"Warmaster Ancients...who's actually played it ? Good?" Topic

I played a few games with the old fantasy set and enjoyed em a lot. Great C+C rules but found the cavalry a little too powerful when playing for Ancients. Have the new 'official' ruleset sorted it or are there more problems?

They did sort a few things out.

1) Cavalry is now based on the broad edge, like infantry, so that cav doesn't attack 2-1 anymore. A few units like shock cavalry and pikes still base along the narrow edge.

2) Combat is now two exchanges only, with the opportunity to toss in reinforcements or pull back.

I like that. I often found combat too decisive.

Yes, you would get two lines of pike pushing, winning by a small margin and taking off a stand every second round, thus slowly attriting each until one breaks.

However, this happen in one turn, so you couldn't be having a desperate cavalry fight for who gets to charge their cavalry into the flank of this combat.

I heard that they also have special rules for gamers who have everything mounted on 40mm wide frontages, so that the DBX crowd does not have to remount their minis.

If you prefer to have your shock cavalry mounted along the long edge then the rules do reflect that but giving the shock a lesser bonus than they would have if you were mounted on the short edge.

The downside of short edge mounting is being easier to flank so if you don't break your opponent immediately then you might have a problem soon enough.

What kind of basing system are they using if they aren't sticking with the original warmaster plans?

The "default" basing is still 40mm by 20mm, with most tropps being mounted facing a long the 40mm edge.

The only bit that is different is that not all cavalry get the 20mm edge as their front, only "shock" cavalry.

And if you already have figs based with the long edge forward (because you have a DBx army say) then they have a rule that lets you play with them.

They also suggest base sizes for other scales than 10mm, altrhough curiously enough not 6mm, which is silly.

So, to recap, in general the basing size is the same as Fantasy Warmaster

There's no real reason th suggest alternative base sizes for 6mm, as opposed to 10mm - just put more figs on the bases.

Doug

Sound pretty good. I will have to give it a try.

I think chariots and Elephants might be based differently if they don't fit a 40x20 base.

Ok, here's a summary:

All regular infantry and cavalry are based on 40x20mm bases, facing the long edge. This is the normal case, just like regular Warmaster (and Battle of the Five armies).

Light artillery, Chariots, and Elephants are based on 20x40mm bases, facing the *short* edge. Thus you can get more bases into contact with the enemy.

Some units (like heavy cavalry and macedonian phalanx) are classed as Shock troops. They also face the 20mm edge.

Heavy chariots are based on 40x40mm bases, because they are too wide to fit! Their attacks are increased to reflect this.

Heavy artillery is based on whatever size is needed.

In the Designer's notes various scales are discussed, and if you don't want to rebase your DBx army you can use it as it is. Units that would have faced the short edge get a +1 Attack as compensation. It's not a perfect fix, but reasonable enough to let people play with their existing collection.

Oh, and I just recieved the rulebook, so I haven't had time to try it out yet, but I will ASAP!

a slight warning on figures however - make sure of of teh number of soldiers on a strip. The 40x20mm bases in teh rules are copied over from teh origional GW rules. Warmaster are cast in 7 soldier strips. you can probably get by with 5 or 6 per rank if teh figures are individually mounted, but some manufacturers are cast in 5 soldier strips which can't be cut down to provide those extra troops for the base, so you might have to either let teh gaps in the ranks show, or use a smaller frontage of base - i'm probably going to have to go with 25 or 30 by 20 mm

damn fine game - I always enjoyed fantasy WM but needed to make changes for ancient stuff - the tweaks they have made are perfect for ancients.

Been playing Roman Ancient Brit games and they have come out evenly on the 'win' front etc which is a fairly good indicator of the lists etc.

should be a review up on Wargames Journal fairly soon.

Woot Kevin, you got all of tehm. I wonder, with all teh spelling changes evident from looking at english in teh past if teh people of teh future will read some book and say "Hey, look at how tehy spell teh: "the" isn't that wierd?" I'm serious, I wouldn't be suprised, although I know that Kevin just did a few typos on a word that our brains don't read anymore.

Anyway, I agree with the comment about seperate 6mm basing not being required. I'm sure Peter Berry is hiding somewhere is this very room, dozing now, yes, but waiting to hear 6mm, then jumping into action and defending his scale. Anyway, I'm sure he'll tell you that his mini's work fine with WMA basing, and will probably shortly have pictures of WMA units, as he has a pretty solid grasp on marketing and knows that will help sell his figures.

As for number of soldiers per strip, that's a tricky one. I guess ask your vendor how many milimetres wide his strips are, and how easy they are to seperate. If they are GW style then it's pretty impossible without sacrificing 1 figure for every 2 you clip out.

Pete Berry's strips are conveniently on a 20mm frontage. $ stips to a WMA base will give a good look, and he is selling prepacked WMA armies. I think these rules will even work with my 2mm armies.

So a question: Have some of the other rules issues that bothered some people about the fantasy version been fixed as well?

The "march all the way across the table and roll the flank all on one turn" based on good initiative rolls glitch seems even less suited to historical battles than fantasy.

And the way that some units were statistically impossible to hurt with missile fire from a single unit, even when rained down all day, yet vulnerable to fire from several units, seems worth asking about yet again too.

Any fixes?

JJW-T.C.H.

I hear that a max. of 3 orders total (including combat) can be given to a unit in a turn in WMA. I don't know about the missile fire issue you mentioned.

