"Skirmishers in Warmaster Ancients" Topic

I am trying to wrap my head around the so-called "problem" with skirmishers in Warhammer Ancients. This is my understanding of it:

• In the original printing of Warmaster Ancients, skirmishers could evade from charging non-skirmisher enemies and shoot at them as they evaded. This created a problem because armies with relatively few skirmishers (like Imperial Romans) would go against armies that had tons of skirmishers (like Celtiberians, where literally every unit is a skirmisher) and the Imperial Romans would have a hard time getting the charge as they would have to set up a second charge on the skirmishers (who have now evaded even further away) to stick them (since the skirmishers couldn't evade more than once in a turn).

• In the first errata for WMA, the skirmishers were changed so that they needed to hit an enemy with missiles in order to be allowed to evade. If they didn't hit the enemy, then they had to take the charge. To my untrained eye, this seems like a good solution as it forces the skirmishers to roll dice to see if they are even allowed to evade in the first place.

• In the second errata for WMA, the skirmishers were changed again, returning to the original version but with the clause that they could only evade OR shoot, not both. This seems to make skirmishers pretty powerful again.

So my questions are: Do I understand this all correctly? Why was the first errata solution (which seems like the best solution) replaced by the second errata?

Honestly the first errata seems like it would fix the issue for me… there is a nice symmetry, where missile hits normally drive back attackers. They don't drive back charging units, but you could imagine that a successful hit would buy the skirmishers enough time to leg it, especially if the charging enemy is disrupted by the skirmishers' sling stones, javelins, arrows etc.

If skirmishers were still too slippery, you could say that their missiles at charging enemies only hit on a 5+ (which makes sense, since they have much less time to lay into the target with missiles, as the latter is bearing down on their position with murderous intent). This means a 3-stand unit of skirmishers only has a 70% chance to evade an unarmored attacker (58% vs attackers with a 6+ save). If you soften them up a little with missiles first (a good, historical tactic), then the chance to evade drops to 55% (46% vs 6+ save attackers). That seems to give a good balance to the effectiveness of skirmishers evading.

Actually, they were pretty powerful in the first iteration and didn't seem to fit the system very well. The errata in the 2nd and 3rd armies book seems to have fixed things, at least for our group. Skirmishers are definitely annoying and can cause hits, but are easier to manage with the rules. Skirmishers in pretty much any rules system are hard to do right, from Ancients to ACW, but with Warmaster they seem to work pretty well.

I actually thought of an alternative that combines these rules into different tactical options:

When your skirmisher unit is charged by the enemy, you may either:

1) Immediately evade away as normal, without taking any shots.
2) Stand and shoot, as normal for units with ranged attacks.
3) Shoot at a -1 penalty (i.e. needing a 5+ to hit) and then evade 1d6 cm for every hit you inflict on the enemy (up to 3d6 cm, for the maximum number of 3 hits). Cavalry skirmishers can automatically evade an additional 10 cm, even if they do not cause any hits.

You may choose any one of these options each time a skirmishing unit reacts to a charge, except that a unit may not evade (options 1 and 3) more than once in a turn. Thus, if a unit has already used either option 1 or 3 to react to a charge this turn, then they may only choose option 2 (stand and shoot) to react to a second or later enemy charge.

What do you think? The third option is meant to represent the skirmishers taking close range shots of opportunity and then falling back after the attacker's charge has been delayed or disrupted. It's riskier as the attacker may maintain initiative and complete the charge (whether because the missiles were ineffective, the attacker's armour protected them or because the skirmishers waited "too long" and rolled low on their fall back movement).