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This sheet includes all of the important errata for Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) and Armies of Antiquity (AoA). Some minor corrections have been left out of this sheet, on the basis that the correction will cause far more confusion than it resolves - or, to put it another way, the cure would be worse than the illness! Please note that these corrections can only be used for battles where both players knew about them before the battle began.
Jervis Johnson, 18/5/99
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Rerolls: A number of rules allow a unit to reroll a dice roll. Unless stated otherwise a reroll may be used every time the dice roll is failed, rather than once per battle. However, a single dice roll may not be rerolled more than once, and the result of the second roll must be accepted.
P18, Charges: Charging units should be moved one at a time. If one unit's move blocks another unit from making a charge, then that other unit counts as having made a failed charge. Note that a unit whose charge is block may not redirect their charge against another unit, or 'swing round' to hit the flank or rear of the unit it was going to charge.
P20, Marching: The only manoeuvre a marching unit can carry out is a wheel. It may not change formation, turn or reform.
P26, Light Armour Save: Light armour provides a 6+ infantry save and a 5+ cavalry save, not 5+ and 4+ saves respectively as shown on the chart.
P29, Which Models May Fight: Models may fight an opponent if they are touching diagonally (i.e. models can fight if the corners of their bases are in contact).
P55, Shooting Through Skirmishers: Note that the 'gaps' between models that are in skirmish formation don't block the line of sight of an enemy unit. If you want to block fire from enemy units then you need to form your skirmishers into a 'cloud' several lines deep, so that models in the rear rows block the gaps in the front rows.
P55, Skirmishers in Hand To Hand Combat: All the models from a charging unit that is in skirmish formation must contact the facing that a 'formed' unit would contact. Place up any skirmishers that are left over behind the ones in the front rank.
P57, Chariots: Unless a rule states otherwise then chariots are effected by psychology in the same way as cavalry. For example, if an enemy unit causes fear in cavalry then it causes fear in chariots as well. Leaders, standard bearers and musicians replace crew models, and thus you can possibly have several in a single chariot if desired.
P58, Chariot Squadrons: Unengaged chariot models move into an ongoing combat in the same manner as skirmishers. Also note that excess wounds caused on engaged chariots 'carry on' to other chariots in the same squadron.
P60, Scythed Chariots vs Drilled Troops: The rules for drilled troops avoiding scythed chariot attacks also apply to troops in skirmish formation. Note that this does not apply to skirmishers fighting elephants (in this case the troops need to be in a solid formation and then open a 'lane' for that the elephant is encouraged to move through).
P62, Elephants In Hand To Hand Combat: Infantry that are in skirmish formation can only be hit by an elephant on a roll of 6, as the skirmishers will use the extra space they have to attack the beast from the sides and generally try to keep out of its way. Note that the crew will still hit any attacking skirmishers normally.
P63, 'Used To' Elephants: Add the following after the second sentence in the first paragraph of this section (i.e. just before the sentence that starts 'Infantry that are used…')
'In addition, unless playing a special scenario that states otherwise, it is assumed that an army fighting an opponent with elephants has already faced them several times and now has a pretty good idea of how to deal with them. Although not yet fully 'used to elephants', all skirmisher infantry, all light infantry, and all drilled infantry in the army are considered to be 'used to' elephants. '
P125, Roman Army List: Increase the cost of elephants to 125 points plus 8 per crew.
P129, Barbarian Army List: Delete the Warrior On Foot line in the chariot entry. It is not needed and is not used (the warriors attacks are included in the chariot's characteristics).
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Inside front cover: 'Gousalves' should be amended to 'Gonsalves'.
Inside front cover: The Battle of Cremona is attributed to 'Tacticus' instead of 'Tacitus'.
P8, Trojan War: The general and any heroes must ride in chariots, bought at additional cost from the Chariotry section of the list.
P13, Achaemenid Persians Spara Bearers: Change the second and forth 'bullets' as follows: A unit that remains stationary in the movement phase may set up a spara barrier. A spara barrier is knocked down if the unit moves or at the end of the first round of combat that it fights (whether it wins or loses). Also, note that a spara barrier counts as an obstacle, so units fighting across them or defending behind them may not use their rank bonus in the first round of combat.
P14, Achaemenid Persians Allies: The Persian army may include allied troops from the Ancient Greek army list as part of their Special Troops allocation.
P14, Ancient Greek: The army general may be upgraded to a Spartan army general at a cost of +25 pts. Spartan army generals are drilled and stubborn.
