Warmaster Ancients – the day of battle

As mentioned previously the all day WMA event took place in Preston, last Saturday.

On the day there were six players;

Steve Rowland (Chorley)	Carthaginian	1510
Dan Johnson (Lancaster)	Arab Conquest	1050
John Holroyd (Bolton)	Sassanid Persian	775
Justin Taylor – me - (Preston)	Classical Indian	765
Dave (Preston)	Late Roman	630
Lee Yates (Chorley)	Parthian	215

A good win there by Steve but more on that later.

Because of a double booking at Worthy Games, we had to use the small gaming room. That meant that we were limited to one 12 foot by 5 foot table,which I split into three 4 foot gaming tables. I decided to use green carpet tiles (that I had picked up at a discount carpet suppliers in Bolton) as the best surface to play on, despite being heavy to carry.

Four foot wide table were a bit cramped and gave the feeling of attacking down the floor of a mountain pass, rather than the open combats I had been hoping for. The limited frontage favoured infantry armies as it was difficult for cavalry armies to get round the enemy flanks.

But we still had some very nicely painted armies turn up. These are Dans Arab Conquest army

And Steves Carthaginians

Lees Parthians advancing in the early part of the game.

And my own Indian army advancing against Daves Late Roman army. Dave actually uses his own Indian army and so I experimented with a brigade structure that I had always thought would work well for Indians; two units of bows, backed by two units of spearmen, with single elephants in the middle and ends of the brigades. The elephants make the flanks of the brigade harder to attack and so funnel the enemy into fighting the archers and spearmen. Whilst this brigade formation was quite effective, it really lacked the ability to attack anything and with the elephants tied up supporting the infantry, I really felt that the army could have done with some heavy chariots to provide an attacking arm.

The game above (my Indians vs Daves Late Romans) was the most brutal game I played all day. Although my infantry were only really good at defending, my Indian cavalry were unleashed onto Daves archers and managed to obliterate them before attacking the flank of the legions. However the legions quickly smashed my cavalry and then went on to tear the Indian infantry to pieces. Not quite enough to win Dave the game (a win is getting the enemy army to Breakpoint or killing the enemy general) but give him another move and he would have got there.

In the first round of games Dan’s Arab Conquest army shattered Lee’s Parthians giving Dan the only really good win of the round. John’s Sassanids got a slight win against Dave’s Late Romans and my Indians beat Steve’s Carthaginians.

In the second round most of us managed to score zero points, the only exceptions being John’s Sassanids beating Lee’s Parthians and Steve beating the Late Romans.

So we went into the third round with Dan just in the lead closely followed by John but in a upset to the expected outcome, Steves Carthaginians got the only true win of the day (breaking the enemy army) against Lee’s Parthians and stormed ahead. Dan and John fought it out on the top table with Dan just scoring a few hundred points more than John to make Dan a close second behind Steve.

Lessons learned.

Well basically Dan showed us that we have been playing WMA very wrong but the lessons have been taken on board and we hope to up the game locally. I really doubt that we will get anymore interest from the local gamers in Preston but we can continue to play happilly amongst ourselves.

I think the varibale army size system was OK but next time rather than betting against the other players army bonus, I would just make it 3 cards over 3 games and each time you use a card is it ‘burned’ and cannot be used again. So the player has the choice of which bonus card to play in each of their three games.

Oh and I did not allow enough time for lunch. If I do it again, I will allow an hour.

Warmaster Ancients gaming days at Worthy Games in Preston

Two gaming sessions are planned at Worthy Games (58 Lancaster Road, Preston, PR1 1DD).

An intro gaming session for those who are unfamiliar with the rules, on the 19th of January and a full days gaming on the 23rd February.

Plan for the Intro Day

First game;           10.00 to 12.45
Lunch;                   12.45 to 13.30
Second game;      13.30 to 15.30

Army size 1,000 points if you are bringing your own. Pick armies from either the rule book or Ancient Armies book. Some players are bringing extra armies for those people who do not have an army of their own.

Terrain will be preset on the table so there is no need to set it up. One player should nominate one table edge to the odds, the other edge will be be evens, roll a die and what is rolled is the edge that player will be playing on.

