Before I start, the following notes are really just me thinking out loud, and should not, under any circumstances be taken as official rules stuff. Basically, I've been thinking over a couple of the topics raised recently, and have some suggestions to make.
The discussion on levies has given me a strange feeling of deje vu, mainly becuase we talked about similar things *waaaay* back in the WH 2-4th edition days. In the 3rd edition of the rules, characters had a Ld value and a bonus, say Ld 9+2. The bonus bit was what was added to other units Ld value if the character joined them. So An Ork Hero leading a unit of Goblins would bump their ld from 5 to 7, rather than from 5 to 9.
The system got dumped in the 4th edition of the game because it was fiddly to use, and also because in games it seemed to have little real effect, and I must say I don't particularly like the idea of bringing it back into WAB for similar reasons.
On the other hand I handicaping levy troops in some way sounds reasonable, as these guys really *should* be horribly unreliable. The best way I've seen suggested of sorting this out is to add a 'Levy' category of troop, and apply special rules to them. These are the rules I think could work:
Moving along from levies, and onto bowfire. I must say that I'm starting to come round to the idea that archery is probably a bit too effective in WAB. Actually, when we were playtesting the rules, most bows had a +1 save modifier (i.e they increased a targets save!), but we dropped this in the end as it made little difference in the games *we* played. I've emphasised the word we, because I think that our games are rather different to most of the games I read about on the list. For a start they tend to be scenarios with very specific objectives, played on large tables with quite small forces, which tended to make missile troop less useful as they had to move around a lot. And secondly we don't have all that many missile armed troops!
Anyway, as I said, based on what I've been hearing, it seems that my initial inclination to tone down the effect of missile weapons for the ancient period had more going for it than I realised. *However*, the other reason for dropping the +1 save mod was that it just didn't 'feel' right - you simply don't get save mods that make armour better in Warhammer. Because of this I'm loath to bring it back, and have instead been considering all together more radical solution, which is to drop the strength of *all* bows and javelins to 2. This would not apply to Medieval Crossbows and Longbows, or to heavy throwing spears like the pilum, which I think should stay as they are, and probably shouldn't apply to slings.
Now before I cause total panic, please remember these are just *ideas* (although I rather like them!). What do you guys think?
Jervis
Thanks for the feedback on the levies and bowfire post. Based on what I've read I'm going to knock the Strength 2 bows idea on the head (but I've been liking the stuff I've been seeing on slings, etc), and try out the following version of the Levies rule in my next game.
Before I write up the rule, however, I'll just say, once again, that this isn't an official change to the game, just something that I'll be trying out in my own games. Personally I don't think you can ever get a perfect set of wargame rules, and there's always something I want to tweak after I've played a game. To me this is part of what makes wargaming such a fun hobby - with wargame rules you can get in there and monkey about with the game mechanics in a way you can't with, say, a computer game. So, when I play a game I'm almost always trying out a new house rule or two. Not all of the house rules work, and many are cast aside never to be used again, but a few stick and end up becoming part of the core rules to the game, and with these, at some time or another they end up getting published and then become part of the 'official' (gosh, how I hate that word!) cannon of the rules. Until then, however, they should be looked upon as nothing more than ideas and house rules, to be used or cast aside in the same manner as any other house rule. Or in other words, it ain't official until you see it in print!
Now, back to those levies...
All of which begs the question, which troops count as levies? Here's my starting list... what do you guys think?
That's all for now....
Jervis