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"Using Armies of Arcana rules for Ancients" Topic


Armies of Arcana

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GreenMountainBoy19 Aug 2003 7:26 a.m. PST


Hi All,

Over the weekend, my friends and I had an opportunity to use the Armies of Arcana rules (Thane's Games) for a series of 3 fantasy battles. The rules are well written, simple and flowing and give a great game.

Like many gamers out there, we have a lot of different interests, including Fantasy wargaming, and several era's of historicals. For rules systems, we play Chronpia, Confrontation, Battlefront WWII, AoA, and probably 1 or 2 others.... That's in addition to our 'ocassional' forays into chit-based games like Glory II, Landships, and SL, plus various boardgames (our latest rage is Eagle Game's Napoleon).

Since we only game about once a month, this has lead to a serious problem of not being able to fully focus on one rules set to really get to know it. And my brain is too small to really cram it full of all these different rules systems. The obvious answer, of course, is to narrow our focus-- Well, that's not going to happen. Instead, we are about to move into collecting 15mm ancients- Yikes!

However, this led to a discussion about using one basic rules system for our 15mm Fantasy/Ancients gaming. Since we like AoA, and they have a very flexible army building system, we think it's 'the' candidate. So my question is this:

- Is anyone else using AoA for thier Ancients wargaming?
- What 'tweaks' have you made to the rules to support it?

The one area we are considering modifying (Sorry, Mr. Morgan, I know its not open source, but consider these house rules) is that of allowed formations. formations such as the extended line, attack collumns, and phalanxes should be supportable by the rules.

Thoughts?

Thane Morgan19 Aug 2003 10:15 a.m. PST

As long as you don't give out any of the main rules, feel free to openly give out your modifications. And thank you for trying and enjoying the game :)

I don't know enough about ancients warfare to know what the effects of various formations should be. I know various commanders did various pointy and trapezoidal things, but it was never clear to me if they actually had a significant effect.

Obviously, you should ditch the magic resistance rules. All of the "historical" human armies in the game have been modified to be more idealized and mythological than historically accurate.

Missile weapons are probably more effective than reality, again going with the romanticized fantasy view of bow fire. Some have suggested using d8's instead of d6's when rolling missile attacks, effectively reducing average hits from 33% to 25%. I have no opinion on if that is truly necessary or more realistic though.

You may want to have two types of shields,to better reflect the difference between small (+1) and large (+2) shields vs. missile fire.

There was a rule in previous versions where RaF formation gave a +1 bonus to armor. This was removed because a) Heavy armor + shield + raf gave armor 5, which was very tough to get through, and b) everyone forgot to use it anyway :). Very few ancients armies should have plate type armor, so the highest armor would get to 4. If you try this, I'd only give that +1 vs melee attacks, not missile.

Most of these are additional levels of complexity that you may or may not want. The loss of the magic system gives you more time for these complexities though, so the game should still move quickly.

I'll be happy to discuss other ideas, I do have a pretty good grasp of what effects various changes will have and so can advise in that regard. feel free to e-mail me or carry it on here, doing it here might get more ideas into the disucssion.

Thane Morgan

andrewgr19 Aug 2003 10:30 a.m. PST

I think the biggest "problem" with using AoA for Ancients is that AoA doesn't have a command and control system, so your ability to zip units all around the battlefield is much greater than in any historical rules set. You can always move every unit every turn, to the maximum of it's movement ability (which is itself very liberal in terms of turning, changing frontage, etc.).

This doesn't really lead to anything particularly resembling Ancient warfare, which was more or less two long battlelines moveing towards each other. I don't think it's even particularly close to medieval warfare.

I think AoA works great for fantasy, but if I was really interested in recreating an ancient Greek or Roman battle, or even a 100 Years War battle, I'd want to use a system that placed much more serious constraints on my abililty to move my units as I chose every turn.

Just my $.02

P.S. If, on the other hand, you got really ambitious and decided to add C&C rules to AoA, that would certainly be a great service to the AoA community, as those rules would be usable in the normal fantasy games as well. Go for it!