The tables are 180 wide and 150cm deep.  So you can set up your army up to 30cm from your table edge and just for our games not within 20cm of the table sides.

Players should roll a die each, the highest roller chooses to deploy first or second. The player going first will deploy their entire army first but will also take the first turn. The other player deploys second and takes the second turn.

There are no turn limits. To win either; kill the enemy general or destroy half of the enemy core units.

Preparation of the terrain continues with some trees

First of all a hole was drilled into the circular bases, the trees stuck into position with a dab of epoxy glue then some flocking gel placed round the base to give them a bit of texture. I will then paint the bases and job done.

Warmaster Ancients Carthaginians vs Indians practice game

This game was part of our introduction to Warmaster Ancients practice session at Worthy Gaming in Preston. Using a Games Workshop plastic battleboard (I hate the things) 6 foot by 4 foot and 6mm armies. 1500 points a side. The main fighting arm of the Indians were three units of heavy chariots and 2 units of elephants. Personally I try to avoid the use of elephants in WMA so had a lot more units, especially of cheap Numidian cavalry (5 units) and Gallic/Spanish warband (9 units).
  
Looking at the Indian army. Chariots on the left and 2 brigades of mixed; archers, spearmen and elephants in the centre.

After the Carthaginian first move, which was mainly to move onto the hill nearest to us in the picture and to move the Carthaginian infantry away from the centre and onto the flank. The Indians move in a long line to meet the Carthaginian advance.

On the far left, Numidian cavalry sneak round the Indian line making the Indian movement more difficult. This is a classic tactic I use with the Numidians.
 
In the centre you can see the long line of Carthaginian light cavalry faced by the mass of the Indian army, including one of the mixed force brigades.

One of the mixed brigades separates with; archers on the wings, elephants and spearmen in the centre. In my opinion this formation would be better with archers backed by spearmen and the elephants acting as protection on the flanks.

On the left, the Indian forces have been cleared away but feirce fighting is going on in the centre. The blocks of white are my unpainted Carthaginian spearmen. Nothing special with 3 attacks a base and a saving roll of 6. Apart from the Carthaginian heavy cavalry they are the best troops in my army.

Under attack from Indian chariots, spearmen and elephants, the Carthaginian spearmen quickly crumble but do destroy the Indian spearmen in the melee.

The final scene. The infantry in white are Spanish warband the last line of defence of the Carthaginian army. Things looked grim for me at this point but in one astonishing move the situation was turned and victory was won for the Carthaginians.
The reason, those huge gaps in the Indian line. In a fantastic series of dice rolls Carthaginian cavalry were able to get behind what remained of the Indian infantry and attack them both in the flank and rear. Five units of Indians were destroyed in a single turn and with the losses they had already suffered, that was enough to break the Indian army. I left the Indian elephants strictly alone as they were just too tough to kill.

