Slitherine

1. Hi, in Spartan/Gates of Troy, putting your skirmishers in front of your heavy units is generally a bad idea, as they can't run away before contacting something nasty - they can only rout afterwards. This isn't exactly historical, and is it also true in AOW? Is there a scouting points mechanism like the excellent one in Spartan/Gates of Troy? Are off-table flank marches allowed and are they easily discovered like they used to be under DBM?

2. Are elephants a two-edged sword under these rules, as likely to run amok amongst your own troops as the enemy?

3. The cohesion rules sound very like 7th edtion/Warrior - is that a fair comment? Will these rules give me a 7th edition style headache?

In reply to your points:

1) Skirmishing foot can move through the heavy troops so no problem there. Also skirmishers can evade a charge, and skirmishing foot can run through the heavies as part of the evade. There might be a problem with light horse in front of heavy troops, depending on circumstance, as they need to flow around troops rather than go through them. There is a scouting mechanism, not sure how it compares to Troy. Yes, you can flank march, but the mechanism is different.

2) Elephants are powerful but brittle; but there is no run-amok rule. If an elephant unit (or indeed any unit - but elephants are more brittle) collapses all troops within 3in/7.5cm need to take a morale test. If they fail they loose cohesion, which you can take to represent panic/elephants running amok.

3) Not sure how Warrior works but I understand it's very similar to 7th. It's a similar concept but is applied differently in AoW. At an abstract level you'd say it's similar, in game mechanics it works differently. Incidently, two of the rules authors never played 7th, and once you've played a couple of games you realise AoW doesn't feel like a 7th revival.

Neil

1. Hi, in Spartan/Gates of Troy, putting your skirmishers in front of your heavy units is generally a bad idea, as they can't run away before contacting something nasty - they can only rout afterwards. This isn't exactly historical, and is it also true in AOW? Is there a scouting points mechanism like the excellent one in Spartan/Gates of Troy? Are off-table flank marches allowed and are they easily discovered like they used to be under DBM?

They evade or intepentrate away generally. Yes there is a simple scouting system that affects the game. Yes there are flank marches. There is in fact no technical connection between AOW and the Slitherine computer game; a strong connection between AOW and Slitherine independently of this. I haven't played the computer game above (not time) and I doubt whether the other authors have either. All of AOWs concepts derive from 20yrs each of tabletop gaming on the part of the three authors and the Slitherine team.

2. Are elephants a two-edged sword under these rules, as likely to run amok amongst your own troops as the enemy?

Yes in that they might rout through you if you get in the way....and they are dangerous but brittle..so can cause you a lot of havoc as well as your enemies.

3. The cohesion rules sound very like 7th edtion/Warrior - is that a fair comment? Will these rules give me a 7th edition style headache?

Definitiley not - similar only as a means to show troops deteriorating and therefore having somethign in common with over 100 sets of wargames rules through the ages. We had no headaches at the Usk test and many ex-7th player who have said how different it is. You can read some of theri comments here or in the Uswk report. We did have 2 nose bleeds from the excitement....

Si

LOL! Thanks, sounds pretty good, I actually think 7th Edition/Warrior has an elegant method of combining fatigue, shooting, thirst, glare etc factors that really works very well but adding and subtracting so many factors all the time (plus calculating fractions for shooting and combat results etc) and concentrating on all the phases and rule interactions really did give me a headache! However, I'm only a middle ranking player at best, and top-class wargamers do not have problems with this and should try Warrior/7th edition at least once just to experience a system that gives proper heed to fatigue factors and mixes them so well with other battlefield conditions. I just wish it could be entered into a PDA at the tabletop!

7th edition was really killed not by its complexity but by the stream of rule amendments - the "I called Phil Last Night" phenomenon. The Warrior team state that they will not issue amendments to the rules in the Warrior rule book but their web site has many "clarifications"!! How does AoW intend to deal with the rule amendment problems? The more popular the rules, the more pressure there will be to change them, and the more likely it will be that holes will be found in them. Will there be special rules for certain armies? Perhaps Osprey will encourage rule changes so you have to buy a new book every six to twelve months?Is there any chance the rules could be published in a ring binder or similarly easily changed format? Perhaps you could register as an owner and download a complete set of new rules using an activation/subscription code?

It sounds like Simon is the only one in the team who hasn't played our computer games

We'll have to get him trained up when the rules are finished and the team has some free time!

Yep, then Simon will see the similarities
JDM:-)

jdm wrote:Yep, then Simon will see the similarities
JDM:-)

So, JD, is AoW (or should I call it "Bad Men with Sharp Sticks"?) based on the computer games? Do they share significant mechanisms? Talk to me.

Curious,

Marc

When we started working on the tabletop rules we decided that we were not trying to create something that would convert to PC/console, as we felt this would hamper the design & vice versa as far as the comptuer design goes. So there is no direct sharing of mechanisms.

Having said that, the experience we draw on to design the computer games is also of great use when designing tabletop rules. So you'll see similarities in there, but mainly because the rules and the computer games are trying to replicate the same real world events, they just go about it in different ways. We use the same research teams, some of the same testers etc.

Thank you. I know that a lot of people are interested in that information.

Marc

Not Aow PC home training, army testing version?
I can't play as much as i want with my friends and i use PC games as substitute.I spent lots of time playing Spartan and Gates of troy and i had the hope that in the future there will be something like:
"Aow Imperial chinese campaings for PC"
I had a dream...