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"Movement in the WRG Rules (and others)" Topic


Wargames Rules 3000 BC to 1485 AD

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hwarang04 Jul 2010 5:09 a.m. PST

Hello all,

how is movement done? It seems that the WRG ancient rules and other rules of similiar age do assume that movement is simultaneous.
How does that work? I only once tried a rules set which handled movement that way and it seemed odd.
It is often quite important who can attack whom – how does one decide?

Markup04 Jul 2010 5:23 a.m. PST

Some people (I'm not one of them) still detest IGOUGO games, and claim that simultaneous movement is 'more realistic'.

Anyway, here's the old WRG 3rd edition from the freewargamesrules site.

PDF link

Start at page 11. Good luck!

hwarang04 Jul 2010 5:35 a.m. PST

There are other alternatives than igiugo, but that is not the point.

But orders surely are executed simultaneously? That should result in pretty ambigous situations.

platypus01au04 Jul 2010 5:39 a.m. PST

Sometimes. But not always.

The trick is to break these situations down. We used to move quarter moves when we were close, to work out where exactly things got tricky. But (IIRC) 6th and 7th did charge declarations first? Charges always trumped normal moves.

John

Markup04 Jul 2010 5:58 a.m. PST

Quite so, but…

From the sequence of play WRG 6th p22

"3. Write down all charge declarations. Reveal these simultaneously with your opponent revealing his, and decide with him which if any are overidden by the declaring unit being itself the intended target of a charge by enemy other than its own target. Test reaction of troops whose charge has not been cancelled by this, then that of troops whose charges are reinstated because opponents failed their test."


It can get a bit complicated…I've seen some spectacular arguments over games of WRG Ancients.

Mark Plant04 Jul 2010 6:08 a.m. PST

There were many things about the old WRG rules that were broken. Simultaneous movement was not one of them. It was never an issue really.

In 7th Edition:

Charges trumped other moves, and if A charged B and B charged C, then B's charge was cancelled. (As this was Ancients both sides were more or less linear and close together 99% of the time, so situations where B's charge could technically take it out of reach of A were very few.) If it was an issue of how many would contact, then quarter moves could be used.

For troops advancing in close range, both sides had to declare that they were advancing, then one side chosen at random got to move its first. The other was then bound to advance those it said it would, and no others. The orders the troops were on often limited choices further.

March moves were done in portions.

It worked fine. I'm not sure it was realistic, but it was certainly less gamey in competitions.

The worst feature of IGoUGo in short games is that one side has a head start, which may or may not be cancelled by the other side going last. It leads to ridiculous situations if you play to a set number of moves, whereby the last side to move can do anything it likes with impunity. 40K is, notoriously, a game of who moves first.

I once managed, in the semi-final of our nationals to lose a game of Warhammer Fantasy before I had moved! That was extreme, but it did show the asymmetric nature of IGoUGo is not always ideal.

I've seen some spectacular arguments over games of WRG Ancients.

Yes. Been there. But not over movement. And certainly not compared to some other parts of the game such as, say, visibility and "known".

hwarang04 Jul 2010 6:21 a.m. PST

Thanks for the insights. Learned something.

Who asked this joker04 Jul 2010 7:25 a.m. PST

I always found IGO-UGO with the phase works well. Games like Arcane Warfare and Might of Arms use this sequence. MoA, for instance, has a movement phase (IGO-UGO) followed by a shooting phase (Simultaneous) followed by a charge phase (Semi-Simultaneous) followed by melee (simultaneous).

The semi-simultaneous charge phase is that way because some units may not get to carry out charges if charged by cavalry.

Arcane warfare has initiative by command with multiple commanders on a side. You move/shoot during the movement step and then melee after all moving and shooting is done.

Both systems give a good representation of "simultaneous" combat without the need to plot movement or having overly engineered rules. Either system might be good systems to bolt on to WRG if you still like the general game mechanics of WRG Ancients.

John

sector5104 Jul 2010 8:15 a.m. PST

"how is movement done? It seems that the WRG ancient rules and other rules of similiar age do assume that movement is simultaneous.
How does that work? I only once tried a rules set which handled movement that way and it seemed odd.
It is often quite important who can attack whom – how does one decide?"

Well once upon a time, thats how we played. If there was a conflict, you broke the move down into quarters and did bits of a move until the proximity of the units stopped further movement.

I still have simultanous movement in my own rules, the unit with the higher movement value (that is within charge range of the enemy) can choose to move first or second.

A charge is a bonus to the combat, rather than saying who fights first (as indeed it is in Warmaster Ancients).

AlanYork04 Jul 2010 10:33 a.m. PST

Back in the 80s simultaneous movement was regarded as the new and advanced way of doing things and alternate moves were old hat and too much like snakes and ladders type board games.

It's a view I still hold with to some degree but now it all seems to be alternate moves whatever set you choose.

Personally I never had a row with anyone over the WRG 6th edition rules and even the minor disagreements were never over the movement rules as far as I can recollect. I'd certainly choose to play 6th edition over DBM or FoG any day of the week!!!

