I have just watched your very interesting video and if you don't mind I'll give my impressions.
First this confirmed what I suspected :... be very well trained for this quite sophisticated but deadly trilogy of pilum, scutum and gladius. So the only possible long range use should be reserved to the so-called "light pila" which were more javelins than anything else.
Now I wouldn't like you to think of these remarks as hard criticism! Your rules look very much like the definitive serious skirmish ancient rules that I have been searching for decades now. I long to test them for real.
Will they work well with the late Antiquity-Early dark Ages?
Philippe
First of all, these are fantastic comments, and in particular I appreciate that you took the time to pay such attention.. I don't take it as hash criticism and I appreciate it...
Let me comment on how our design concepts address what you mention and by no means we assume that this is the only way to do it. it is just the way we felt worked better and obviously some level of abstraction is needed.
Moving sideways or back...
In open order there is no penalty.. in closed ranks you can only move forwards, and you can shift sideways but only 2"..
Giving your back to the enemy..
In open order it doesn't matter, we don't micromanage figure facing in the unit, in close order, troops attacking you from the side or rear ignore all the trait that you benefit from for being in open order so in that game Alvaro didn't want to do it, he couldn't avoid it because all his lights had been killed...
Shooting through woods... up to 6" you have no penalty if the target is in the open.. if the target is in the woods they are -1 to hit assuming that they are using cover from the woods. In that game I did a mistake ( cheat ? ) , my front rank was within 6" of the enemy but my back troops were not.. although range is measured unit to unit, visibility is by model so the guys in the back, more than 6" could not see the enemy and should not have rolled so in practice I should have been 50% effective, sorry.. my bad.. I did another mistake (cheat?
) around 1:23.. we'll see who can find it..... ( 6" might seem generous but it is important to give troops used to ambushes in woods to be able to use their weapons )
Target priority, we had it in but over playtesting we took it away, going by closest unit did not always seemed right, due to some units being less of a threat than other and such... after removing it and seeing how players would play we found out that players naturally targeted what we would have considered the greatest threat... one of the reasons is that missile troops usually are very easy to kill and you still get victory points.. Characters are the exception, they have to be the closest for you to target them...
Wreckless of generals..
Commanders have 2 or 3 attacks, and 2 or 3 wounds.. Spending a command point to charge an enemy unit is not usually a good idea.. however in that game Alvaro was losing his flank, I had killed his tribsemen and my velites were about to flank his hoplites... so he did that with the general as a desperate attempt to gain time... I sent my commander so that I wouldn't have to expend energy and time from my velites fighting a general, because it takes too much time and does not have as much tactical value... so it was just a desperate attempt that actually didn't pay off.. the reason why I defended with the velites instead of counterattacking was that I thought.. even though a velite is 13 points and his geneal is about 90 points I don't want to loose velites.. I want them free to go shoot at the hoplites back, so I though.. I'll defend.. save my velites and send my general to fight.. he can do many defend actions and keep his commander occupied... It was Alvaro's tactical desperate ploy that didn't pay off... I would say, when you get to the point when your general is fighting.. you are close to loosing the battle... ( and of course if you loose all your generals you loose )... Another thing you can do is attach your general to a unit.. that can make him last longer in combat but he has less command flexibility while attached.. so a trade off..
Range of pila... fantastic point...
We group the pointy thrwoing things in two catergories.. javelins and throwing spears.. these are arbitrary names/abstractions... there is a continuum of these weapons and even pilas and javelins would come in different weights... here is the KEY difference.. in CLASH you can always pre measure... the move range is 4" , the pila has a range of 4" the javelin 6"... so when you throw the pila, you are right there about to engage in combat or be engaged in combat by the enemy.. because after you throw the pila, if you want to go away.. guess what the enemy can react and charge you...
The javelin has a range of 6" so when you throw the javelin you can do it from a range where the enemy cannot engage you if you choose to run away. If we were not using a telescopic scale javelins would have longer range, but guess what, now bows and slinges need a longer range and soon the game becomes very missile oriented and plays more like WWII, so we shorten the longer missile ranges a bit to avoid that but made sure that the distance was such that we could represent the mechanic... Also cav can move 8" so guess what, when you try to throw javelins at cav, you are at risk..
So I hope you see that although we recognized what you mentioned, we had to cut the longer ranges a bit for game purposes, an abstraction of course.... We couldn't shorten the range of the pila because if not you would have to combine the throw with the charge, like most rules do and we didn't want to do that because we wanted to have the decision point of "do I charge or not?" depending if you were able to disrupt the enemy formation... have a look at this example to see what I mean
http://www.thewargamespot.com/roman-legionary-vs-carthaginian-warrior/Throwing spear do get the "reload" rule, so when you throw it before combat you only have time to take your gladius out and cannot saty at 4" throwing pila again... javelins don't so you can stand at 6" and torture them with javelins.. and for example your spartan hoplites will need to break close order and chase you in open order to try to reach you and your peltasts will get their chance to react in the middle... all this works with very strict precision and why it is critical that you can premeasure in CLASH, we don't want you guys to be experts in distance guessing.. just to play with the tactics...
So your remarks are absolutely spot on, I don't take them as criticism but as curiosity of someone trying to find out if the design concepts on a new set of rules work for them... I think that given your focus on this concepts you will enjoy CLASH very much.. I hope that other people also will enjoy them as we have worked to streamline mechanic for everyone but for detail oriented players like you we really think that these mechanics will suit your understanding of classical warfare... you will see that the final outcome is very much as described in history even if the granular specifics are abstracted a bit as in this case javs being only 50% longer range than pilum which is an abstraction as mentioned above..
You will see that when you play clash you will feel that missile troops are of very tactical use, but that close combat seals the deal.. and that was very important for us...
hope this works...
And very heart felt appreciation from your detailed questions... I really love to discuss our design principles to try to convey to players the concepts of the game..
cheers
Francisco
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April 26, 2024, 07:05:13 AM