@Coyote
LOL, true mate. I have type teh so many times i considered actually remapping the h and the e so that i would always type the instead of the default speed typing teh.
Still, a whole new branch of english is developing before our eyes. W00t4ge, \/\/3 g3t 2 C 4 sp33|< pWn3d b4 0uR v3Ry 3Y3s!
BAck on topic...
Having Battle of the five armies, but not having played it yet, and having an interset/desire to get into ancients/historicals...would BOFA give a good feel of what WMA is like before i drop cash on the 10mm armies of yore?
Or should i stick to my original expensive plan and get WAB/Shieldwall and do 28mm?

Hi
Firstly roknroll - BoFA is Wm straight with new lists - it hasn't the changes of WMA at all. So it would give a flavour but not the 'meat' :-)

I'd go with WMA rather than WAB although you may be able to get more opponents with WAB I suppose.

JJwhite - there is now a 3 order maximum and also it seems harder to give orders as most allied troops give a -1 to command and there is now a enemy to flank as well as a near proximinity minus which all adds up. Also the new 'slow' troop category gives a -1 as well. So you can't do as much (in one turn) and in a lot of cases what you can do is harder to achieve.

As to shooting archers have one attack per stand and are able to drive back and maybe even take stands off as a single unit. Most stands have 3 hits so it is very rare now for it to be statistically imopssible for a 3 stand unit to take off a stand - I think elephants may have four hits but then they are very likely to go walkabout through your own troops if they are driven back from fire anyway. There are not that plethora of 4 hit stands which were as you say impossible to knock off. You can still concentrate fire although the line of fire and fire arcs have been tightened up.

Rich Jones

I thought WMA wasn't out for a while yet. Has it perhaps been released only in Britain so far? I haven't seen anything at the local store so I was just wondering.

That said, I've definately been looking forward to the rules coming out.

Its out in the states as well I believe.

Thanks for the info Rich J - those do indeed sound like improvements. Maybe it's time to give the engine another try...

JJW-T.C.H.

Nice to hear you're not dead set in your dislike of Warmaster, JJ!

Rockroll you nweed to check what the gamers in your area are doing. It will be interesting to see how WMA pans out, WAB seems to be geared towards 28mm and 15mm has become sinomous with DBX .

I remain unconvinced that the command rules reflect CnC in ancient battles, less so in medieval batttles. Its a game mechnaism which is OK but can be frustrating watching impotently as half your army sits about doing nothing.

As I have said before… If WMA produces a big enough impact on the industry to put the spurs to high quality 10mm historical figure development… Then I will be all over it like white on rice.

As it is… I have seen few 10mm historical figures that meet with my standards for acceptable. The OG are not bad, and some of the Chariot are OK (If they do have telephone pole weapons), but I am looking for something in 10mm that will look like Xyston, Corvus Belli, Mirliton, Foundry, Vendel, A&A, etc look in their own scales (ie I want 10mm figures that look like the best of other scale miniatures look.)

Hi Everyone,

Where do you get the rules?

Shalom,

Maksim-Smelchak.

Rules are only available from independent stockists such as Magister Militum or the Warhammer Historicals site. Not available from GW mail order or stores.
warhammer-historical.com

Max

You can get the rules by mail order from Little Wars in Houston:

link

That SHOULD get you to the order page with WMA right on top of the listings.

If it does not… Just go to the sidebar and look for "Rule Books", and click the link. WMA should be the first Item listed.

While I am at it…

Why didn't they do the "special" rule for Shock units that are based for DBx (or some other system where the units are based along the 40mm edge instead of the 20mm edge) so that the attack dice remained the same.

I can see if you had an unsupported unit attacking that the +1 attack die would be sufficient, but why didn't they add???:

If the unit is supposrted by another identical unit to its rear then it will get 2x the attack dice.

This essentially restores the "unit" to its original strength, and the "2" units that are required to perform this action would still get the same number of attack dice that they originally would have recieved…

Anyone???

We've played WMA with DBx-based figures (in 25mm, no less).

We allowed Shock troops to fight two stands deep – as you say this restores them to more or less the same power as the half-width basing. No downsides that we could see.
It's often best to fight them in columns, 3 deep. That way even when you lose a stand you still have full offensive power.

I have just played my first game, and found it to be very much like other GW products.

It played VERY fast, but lacked in certain areas. Shooting seemed to be pretty powerful for one, but GW seems to like combat to produce results even if History says that it was not all that decisive in many instances.

But, how do you simply sort out where it was decisive and where it was not? Not an easy task, so I can see why they went the way they did.

I am toying with variable stand units. A 2 stand is nothing more than a unit that has lost a stand in combat already, so just buy it at 2/3 points (rounded up to the nearest 5 points). And, I have tried some units of 4 stands (Republican Romans currently) that have worked out OK.

Some people have warned me that this will screw up the odds. If both sides have units that are made up of variable sizes… I found there to be no problem. If the Macedonians have 4 stand Phalanxes, and the Republican Romans have 4 stand Hastati, Princeps and Triarii units… Then I see no problems arising. It does allow for stronger defense of the Legionairres against the Phalanx without having to have separate unit support if you allow units like Legionairres to support themselves in 2x2 formations, but not so much that they don't get torn up by the Phalanx in the process, and the Macedonians still have all of that Cavalry that they can chew on the legions with… Tough fight. I think that the objections I have seen about variable strength units are just smoke and mirrors. GW has been pretty arbitrary in the past simply to maintain simplicity in its games, so I expect that WMA is no different.

I would buy it from artsbargains.com, which is my regular supplier. Not only do they typically give discounts, but for reasonably sized orders you get free shipping as well. I think I paid $28.50 USD for the $38 USD set of warmaster rules, if I remember correctly. My friends and I bought three sets, tho, and some others stuff for a $200 USD order.

Preliminary read is that it looks good. I haven't close-read it yet, that'll have to wait until next week. But my Pelopponesian War Greeks, Late Republic Romans and Gauls are dying to get out there!

a.