Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Tournament, 11-12 March 2011 (Intro)

The Northeastern Warhammer Ancients community has started to splinter somewhat with the arrival of the new 2nd edition of the ruleset – some long-time members of the community have been unhappy with the changes to the rules, while others have taken to the new rules with few complaints.  This 2011 Cold Wars was an opportunity for the two ‘sides’ to reach a sort of working compromise on the issue – those favoring the 1e rules (as well as those looking for a change of pace) flocked to the English Civil War tournament, while the remaining few who showed up at this low-turnout event played in the fully 100% anachronistic, not-at-all historically accurate Ancients/Medievals combined tournament.

Of course, before the shenanigans on Saturday (12 March), there was the traditional evening doubles tournament to start off the festivities.  Unlike in previous years, I already had a partner for the doubles in advance – fellow Warmonger Ancients gamer (and fellow prenomen) Ken P, fielding his Arthurian Saxon army.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Doubles Tournament, 11 March 2011 (Game 1)

Opponents: Mike D (Teutonics) and John B (Ottomans).  John is a long-time opponent and I am very familiar with his maneuver-heavy playstyle with Ottomans.  Mike’s Teutonic Knights, on the other hand, was sure to be a fairly blunt instrument, but also heavily reliant on cavalry.

Armies: (3000 pts)
TEUTONICS (Mike)

• General & BSB on warhorses with full armor, not attached to units
• 2 units of 5 Knights and 5 Turkopoles in back ranks, one unit with WS5
• 3 units of 8/8/9 crossbows with heavy armor and pavise (3+ saves)
• 1 unit of 8 skirmishing cavalry with bows

OTTOMANS (John)

• General & BSB on horses with armor, not attached to units
• 2 units of 10 medium spear/archer cavalry (one unit is Janissaries)
• 2 units of 9/10 skirmishing nomadic cavalry
• 2 units of 9 skirmishing infantry archers
• 1 unit of 10 medium infantry (Janissaries with halberds/bows)
• 1 Bombard artillery piece with crew

Mission: Alternating deployment (2 units per side until all units set up), 12” in from long board edge, and an unmodified roll-off afterwards to decide who takes first turn.

Terrain: Playing on a 4x8 table, the left half was almost completely open, with a few trees and hills about 12” in from either long edge.  The right half had a huge hill in the middle of the table, neatly blocking up LOS from most angles.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Doubles Tournament, 11 March 2011 (Game 2)

Opponent: Adam (Imperial Macedonians) and Duncan (Spartacus Romans).  Duncan is a tournament regular and true ambassador of the hobby, and had traveled to Cold Wars from England to participate in the events.  Adam is one of the more notorious members of the Warhammer Ancients scene, as you will see below.

Armies: (3000 pts)
IMPERIAL MACEDONIANS (Adam)

• General & BSB on horses with armor, not attached to units
• 4 units of 21 phalanx pikemen
• 1 unit of 11 companions (medium shock cavalry)

SPARTACUS ROMANS (Duncan)

• Special Character General Crassus, on horse and not attached to unit
• BSB and Lictor on foot, not attached to unit
• 4 units of 18 legionnaires (three are drilled/stubborn)
• 1 unit of 9 skirmishers
• 1 unit of 12 archers without command

Mission: Alternating deployment (2 units per side until all units set up), 12” in from long board edge, but also more than 12” from short board edges, and an unmodified roll-off afterwards to decide who takes first turn.

Terrain: A large hill and long arm of trees largely divides the table into two parts, one part significantly larger than the other.  Hills and trees ring the rest of the killing grounds.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Singles Tournament, 12 March 2011 (Game 1)

Opponent: Eric (Sassanids).  A cheerful enough fellow leading a historically unlikely foe, Eric had a cavalry-heavy force of Persians that seemed, on paper at least, to be exactly the sort of foe that an Elephant-heavy list like mine would most prefer to face.

Army: (1750 pts)

• General & BSB on horses with armor, not attached to units
• Elephant with Howdah and archers
• 1 unit of 8 Kontos/Bow Drilled Heavy Cavalry (Clibanarii)
• 2 units of 9 Kontos/Bow Medium Cavalry (Clibanarii)
• 1 unit of 15 spearmen/archer infantry
• 1 unit of 10 light cavalry with Parthian shot
• 1 unit of 9 nomadic cavalry

Mission: Fog of War (special mission).  Diagonal deployment zones 24” apart, alternating deployment, and an unmodified roll-off to decide who takes first turn.