Autarch19 Aug 2003 12:20 p.m. PST

in addition to a lack of c&c AoA treats skirmish formations a bit strange iirc. this is one reason i shied away from it. ideally Ancients rules should have regular, loose, and skirmished formations. AoA has regular and skirmished, but the skirmished troops actually become more effective in cc (barring morale adjustments). to me it makes much more sense to make skirmished troops highly vulnerable to cc, they shouldn't have any chance against formed infantry (nor should they consider attacking it!).

still, if you enjoy it as a ruleset its no less historical than WAB, which people are crazy about. personally i think you should play it to its strengths (fantasy, mass troop blocks mingled with large beasties, flexability to dream up any fantastic force you can imagine) and look into some rulesets that specialize in ancients warfare and attempt o communicate the feel of the massive armies and formations of an ancient battle. but that's just my opinion, and there's always room to do both.

GreenMountainBoy19 Aug 2003 1:39 p.m. PST

Thanks all for your inputs! The thing I enjoy about AoA is the streamlined simplicity. I think the other items can be 'fixed' as far as adapting the system for Ancients (Hey Thane, maybe your next supliment will be AOA:Ancients!)

You have all hit the major concerns I have:

1) Missile fire- Yup, it's deadly. I found that out over the weekend when a unit of DE archers wiped out a unit of orc spearmen, and then my Wyvern on the following turn. I think this can be addressed a couple of ways, and thanks, Thane, for your suggestions. Limiting missile troops; improving the effectiveness of armor/shields against missiles, and maybe even reducing missile troop skill levels are probably the routes I would take.

2) C&C- this is a biggie for me. The challenge is, how to implement a reasonable C&C structure without adding a lot of complexity and/or playtime. Taking out the entire magic phase will free up time for C&C, though, which is good. I am toying with the idea of using 'command markers', borrowed from Demonworld. Basically, the first task in the Movement phase would be for each player to assign a marker (Hold, Attack or Move- hidden from the opponent) to each of thier units. Units within command range of a leader could assign 2 makers. Once initiative is rolled, players turn over thier markers and must execute the command assigned to that unit. Units with multiple markers can choose the appropriate movement type based on what the opponent is doing. Next Comes actual movement-- Here, instead of one player moving, then the next, I was thinking of alternating moves (starting with whoever rolled highest initiative). Maybe units not in command radius of a leader must make a morale check to execute thier assigned move?

3) Formations- Here, I think I'll need to do some research; Ancient warfare is new to me. The open questions are, what formations are allowed? What impact on the game should they have? How should they be limited?

I am especially interested you everyone's thoughts on Command & Control systems- What works, what doesn't; what is 'realistic', but also what won't bog a game down.

Thanks!

Spectralwraith19 Aug 2003 3:05 p.m. PST

The DBx system of Pips works pretty well and wont slow things up too much. Every pip could move a block of troops and using an "average die" would cut down on the luck factor to a reasonable level.

Also the Hordes of the Things command and control ranges for the General and commanders.

Id give better Generals a plus to the Pip die and longer command range to more accuratly simulate situations like Alexander against Darius. Of course you could give sub commanders there own pip dies as well with whatever modifiers to boot.

Personal logo Parzival Supporting Member of TMP19 Aug 2003 6:44 p.m. PST

I'd say the power of the bow depends on the ancient culture. Many did not use bows effectively, if at all. Others perfected different forms of the weapon and archery techniques, and used them to incredible effect. So a rules system should mimic this in some way.

For example, Greek and Roman bow fire (and Western Europe prior to 13th century England & Wales) should be limited in range and effectiveness. On the other hand, Parthian, Mongol and English bowmen should be extremely deadly, due to better bow technology, fire rates, ranges, archery techniques and training (but also more expensive for the same reasons).

Vis Bellica19 Aug 2003 11:42 p.m. PST

If you want a good command and control system, try Vis Bellica.

Go to the website (www.visbellica.com) and read some of the reviews, articles and battle reports there and they'll show you what I mean.

Cheers

SirG
(aka Robert Avery, Author Vis Bellica)

Thane Morgan20 Aug 2003 10:57 a.m. PST

I will tell you there has only been one C&C system that I thought worked well, and that was the morale clock from FR! The others I have seen have been far too random, where the whole game revolved around rolling well for C&C. I think that isn't fun, though obviously many disagree.

I put out the draft for a more complex C&C system that didn't involve much randomness, I think it is still in the AoA support section - if not I'll find it and use it again. I felt it gave a better feel for control than pip or activation roll systems, but I think it was only roughly tested on my own.

