Joined: Jun 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 218 Location: Kanagawa, Japan Karma: 15
Greyhawk Scenario Report « Thread Started on Jun 2, 2012, 12:30am »
Introduction
Played a scenario with my wife today, 12 heavy cavalry (144 points) versus 18 light cavalry with horse bows (144 points). We rolled dice to see who would play which side, and so I was assigned the heavy cavalry, or bold knights of Furyondy as I preferred to think of them. Makiko took the part of the light cavalry, probably Wolf Nomads or perhaps Paynims from the plains. Either way, one group was far from home and the other saw them as up to no good!
Set Up
Above: The Wolf Nomads appear from behind a mountain to make their presence known, causing the Knights of Furyondy to draw up in a body
Turn One
Above: The first group of Wolf Nomads advances and rains down arrows upon the knights as they deploy into line, a roll of 5+ after second movement resulted in the death of Sir Lawrec, a miserable end for that hardy fighter! Meanwhile the second group of Nomads reforms into line
Turn Two
Above: The Knights of Furyondy turn obliquely (¼ Move) and advance towards the Nomads who turn ninety degrees to show their flanks (½ Move); the second group of Nomads advances to the attack, and in combination the two bands inflict a further five casualties on the heavily armoured knights (Makiko magnanimously elected to use two groups of nine, rather than one group of eighteen, but nonetheless inflicted heavy casualties. Happily, the knights pass their morale test, and so avoid being destroyed for now.
Above: The remaining Wolf Nomads win initiative and reform into line (one move) to face off against the Knight of Furyondy. Not shown above, the knights turn ninety degrees and advance to the attack. However, two volleys of arrows soon reduce them from four to one, Sir Calades the Bold! He prepares to sell his life dearly.
Turn Four
Above: Noble Sir Calades charges towards the Wolf Nomads and is slain by an arrow, but Makiko overrules this sad ending and retroactively elects not to shoot him down.
This scenario was good fun, and it played out very fast, about an hour from start to finish. It was clear from the outset that the advantage lay with the horse archers, which was no great surprise to us. Still, it was pretty close and shows the necessity of combined arms forces, this scenario might have gone rather differently if half the heavy horse had been exchanged for nine bow armed Turcopoles or eighteen light foot archers/medium foot crossbowmen. We found the averaging approach for archery attacks a bit boring, in that the outcome was overly certain, but we both enjoyed the game and Makiko declared that she would make a rather good general in another life.
It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one's own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
Joined: Jun 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 218 Location: Kanagawa, Japan Karma: 15
Re: Greyhawk Scenario Report « Reply #2 on Jun 2, 2012, 10:34am »
Sure, War & Battle is still an ongoing project, but I got heavily distracted by the excellent ancient and medieval war game, Field of Glory. Part of the purpose of playing Chain Mail is investigating how it relates to the roots of Dungeons & Dragons in order to better understand what might make for a fun OSRIC mass combat game supplement.
It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one's own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
Michael Mornard -------------------------- Played in the original Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and EPT Campaigns "Gronan of Simmerya" aka "Old Geezer" aka "LORD Grumpy"
I haven't read Chainmail properly yet but I thought that
[1] '12 Heavy Cavalry' would represent 240 men.
Yes, conventionally one figure can represent 20 or 10 men (depending on your preference), or it can represent 1 man (though the man-to-man combat rules are recommended in this case). However, it makes no difference how many men a figure represents to the procedure of the game, and (according to Gygax) the Fantasy Supplement was not intended for use with the 1:20 system. I used to think that meant he only used the man-to-man rules with the FS, but that makes no sense of the way it is written.
[2] A hit on 1 cavalry unit of 20 men would kill some of the men but not wipe out the whole unit.
Appreciate any guidance on this.
A hit kills a figure, regardless of the number it represents. So, if you have one figure of archers shooting at one figure of cavalry, that can represent 1 versus 1, 10 versus 10 or 20 versus 20, but regardless of scale one figure affects one figure (if you see what I mean).
It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one's own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
A hit kills a figure, regardless of the number it represents. So, if you have one figure of archers shooting at one figure of cavalry, that can represent 1 versus 1, 10 versus 10 or 20 versus 20, but regardless of scale one figure affects one figure (if you see what I mean).
I hope I edited that to correctly attribute the comment.
As a long time miniature wargamer, I'd note that 'typically' games do not assume that 20 men are dead if you remove a figure in a 1:20 game. The overall unit has decreased in effectiveness, and is probably closer to a morale failure. However, without either a set of designer's notes discussing how the author(s) viewed this, or a set of integral campaign rules discussing how to translate a single battle's casualties into the campaign for the next battle, it would be hard to guess what was specifically intended. One of the old school miniatures campaign books I have suggests, in general, that tabletop 'dead' represent about 1/5 dead, and similar proportions of various levels of wounded and troops who had simply fled. Whether you could recover your wounded would depend on whether you held the field, or how many troops you could devote to hauling off their wounded comrades.
Joined: Jul 2010 Gender: Male Posts: 561 Karma: 17
Re: Greyhawk Scenario Report « Reply #8 on Jun 4, 2012, 12:48am »
Chainmail does state that 30% of defeated foes are counted as wounded and not dead. Further, 1 or 2 units of a retreating or routed group will be taken as prisoners.
Matthew, on your next run, if your wife insists on archers again, you should think of adding a commander or hero to yours as it will raise all your dice scores by one. 10 units of heavy horse and a hero (140pts) gives you 10 units all with +1 to all combat, morale and defense dice.