Terrain: A number of low hills broke up the deployment areas into a number of separate sections, and some sparse copses of trees further enclosed and restricted the midfield area.  This would be a relatively tight fight in the center of the table.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Singles Tournament, 12 March 2011 (Game 2)

Opponent: Ken P (Arthurian Saxons).  This is an army list that I’m very familiar with, as I’ve helped Ken playtest and modify the list over a number of months.  It’s a pretty straightforward fast warband horde list – save one key difference that wouldn’t make much difference against me: no auto-breaking opponents after winning combat.  Since my elephants stampede automatically when they lose combat, and I don’t expect my archers to do well against the Saxons in melee, I figured this distinction was more or less moot.

Army: (1750 pts)

• 4 units of 28 freemen, one with General & BSB
• 1 unit of 28 churls
• 1 unit of 10 skirmishing freemen cavalry
• 2 units of 9 skirmishers

Mission: “Meeting Engagement”.  Armies deploy in pre-determined sequence (‘marching order’), with war machines automatically setting up last.  Units deploy 6” away from center line, and no closer than 18” to enemy units.  NO special/skirmish deployment to start game, and player who finishes first – or who has no war machines – gets automatic choice of first turn.

Terrain: Low hills and trees surrounding an empty midfield.  The Saxons had no terrain really breaking up their deployment zone, while my zone was broken up into several discrete areas, forcing me to set up fairly tight in order to have mutual supporting LOS with all my ranged units.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Singles Tournament, 12 March 2011 (Game 3)

Opponent: Duncan (Spartacus Romans).  Possibly the only plausibly historical match-up I had this tournament!  The Spartacus Roman list is an interesting one, and in hindsight, possibly one of the nastier Roman army lists out of the many that exist in the Ancients rules.  The key elements are dirt-cheap Legionnaires, led by what are effectively minor heroes in the Centurion upgrades – and those Spartacus-era Centurions are head-and-shoulders above the ones from other eras, too.

Army: (1750 pts)

• Special Character General Crassus, on horse and not attached to unit
• BSB and Lictor on foot, not attached to unit
• 2 units of 12 legionnaires (veteran/drilled/stubborn) with Centurion
• 1 unit of 21 legionnaires (drilled/stubborn) with Centurion
• 3 units of 18 conscript legionnaires with Centurion
• 2 unit of 9/10 archers without command

Mission: “Delayed Reserves”.  Both units must set aside a formed infantry or cavalry unit as a reserve, and note which short table edge they will enter (left/right) later in the game.  Alternating deployment 12” in from long table edge, and an unmodified roll-off to decide who takes first turn.  Flankers enter on 4+ on Turn 3, or 3+ on Turn 4, or 2+ on Turn 5, or do not enter at all and are considered lost.

Terrain: Low hills and trees surrounding an empty midfield.  The Romans (as a melee army) didn’t really need to worry about terrain in their deployment zone; my Nubians ended up being squeezed a little by some woods in my deployment zone.

Retrospective: Warmonger Charity WAB Tournament: 29 January 2011 (Intro)

The third annual Warmonger Charity tournament to benefit the American Cancer Society, organized by our local Warhammer Ancients fanatic and condottiero John Bianchi, was held on 29 January 2010.  One could also think of it as another fine excuse for me to field my (mostly finished) Nubian historical army, and to play a version of Warhammer Fantasy that actually doesn’t suck most mightily (and which is within a reasonable price-range for a full army), all whilst introducing myself to an anachronistic array of historical opponent from virtually every period of human history.

The Nubians are the third of my WAB armies, and by far the most random, relying as they do almost entirely on the hitting power of elephants, which are unpredictable creatures even at the best of times.  When things work, they tend to work great.  When they don’t, it’s either a brutal loss (for me) or a long, slow, grinding tie game (also fairly common).  And because the elephants are so not maneuverable at all, I can easily lose a game in the deployment phase.  Still, practice makes permanents, and the more practice I get with the Nubians, the better I (hopefully) can be with them.