In Praise of Warmaster Ancients

Back in the days when DBM was king, it was my preferred system for playing games with 15mm figures. That did not mean that I did not have my doubts about the system including the way that chance could have such a great effect not only on the ability to move but combats. The strength of DBM was that it was so universal, practically everywhere you went you could get a game of DBM against someone you had never met before. But the decision of both of the DBM rule designers to go their separate ways for future rules development almost gave us permission to explore other rule sets. So I, like others hunted around for another ruleset to satisfy our gaming urges. In the end – after trying several of the current rules – I settled on Warmaster Ancients, written by Rick Priestly and sold by Warhammer Historical. The rules are a modification of the Games Workshop fantasy rules and in common with their normal rules the first thing you need is loads of dice. Since Warmaster Ancients does not get a lot of mention in Slingshot, it seems worthwhile giving you a quick view of how it works and why I like it.
Movement is done by rolling dice and comparing the roll with the commanders leadership value. If you pass the test then the unit or group of units being ordered to move, can indeed move. If the commander fails a roll then that’s it, no more orders from them for the rest of the turn. If the overall army commander fails a roll then no more orders can be issued for that army for this turn. If a double six is rolled then as well as failing to give the order successfully, a Blunder has occurred and another die is rolled to see what unpredictable event has happened. The command roll is influenced by how far the commander is from the units he is trying to order and number of other factors like proximity to the enemy and casualties suffered. Units or groups of units can be given up to 3 successive orders in a turn, so units can move up to 90cm in a turn but each further order makes it harder to make a successful roll. Better leaders give a higher chance of success but nothing guarantees a successful roll, it is not uncommon to have units sitting there doing nothing as the enemy advance upon them but there is always the refuge of the Initiative order allowing units to make an automatic move when then enemy are within 20cm, instead of commanders attempting to give them orders. Initiative moves are inflexible but at least stop the horror of not being able to do anything if the enemy are close and your dice have been poor. Some people like movement controlled by dice rolls, I must admit I am not a fan but better commanders give you greater chance of getting your troops to go where you want them to be and the Initiative move gives you a last chance to do something even if the dice fail. Another plus for the Warmaster movement system is that you can get some really large moves that greatly add to the fluidity of the game.
Shooting – like combat – is extremely simple, roll a dice to hit and another die is rolled by the opposing player if the enemy unit has armour in an attempt to stop the hit from wounding the unit. Three wounds will normally remove a base from a unit and a unit normally has 3 bases. Wounds which have not removed a base are removed from units at the end of turn unless the unit is in combat. In other words they are lost. Shooting tends to drive the enemy back rather than inflict enough casualties to remove bases but also has a chance of causing Confusion in the target unit. Confusion means that the unit will not be able to receive orders in their own turn and is at reduced effectiveness in melee. But with sufficient missile troops, you can shoot a unit to death, especially if it has no save. In a siege game, I managed to destroy a section of wall and was preparing to advance through it, when my opponent used to the ineffectiveness of normal shooting deployed a unit in the gap created by the destroyed section. The concentrated fire of my siege artillery totally destroyed the unit in one round of – lucky – shooting, which was a surprise to both of us.
Combat is like shooting but with more dice rolled, each base of troops will have a number of attacks specified for its troop type. Normally it is a simple roll of 4 or more to hit but if the enemy counts as defended or fortified it will reduce this. Combat is simultaneous but chargers get a bonus for charging and reduce the number of dice that the enemy fight with, if they happen to attack them in the flank or rear. As with shooting, armour saves apply, so well armoured troops take less casualties in combat. There are two rounds of combat fought each turn and if you wipe out your opponents, you can advance into another enemy and fight two more rounds of combat that turn. As you can imagine combat tends to be decisive. Unarmoured units can be wiped out in one round of combat, even well armoured troops gradually take casualties and become ineffective even if you could mange to give them orders. The best way to attack is to hit an enemy in the flank which reduces their effectiveness and reduces your own losses. Frontal attacks with good troops can succeed but to truly work the enemy needs to be hit with multiple units, not isolated attacks.
Commanders principle role is to issue orders to units but they can add extra dice to a units attacks if they choose to join a unit. The penalty is that if the unit they are with is wiped out, they are lost as well. Normally commanders are invulnerable but if the enemy move through a commander, they force the commander to join the nearest friendly unit where of course they can be destroyed if you wipe the unit out. In fact killing the enemy army general is one of the methods to win the game.
Army lists are included in the main rules and there are two supplements specifically of army lists, ancients and medieval. The supplements include changes to the rules especially for the use of skirmishers which really make the game work. I am glad to say that skirmishers actually shoot in Warmaster Ancients, one of my beefs with DBM was that skirmishers ‘shooting’ was only done in combat. The rules are no longer in print but copies seem to be available online second hand. The amendments are also available online and I recommend using them.
The rules are simple but like with chess, the application of them, make the game. Luck is of course a factor but with many dice being rolled, one or two bad die rolls will not affect the game. I said I was looking to play games with my 15mm figures but Warmaster Ancients tend to be played with 6mm or 10mm figures. So I now have armies in both those scales to play locally, all based on the standard 40x20 mm base used by Warmaster. DBM used 40mm width elements and I am happy that I could use my 15mm figures for Warmaster if anyone was interested, without having to re-base them. Now we know the rules, our games last between one or two hours. I have some battle reports up on the CACK wargames club site under historical battles if you are interested.