sense.

Simon

Bryan put into words a question that had been bouncing around my head too. I like the thought that AoW gives more possible granularity in the troop types. That is one of the things that DBM lacks. Too many different troops ended up getting compressed into each category. Auxilia is the main problem, but there are others.

Of course, more granularity means more tihngs to remember (or look up) in the course of a game. A balance must be struck.

Marc

A little bit more to remember but if each dimension is kept simple hopefully easy to do so. So far so good it seems.

Si

My personal experience in playtesting is that the categories and factors are simple enough in themselves, that memorising what you need to is actually quite easy.

Also, the main factors are presented in a couple of small, easily read and logically presented tables.

So, as was implied earlier, even though there may be many, .many possible combinations, it's not the combinations you need to remember, but the constituent parts. For example, if there are, for sake of arguments, four diffreent categories to remember for combat, and they contain, say 4, 5 4 and 3 possible values, the implication is that thre are 4x5x4x3 = 240 things to remember. In fact, there are only 4 + 5 + 4 + 3 = 16 things to remember, but there are 240 ways that the overall situation can differ.

So, to come to Bryans point as well, even though troops might be described as say, medium foot, superoir drilled, protected, -, Offensive Spearmen, Spearmen - which I admit is a terrible mouthful, once you know what each thing stands for, it makes sense. And more to the point, it makes much more sense than it does in some other systems, because the implications of categry and value within the category are much smpler and more logical than in, say, *cough*BM.

I'm not sure I'm getting it across very well. Maybe I should just say that I found D*cough*M a complete struggle to learn (and never did really get to grips with it), whereas AoW has been easier to learn, faster to play, more convincing as a simulation, seriously lacking in dairy products, and WAY more fun.