"Neil Thomas's A&MW rules" Topic

I'm interested in the rules flexibility. Has anyone tried rules with uneven numbers of units on each side? As well as smaller and larger army sizes?

Yes, we do this locally quite often for historical battles, though you have to be careful not to weight it too heavily. See Treb's blog for useful battle reports.

Good and sometimes surprising games. We tend not to use the 'march off the table' rule.

Phil

Max,

Experience would tend to suggest that the 8 unit limit on the armies is entirely unnecessary, except to make the army lists work.

As long as the armies are not too uneven in actual unit numbers you can push the numbers up to what ever you want. Never tried reducing the army numbers. Why would you???

Trebian

We just played Aztecs vs Conquistadors last night. My bad tactics as Don Diego were amply rewarded. We had 3 players per side.

Unless one is playing tournament games where all sides MUST be equal, any restrictions on army size or number of units in ANY set of rules are there to be ignored.

I play all of NT's rules from Ancients through to WW2. Ive never played the tournament type games they appear to be written for. All the games I've played have been scenario driven with unequal sides and scenario objectives to achieve. There are a few things you have to do like toning down the effect of anti tank guns and artillery but nothing drastic, and don't bother with the marching off the table rule either that is there for the tournament type games really.

Jeff

The rules aren't for tournaments, – NT said elsewhere that the armies aren't balanced. He wrote a handicapping system for Slingshot and it doesn't really work.

The marching off the table rule, which we rarely use, is important if you have infantry armies that can't close with cavalry armies.

Trebian

"Never tried reducing the army numbers. Why would you???"

I tried dropping to six to use with one of the scenarios in 'One Hour Wargames', but in fact 8 would have worked. I've now redone the OHW scenario army generator to generate 8 unit 'armies' for the scenarios to play with AMW rules.

Hi Trebian
Sorry when I said tournament type games I actually used that term to try to describe the sort of games in NT's books as opposed to the sort of games I play which are normally scenarios from WAB articles or in the case of Napoleonics, the GdeB rules.
Admittedly I only play once a month but I haven't had any problems as yet.

Jeff

Thanks everyone for the help and also the link I've had hours of enjoyable reading there!
The query regarding the rules tolerating a smaller number of units is for "raiders from the sea" like scenarios or campaigns.
I think these are going to be my rules.

Max,

Welcome to the AMW cult. You won't regret it.

Just don't go up against anyone with an army made up of Heavy Archers. You'll be toast.

Trebian

Ha ha thanks for the warning Trebian. I look forward to having a Roman v Celts game on the weekend.

Aaah, – warbands. Don't use them in open terrain against Heavy Infantry.

The Ancient Germans are fairly nasty tho', but Mr T is clearly a big fan of the Romans.

That's interesting because from reading the battle reports and rules it seemed to me A) Heavy Archers will struggle against Hoplites and B) Roman legionaries are treated the same as any other Heavy Infantry and not with Pilum or a swordsman bonus like many rules.
It shows what experience with a set of rules will show.

Just ordered AMW from Amazon and expect it to arrive Monday. I've enjoyed the few battles I've played with the OHW rules and want to see how much they are developed in AMW. I think the flavour of the armies is lost in the simplification of the 4 unit types in OHW.

Max,

The Roman Legionaries benefit from being Heavy Infantry, having good defensive armour and often better morale. That's enough to differentiate them.

Heavy Archers v Hoplites is a bit of a one-sided crap shoot. We've done Marathon a couple of times. The Greek player just puts his head down and runs. The Persian has to shoot like mad and hope for above average hit scores and hopefully kill a base or (almost better) have a base with three hits before the hand to hand combat round. If the Greek then fails a morale roll or two you are in with a chance.

Sumer
The rules have more flavour than OHW. If you are a Sumerian fan (and I guess you are) you may find the army lists for them a bit disappointing. If you go to my blog link and look at the posts with the Sumerian label you can follow my journey with the rules over a 12 month period, starting in July 2013.

Trebian

Thanks' Trebian, I will.

I look forward to trying a battle of Plataea with these rules.

Yesthatphil did Platea over at Ancients on the Move: soawargamesteam.blogspot.co.uk . You'll have to poke around the labels to get the full story, but it ended up with flats on a sand table.

That's hard core Old School Wargaming.

Thanks Trebian. I'll go explore!