Joined: Jul 2011 Gender: Male Posts: 478 Karma: 37
Re: Greyhawk Scenario Report « Reply #9 on Jun 4, 2012, 12:51am »
What's interesting is that in 1975 my first wife and I played this exact same scenario, except I had the mounted archers and she had the heavy cavalry.
She did not bother reforming her heavy horse; she noticed that heavy cav had a charge move of 18" and horse bows had a range of 18" and she charged first turn.
Michael Mornard -------------------------- Played in the original Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and EPT Campaigns "Gronan of Simmerya" aka "Old Geezer" aka "LORD Grumpy"
I hope I edited that to correctly attribute the comment.
As a long time miniature wargamer, I'd note that 'typically' games do not assume that 20 men are dead if you remove a figure in a 1:20 game. The overall unit has decreased in effectiveness, and is probably closer to a morale failure. However, without either a set of designer's notes discussing how the author(s) viewed this, or a set of integral campaign rules discussing how to translate a single battle's casualties into the campaign for the next battle, it would be hard to guess what was specifically intended. One of the old school miniatures campaign books I have suggests, in general, that tabletop 'dead' represent about 1/5 dead, and similar proportions of various levels of wounded and troops who had simply fled. Whether you could recover your wounded would depend on whether you held the field, or how many troops you could devote to hauling off their wounded comrades.
Chainmail does state that 30% of defeated foes are counted as wounded and not dead. Further, 1 or 2 units of a retreating or routed group will be taken as prisoners.
Right, whatever proportions of dead will be reflected on a smaller or larger scale regardless of the numbers the figures represent. In other words, if you "kill" twenty figures representing 400 men and twenty five percent are assumed to be killed, fifty percent are assumed to be wounded, and twenty-five percent are assumed to be scattered then that also holds true for when they represent twenty men. Chain Mail has morale rules for units falling apart from casualties either way, so destroying a unit only usually required 1/3 to 2/3 of figures receiving hits or "kills".
Matthew, on your next run, if your wife insists on archers again, you should think of adding a commander or hero to yours as it will raise all your dice scores by one. 10 units of heavy horse and a hero (140pts) gives you 10 units all with +1 to all combat, morale and defense dice.
We have already played the next scenario, in fact, and I was the horse archers defeated by a combined arms force of crossbowmen, medium cavalry and spearmen. Watch this space.
What's interesting is that in 1975 my first wife and I played this exact same scenario, except I had the mounted archers and she had the heavy cavalry.
She did not bother reforming her heavy horse; she noticed that heavy cav had a charge move of 18" and horse bows had a range of 18" and she charged first turn.
Wiped me out almost instantly.
This scenario is probably somewhat different to the one you are remembering, for instance the horse archers were split into two units in order to forestall that very action. as you can see, I did charge one unit of light horse and utterly destroyed them, but could not recover in time to avoid being annihilated by the remaining unit of horse archers. We were using different points values from those in the book, though, so probably you had more heavy cavalry (5 points) than horse archers (7 points) in the game you played.
As far as I can tell, the best that can be hoped for with a direct charge on the light horse would be six hits if the units started more than 18" away, assuming the light horse played intelligently [i.e. always acting after the heavy horse so that one round of shooting occurs before the charge, and one during as pass through fire].
However, we did play this scenario a bit wrong in retrospect, I think the horse archers got too many shooting attacks overall.
It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one's own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
Joined: Jul 2011 Gender: Male Posts: 478 Karma: 37
Re: Greyhawk Scenario Report « Reply #11 on Jun 4, 2012, 9:16am »
Matthew, good notes.
I noticed you said the horse archers fired on you as you redeployed into line. I wonder what would have happened if you'd charged in column instead.
Also, we used the man-to-man system, in which heavy horse are even MORE lethal, if possible. Lance kills leather armor on something like a five on 2d6.
Michael Mornard -------------------------- Played in the original Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and EPT Campaigns "Gronan of Simmerya" aka "Old Geezer" aka "LORD Grumpy"
Joined: Jul 2010 Gender: Male Posts: 561 Karma: 17
Re: Greyhawk Scenario Report « Reply #12 on Jun 4, 2012, 9:36am »
Matthew, in turn 3, shouldn't the heavy horse been able to move the remainder of their move in round 2 of turn 3? Would that have gotten them into melee distance of the 2nd wife group and therefore forstall a turn 4 (and missile fire)?
Chainmail does state that 30% of defeated foes are counted as wounded and not dead. Further, 1 or 2 units of a retreating or routed group will be taken as prisoners.
I'm suffering from dimness today. What page is that on? I did find the prisoner rule cited; 1-2 prisoners is a minimum, with the possibility of more with uneven die rolls (and I didn't track it far enough to see which rolls are being compared...)
Yes, conventionally one figure can represent 20 or 10 men (depending on your preference), or it can represent 1 man (though the man-to-man combat rules are recommended in this case). However, it makes no difference how many men a figure represents to the procedure of the game, and (according to Gygax) the Fantasy Supplement was not intended for use with the 1:20 system. I used to think that meant he only used the man-to-man rules with the FS, but that makes no sense of the way it is written.
So thinking about this I want be very clear about the following. Does this mean that a hero - 4th lvl fighter - is always the equivalent of 4 soldiers and NEVER the equivalent of 80 soldiers on the battlefield?
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