Home again

Well, hello again.  We arrived back from our holiday last night, tired but nicely relaxed...  And I woke up (at 05:00) with a headache, so yes, I can confirm that we're back to 'normal life'.  Ready for another holiday already!

I haven't done a lot of wargaming stuff while away - I had been going to clean up all the rest of the figures for the two 1,000 point 'Fire in the East' forces, but in the event I only managed the lanciarii and the Roman cavalry (which are now primed and ready for paint once the primer is hard).  I did do a fair bit of reading, and a lot of thinking.

I am still pondering the idea that there may be something (or even several somethings) fundamentally 'wrong' with ancients wargaming and the way things work.  Apologies to those of you who may have heard some of this before! There are a host of minor problems too.  Let's start with the latter.  First and foremost amongst those, in my view, are those linked to my 'bête noire' - tournament, or competition, gaming.  

The idea that any and all ancient armies (those from the dawn of time through until, say, AD1500) ought to be able to fight each other on equal terms is perhaps the one that gets my goat most.  It's just mad.  There's an assumption that, just because warriors from, say, Ur, and French medieval knights both use variations on 'pointy sticks' with which to fight, they ought to be able to fight each other fairly.  That, to me, is like making the assumption that a sixteenth century Tercio could fight on equal terms against a modern battle-group - after all, both use firearms, don't they?  That single premise, daft as it is, has coloured the development of ancients wargames rules for as long as I can remember.  Added to this is the 'necessity' for all armies to have an equal chance of winning an 'equal points' engagement.  These two requirements have together probably done more to mould ancients wargaming than any others.  And they may well be at the root of the more fundamental problems.

Dealing with the first 'problem' is easy - and Warhammer Ancient Battles, for all its perceived faults, does go some way towards achieving this - the idea of armies from supplements being able to compete on more-or-less equal terms, but there being no guarantee of a fair game between 'out of supplement' armies has, I feel, been one of the major strengths of the system.  Personally, I might even go further, and write different sets of rules for different 'periods' - 'Biblicals', Classical Greece, Macedonian and Punic Wars, Roman Principate, etc.  But perhaps WAB's 'special rules' (each supplement has some, taking precedence over certain rules in the main rulebook, where the authors felt the main rules didn't cover some aspect of a particular period particularly well) go far enough in this regard - after all they do, in effect, replace the main rules, and presenting 'special rules' does avoid the need to reproduce most of the 'core rules' in each 'rule-book'.

The fundamental problem with most (or all?) ancients wargames is that they are predicated upon the assumption that you won't hold a reserve, or deploy in more than a single line - points values seem to work against the idea - fight with all your troops/points or you won't stand a chance.  Principate Roman armies normally deployed in at least two, and more usually three, lines.  These lines acted as a sort of 'reserve', but very often an additional reserve was held back to cope with any unforeseen emergencies.  If you try that in any of the current rule-sets, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose: you will only be fighting with, say, 1/3 of your force.  Conversely, the opposition, fighting in a single line, will have far more troops in combat and will probably slaughter each line in detail - if indeed there is time within the limited number of turns in a typical game.  And that is probably the one thing which, in my opinion, makes ancient wargames look and feel least like 'real' ancient warfare - at least in our period.  

As to what form a solution might take, I have no idea at this juncture (it would help if I had a clear picture of the 'nitty-gritty' of ancient warfare).  One could write a rule requiring armies to hold a certain minimum number of points back as a reserve, but how then does one account for barbarian armies, which (seemingly) rarely held a reserve?  In order for the army holding a reserve to stand a chance against the army which does not, the 'fighting power' of its troops must be much greater than those of the opposition - or else how will they avoid being slaughtered?  And there is then a danger that the player of the army holding a reserve could commit it 'early' and use his advantageous fighting power, and numbers, to turn the tables on his enemy.  

Looking at a Roman army (and considering what Onasander says in 'The General') from our period, it seems that they 'transposed' units - presumably to allow fatigued troops to be replaced by fresh ones from the reserve lines.  It seems, from Onasander, as if knowing when to 'transpose' units might be a vital skill for a successful general.  Perhaps then, fatigue was much more important than we give credit for - maybe a line of fresh units, taking over from a part-worn line, might be so much superior to the worn troops facing them (even if heavily outnumbered by them), as to be almost unstoppable: maybe that effect might even be mostly moral - i.e. the thought of facing fresh troops when tired from combat might be just too much to face, resulting in a rout, with the fresh troops pursuing and slaughtering those running away.

Therefore I wonder if some simple fatigue rules, 'bolted onto' WAB, might make a difference to the way the game played (hopefully without slowing a fun game too much - or removing all the fun!).  It might well encourage one to hold a reserve.  Perhaps reserves would have to take leadership tests in order not to advance and join in with the general melee - thus making it easy for (high leadership) Romans, and difficult for (low leadership) barbarians to hold a reserve.  Add to that a mechanism (perhaps akin to that in Allen Curtis's Hannibal WAB supplement) allowing the transposing of units/lines (perhaps, again, dependent on leadership) and perhaps we might be onto something.

These are just some fairly random thoughts, which need much more work - so please don't be too rude to me, though comments are welcome.

Copyright © Dr. P.C. Hendry, 2010