The probablem with straight up alternating unit moves is that the player with more units gets an advantage, because he can move critical units early and then still have free response units at the end - this makes players put out crappy light and understaffed units to take up "move slots" so they can keep the response units free. Having one player move units until they are equal does the same thing, except the advantage goes to being able to move a bunch of stuff before your opponent can. In either case, the effect is opposite of reality, where more units are harder to control, not easier.

Skirmished troops are not more effect in melee, there only advantage is being able to "wrap around" formation troops which at best yeilds 4 additional attackers on a full wrap around. The skirmished troops will than have to make a morale test if the formation troops have equal wounds or more, no matter what casualties were involved. The RaF troops will then be putting a morale penalty twice that of the skirmished troops, man for man.

The reason it works in AoA is that players can buy fantastic melee oriented troops with multiple attacks where it really pays to maximize the number of models fighting, in spite of the morale penalties. Models with 2 or 3 attacks each have a great advantage when they can surround an enemy to take advantage of their superior melee skills - getting tied down in RaF plays to the enemies strengths, not their own. In Historical terms, the number of troops weilding two weapons is going to be close to zero, so that advantage will be nullified, and I think few players will want to use skirmishing for anything but its maneuver bonus and when panicking over line breaks/flanking.

Dark Elf archers are really, really nasty, especially those with the double crossbows. Fortunately they die easy, and DE archers are high on my priority list whenever I fight them. Usually, I can afford to lose 2 archers for every one of his killed, and am willing to make that exchange if necessary. In contrast Human bow archers typically hit 1/3 of the time and light targets with shields save 1/3 of the time, so basically 22% or so of shots will kill. Light bow users get kills about 16% of the time against light troops.

GreenMountainBoy21 Aug 2003 1:53 p.m. PST

Thane, I would be interested in seeing your proposed C&C solution. The challenge in developing one is finding that happy medium between realism, speed, and fun. While the 'random' systems may be more 'realistic', I also think that they can be frustrating to players. Your observation of the entire game hanging on that die roll is a good one!

Okay, point taken on alternating moves; I've played a lot of Chronopia and like the system because of the fluid feel but I can see where it can be abused. Also, AoA is a far cry from the (company who shall not be named) Igo-hugo snoozer.

And, yes- Lesson learned on Dark Elves! In terms of using the system for Ancients, one simple alternative I've come up with is to essentially halve the range of missle fire, in addition to better armor saves. The big issue isn't just the killing power of longbows, but also the fact that when your unit as a move of 6" and you start 24" apart, you are basically in range for 4 turns! Ouch- that translates into no unit left to engage! Fine for fantasy where you have all kinds of fancy beasts and magic to conter missile fire or mask movement, but Ancients with big blocks of infantry lined up is another story.

ArchDuck Chuck22 Aug 2003 8:31 a.m. PST

Borrow the C&C system from Grenadier (I can make this offer; I helped develop it):

-- Command must be traced from a command source. A command source is defined as a command tent, a general attached to the tracing unit, or any general in a valid command chain. A command chain must begin at a command tent. A command tent may only function as a command source if the highest ranking general on the side is within ten inches. The chain then extends through a line of generals of equal or descending rank with no more than ten inches between them. Generals attached to units can not be part of a command chain; however, the unit they are attached to is always in command. Any unit within ten inches of any general in a command chain is in command. Command is checked at the begining of their move. Units not in command are subject to the following restrictions:

The unit may not
1. change formation and move
2. move more than a half move
--

(You might wish to simplify a bit by designating one commander figure as the C-in-C and tracing command from that figure. Commander figures do not represent actual persons, they act more like "command points". Penalties for being out of command can be adjusted to suit your own ideas.)

The net upshot is that units have to stay within an area defined by the length of the command chain. A general can be attached to a unit which then can go off on its own, but at the cost of limited manuevering space for the rest of the army (since that general is no longer part of the command chain).

Like Rocky Russo have stated on other threads, I don't believe in rules that tries to make you behave like Alex the Nifty if you play Macedonian or Darius if you play Persian. When I play, _I_ am the C-in-C. There are plenty of Alexes or Dariuses among players out there, let them prove themselves! That's why we play, isn't it?

If you want diversity, give armies that had a flexible organization more command figures than those with rigid organizations. Then Murat can lead a grand cavalry charge without disrupting the command chain, while Charles grabbing the colours and leading the grenadiers forward leaves the rest of his army standing around.

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