Lentulus04 Jul 2010 1:30 p.m. PST

They work just fine if you stay calm and play nice; never had problems with them with either WRG or Charge!

ashill04 Jul 2010 1:31 p.m. PST

I recall playing many games of 2nd to 7th ed WRG Ancients and although there were disagreements it was seldom over movement. One convention adopted sometimes was for both players to start moving units from the same side of the table. So player A would start with his rightmost unit and player B would start with his leftmost unit. Another useful device to help with avoiding potential arguments generated by simultanious moves was that units had to be given tactical orders at the start of the game. Some orders imposed limitations on what a unit could do. E.g. a mounted unit given 'probe' orders was not allowed to frontally charge steady steady close formation foot armed with pikes or long thrusting spears. Plus, there were rules that determined when and if a unit's tactical orders could be changed.

There was a lot to be said for the old rules but, initially, DBM did seem to be a lot simpler and I guess that is why, for a time, it became the standard set, at least here in the UK.

adster05 Jul 2010 6:17 a.m. PST

In WRG 7th (Warrior as it now is) I quite liked the rule that when cavalry faced just infantry they could force the infantry to move first or choose to go first themselves. It gave them a flexibilty that was quite believable. Simultaneous movement and IGOUGO both seem quite dated now as a way to deal with movement(not alway a bad thing of course…)

Oldenbarnevelt05 Jul 2010 9:21 a.m. PST

Simultaneous movement, in the old WRG rules, allowed too much gaming the system. There was a lot of "if you move there then I'm going to here." I find simultaneous movement preferable to sequential movement but only if it is accompanied by command chits.

Mellehovich06 Jul 2010 4:14 a.m. PST

I remember the "good old days" of simultaneous movement. I also remember with horror some opponents forcing you to break down moves into 1/16ths when two opposing units approached each other. Alternate moves (for me anyway) give a much cleaner game.

Major William Martin RM08 Jul 2010 5:20 a.m. PST

My opinion only, but I do prefer simultaneous movement in almost all periods. Where we used to run into problems under the WRG system (Barker & Co., Millward and Gush) typically was when opponents from different clubs used to playing within a specific time range of opponents met someone with a "new" army (to them at least) and radically different tactics. Or, when a less experienced player not familiar with the nuances met a much more experienced player. Then, yes, quartering could become a pain and lead to disputes, and some ugly "learning experiences" for the less experienced player.

The thing that many people never quite grasped about the system is that there is/was a certain "elegance" to the mechanics: Movement is dictated by "Orders", Movement can be trumped by "Actions" (declared charges, obligatory pursuits, etc.), and both Orders and Actions can be trumped by "Reactions" (uncontrolled advance or Impetuous, failing a reaction test, etc.). Many times even very experienced players encountered situations they had never faced before and were baffled by the impact on their plans. To some extent the problems began with amendments to 6th Edition and then really blew up under 7th Edition. Units began to operate under "assumed orders" and became almost telepathic in nature.

I once played (under 7th Edition) against a Teutonic Knight army using my Late Poles with a lot of light and heavy cavalry and LMI support (axe and bow). My opponent had gone "armor heavy" with his list (I think he thought Guderian was leading them) and was terrified that I had some exotic flank march or hidden troops or a flanking move planned and so kept his two largest units of knights simply riding back and forth behind a very thin line from one side of the table to the other. That is, until I managed to break through his battle line on one extreme end. Then the two units suddenly did a 180 degree turn and made a dash for the opposite end of the table to plug the gap by charging me. When I questioned the orders that would allow him to move roughly a mile (in scale) to his unit's own rear and execute this plan, he was able to find the relevant (and vague) "general order" that allowed him to do so because there was a General with each unit and they "knew" everything that happened on the tabletop. This same player kept a unit of Foot Sergeants (HI) completely stationary exactly 30 paces from the back edge of two small woods for the entire game because the reaction distance for "surprise" was 20 paces. So I declared a charge against him with one of my units of LMI in one wooded area, he counter-charged (which brought him to within 15 paces of the woods), and then I charged with my second unit of LMI from the other woods the next turn and forced him to check as surprised and now with enemy to flank. Lawyerish? Absolutely! But, in my opinion, he had already demonstrated a disregard for the integrity of the game with his Telepathic Knights and their "round the World Tour" activity. His whole "battle plan" was to try and use his superior morale, several generals and what he perceived as "loopholes" in the rules to "react" to my army instead of actually having a plan.

Counting Ancients and P&S together (both WRG and similar mechanics), I played roughly 100-120 games a year for 16 years, about 80 of them a year "serious" games, and most of the time the rules flowed well without major disputes. It's one of the reasons that I can still remember some of the exceptions. I still play Gush for P&S, and though I've tried MoA and like it, I just can't get used to the IGOUGO system and mandatory unit sizes, so I'll probably go back to 6th Edition (or maybe even earlier). It helps that I don't play in public anymore and my regular opponent is my Son. We know each others habits and share the same armies, so it really becomes a bit of a chess match when we play.

Bill
Sir William the Aged

wballard24 Jul 2010 3:37 p.m. PST

For a board game example of breaking movement into smaller fragments take a look at Star Fleet Battles. Which is for most purposes a miniatures game anyway. The movement is based on a 32 pulses. If your ship moves 16 in a turn then it moves every other pulse, if you move 8 then once every 4th pulse. They have tables for which pulse different speeds move within the turn. It may be slow with lots of elements but the concept works quite well for resolving who got to the desirable piece of terrain, or out of the disadvantageous, when.

I prefer the simultaneous movement on tactical games as I never noticed the opposing forces stop moving when we did while I was in the Army.

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