I quite like the Warhammer Ancient Battles rules for doing small scale skirmish battles, although I think they don’t give a good feel of a larger scale battle very well at all. This is a problem with some of the army lists, like the later Byzantines, where you want a unit of really nice looking kataphractoi but can’t really justify having an imperial guard regiment in an army of 80 men, which would really have just been the garrison of a frontier fort.<\/p>\n
There are a couple of things that I would like to change though, to give it a better feel.<\/p>\n
The first is purely nomenclatural. The names of generals are always too important. My 80 man byzantine force (its not an army) will be let by a Turmarch or similar, not by the emperor. Its easy to change this though.<\/p>\n
The second is a spin-on from WFB. If the unit width to qualify for ranks were upped to 5 it would give the battle-lines a thinner, more realistic feel, rather than the deep company columns you often seem to get at the moment.<\/p>\n
The third is the big one. It dates from the very first days of Warhammer, back in the ’80s. At that point there was a fundamental misapprehension. Being on a horse does not give you extra protection if you and the horse are a single entity. It makes you more vulnerable. Because of this mistake, everything thereafter has to compensate in WAB to make up. Ideally the situation should be:<\/p>\n
Missile fire should have a +1 to hit cavalry, as they are a larger target. In hand to hand the larger target is outweighed by the extra height the cavalry-man has.<\/p>\n
Saving throws should be:<\/p>\n
None as a base for everyone.<\/p>\n
+1 for a shield.<\/p>\n
+2 for a large shield for infantry (-1 move).<\/p>\n
+1 for light armour for infantry.<\/p>\n
+1 for heavy armour for cavalry.<\/p>\n
+1 for light armour and cloth trapper for cavalry.<\/p>\n
+2 for heavy armour for infantry (-1 move).<\/p>\n
+2 for heavy armour and barding for cavalry (-1 move).<\/p>\n
+4 for cataphract armour and barding for cavalry or mediaeval full plate and plate barding (no extra bonus for shields, -2 move).<\/p>\n
So the saving throws would be:<\/p>\n
None – anyone<\/p>\n
6+ – infantry with shields or light armour, cavalry with heavy armour, cavalry with shields, cavalry with light armour and light barding.<\/p>\n
5+ – infantry with large shields, infantry with light armour and shields, infantry with heavy armour, cavalry with heavy armour and barding, cavalry with light armour and light barding and shields.<\/p>\n
4+ – infantry with light armour and large shields, infantry with heavy armour and shields, cavalry with heavy armour and barding and shields.<\/p>\n
3+ – infantry with heavy armour and large shields, cataphract cavalry with full armour and full barding.<\/p>\n
No-one would have 2+ or 1+ saving throws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I quite like the Warhammer Ancient Battles rules for doing small scale skirmish battles, although I think they don’t give a good feel of a larger scale battle very well at all. This is a problem with some of the army lists, like the later Byzantines, where you want a unit of really nice looking … Continue reading “WAB Armour”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wargaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partridge.site\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}