Retrospective: Warmonger Charity WAB Tournament: 29 January 2011 (Results)

In all, I played three fine opponents that day, starting with Dave and his samurai list.  Now, it’s no secret that the official Samurai list in the “Armies of Antiquity” supplement is quite nasty, and I rather expected that Dave would hurt me quite badly.  That said, I was a bit surprised at how small his army was, and in particular how he had no cavalry to speak of.  I even (foolishly) allowed myself the hope that I might actually win this.

Beautiful models, apparently of the “Mountain” clan.

8-9 July 2010 Historicon Warhammer Ancients Tournaments (Intro)

This review of my games at Historicon 2010 will be somewhat different than normal.  Instead of writing individual battle reports for all my games, I’ll do a more general overview of my results, and what I learned while playing.  I’m doing this for two reasons:

(a) I was playing a completely new army list, and completely new army, using unit types I’ve never fielded before in Ancients games.  As a result, I don’t know that a detailed analysis provided by me would be terribly useful.

(b) I have enormous difficulty writing up battle reports for games that I didn’t much enjoy.  This is not to say that I had no fun at all, but let’s just say that one person cheated, one person was a bully, one person was both, and one other surprisingly lacking in social graces.  This meant that the games with the several other gamers I played with were somewhat overshadowed as a result, although I did have good fun with several quality opponents.

8-9 July 2010 Historicon Warhammer Ancients Tournaments (Analysis)

All my list construction theory was tested during actual fielding of the army, at which point I noticed a number of things:

(1) Elephants are quite punchy, but they are also very slow, and against large blocks of infantry really do need to be supported by another unit (ideally a second elephant).  Given how slow they are, they really can't be held in reserve, and putting them on a far flank is a bit of a risk -- there's a danger that they'll never actually get into battle at all.  Elephants need to be set up with a plan to throw them into the thick of the enemy, as soon as possible.

They are also an all-or-nothing investment, as I discovered that in half of my games, my elephants panicked fairly quickly, rampaging around the field uncontrollably after being either shot to pieces, or (more commonly) losing combat after doing poorly in melee against a large block of resilient infantry.

In my match-up with Heraclian Byzantines, all three of my elephants managed not just to stampede
but to stampede directly into each other at one point.  Pratfalls and other hilarity ensued.
In fact, in this picture, you can see the Greek skutatoi (spearmen) pointing and laughing.

8-9 July 2010 Historicon Warhammer Ancients Tournaments (Doubles Results)

Warhammer Ancients Doubles Tournament
Despite not teamed up in advance with anyone in the doubles event, I was confident that other singletons would be in attendance, with whom I could form an ad hoc alliance.  Indeed, I was matched upon my arrival to the event with Adam Hughes, fielding a Han Chinese army made up of four units of crossbows, four of spearmen, and seven heavy chariots -- plus general and battle standard on horse.  Despite some lackluster contributions on my part, the Nubian/Chinese tag-team still placed a respectable 6th out of 16 total teams.

Adam's Han Chinese force.  Hard to make out clearly in this picture is his fourth unit of crossbows,
which are in ranks in the center of his line, just back of the other crossbows.

8-9 July 2010 Historicon Warhammer Ancients Tournaments (Classical Results)

Ancients Tournament, Classical Division

In a change of pace for me – I have played in the Chivalry division (1200-1500 AD) division for many years – I entered the Classical (400 AD and before) division with my Nubians.  In what was possibly one of the more…interesting…aspects of the tournament (and something that managed to very neatly suck out what enjoyment I’d had during the course of the three games I played), I realized later that the tournament organizer had not been joking when he told me I had intentionally been matched up against three armies with drilled infantry – the bane of an Elephant army list.  Out of 12 players (and 11 possible opponents), only four fielded drilled infantry.  I faced three of those four, twice being re-matched in later rounds to ensure I faced drilled infantry.  The tournament standings (and round-by-round results) that support this grim conclusion are all available online.  Ah, organizer shenanigans.  How exciting.

Despite this, I somehow managed to pull a draw in all three of my games, and finish a moderately respectable 5th out of 12 total players.  And by the end of the third game, I felt I had a fairly solid grasp of what I should be doing with my Nubians on the tabletop.