An Old Midlish Rhyme
The wind from the North sings of heroes of Olde
The wind from the East makes our blood run Cold
The wind from the South smells of Spices and Gold
But the wind from the West tells of warriors Bold.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

TIME FOR A TEST GAME: CAST YOUR VOTE NOW

My new ancient rules have been worked over some more and some small, out of context, tests made. Its time for another real test, a battle. The question is should I just carry on with the campaign even if the next scenario is not a great one for testing rules or devise something to work them out.

I know, its the weekend, and a very short poll. Not everyone is going to have time to cast a vote, but to those who do cast a ballot by Tuesday night, I thank you for your opinions.  I have laid out 3 options:

1. A historical refight. This has the advantage of providing a baseline to compare the rules to. That is, does the game resemble in any way, shape or form what happened, or what might have happened?  But its a break in the sequence of things.

2. The Next Campaign game. This might be an interesting game, but given the losses to date, it might be rather lop sided and depending what is drawn, might be an unusual situation. It would be good to know the rules could handle that but wouldn't necessarily say if they could handle normality. It might also be hard to judge if what appears to be a flaw was due to the rules or the situation.

3. A Mede-Lydian pitched battle. The 3rd option is to short circuit the campaign and do a fairly generic pitched battle with the idea of trying out the interaction of units in a standard ancient battle setting (which is to say in the middle of a dusty plain rather than an opposed river crossing, delaying action or a race to get away with stolen temple treasure.)

What do you think folks?

3 comments:

  1. I voted for 1 though I'd personally prefer to see 3 - I think 1 would be more useful to you.

    Rob

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  2. I'm not sure if 1 or 3 is better. If 1 I can cross reference results, but if I go with 3, I can use almost all the various troop types and will have a mix of all arms on both sides. (That could be true of 1 even given the scanty and conflicting accounts of Thymbra but I don't have the Lydians ready so at this point the options are Platea or Marathon again)oh wait, maybe Cunaxa.

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  3. I would be tempted to go for 3, Ross -- refights have their own dynamics and problems, not least: 'did this non-historical result happen because of the rules, player choices, or the initial set up?' Perhaps you might be able to work the results of the '3' game into your campaign narrative ? I am intruiged by your rules, especially the orders/disorder/recovery tests, and look forward to hearing how they work out. Best Wishes, Nick

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