P16, Alexander & His Successors: Unengaged models in a wedge may only use their attacks against an enemy unit that was charged by the wedge. Hypaspists may be given light armour at +2 pts per model. Also, please note that the rules for the Macedonian phalanx are meant to be different to those of the Ancient Greek phalanx. The change represents the professionalism of Macendonian and Successor phalangites compared to the citizen militia that made up a typical Ancient Greek phalanx.
P18, Ancient Indian: The Indian Longbow was a long and rather unwieldy weapon, not well suited to being used in confined spaces (like a chariot cab) or precarious locations (like the back of an elephant). To represent this, models armed with longbows do not get to shoot twice if mounted in a chariot or riding an elephant.
P25, Late Roman: The Comitatense option for Late Roman Heavy cavalry is in fact unlimited and the 0-1 restriction should be ignored. The Special Rule for Heavy Cavalry should read "Cataphracts use the special rules in the Cataphract army list." rather than the sentence that is actually printed there. Also, please note that if you are using the Craig Davey option then the army may include units of stubborn/drilled Guard or units of Guards using the increased profile, not both.
P30, Nomadic Hordes: A unit that uses feigned flight and flees off the table is lost and may not return later in the battle.
P34, Saxons: The single unit of Huscarls can have a leader, standard and so on, and these can be allocated out to units of Fryd along with other models. If the Fryd have their own such models, then leaders work normally (+1 attack each if in contact with the enemy), but there is no additional bonus for having multiple standards and musicians.
P40, Crusaders: Please note that Knights and Sergeants are mounted on warhorses, even though the characteristic line for the warhorse was missed out. See the entries for the army general or army battle standard for the warhorses characteristics.
P45, Samurai: Wakato should have a Ld value of 5.
P46, Cavalry Counter-Charges: Light chariots may counter-charge, but heavy chariots and scythed chariots may not.
P46, Falling Back In Good Order: Units with a Ld of less than 5 cannot fall back in good order and follow the normal rules instead. In circumstances where a unit would normally break automatically (if beaten in combat by charging Norman Knights for example), then a unit will automatically fall back in good order instead. Units that move off the table while falling back in good order are lost and may not return.
P46, Characters in Chariots and on Elephants: A character whose armour save is worse (after modification for shield bearers etc.) than that of the his mount may use the mount's saving throw instead. All his other characteristics remain the same, even if lower than those of the mount.
P46, Elephant Howdahs: The lists make no mention of which elephants have howdahs. To resolve this, if the Elephant model (as sold) has a howdah treat the model as having one in game terms. If no howdah is on the model it does not gain this bonus. Converted howdahs are fine if you've got some historical basis for giving the elephant a howdah.
P47, Ancient Britons: In section 4 replace the third 'bullet point' (the one that starts 'The player controlling…') with the following:
· To represent the trick of the warriors in the chariot dismounting to fight on foot, the formation counts as having a rank bonus of +1 if there are 8-11 models in the unit, and +2 if there are 12 or more models in the unit.
Thanks for the feedback on the errata.
New Weapons Options
Based on the response, I'm going to add the large shield option in for the Late Roman cavalry, and give Indian swordsmen the option of replacing their dh sword with a throwing spear and javelins at no extra cost.
Indian Longbow
With regard whether the cheaper version of the indian lonbow is allowed to shoot twice, I'd have to say no, as it is still a long weapon, it's just that this option assumes that it didn't have the power of a 'proper' longbow.
The Indian Army
And following that, I feel that I owe Vince some explanation as to why I have been so harsh on his beloved Indians. Basically, one of my aims when writing WAB was to try and avoid the situation where 'exotic' armies and troop types ended up being the best thing to take. This is why I've done so much to try and reel back in the elephants, heavy chariots and the longbowmen in his Indian army. To my mind an interesting and exotic army like the Indians or (for example) Khymer should be an army you field because you love it, rather than because its a game-winning juggernaut. This isn't to say that the army should be impossible to win with, just that it should require real skill and flair to use well.
Now I know that some players will find this hard to swallow, in that they feel all armies should end up with an equal chance of winning. All I can say is that I don't really go along with this, and think that there should be a range of armies to choose from, some of which require more skill to use than others. To go slightly off-topic, in the new edition of 40K the Dark Eldar are just such an army; they are very fragile, and will loose quickly in the hands of a player who doesn't know how to use them. Initially they did very poorly, and were bottom of the heap on the game win/loss records we keep (though even then they were winning about 33 percent of the games recorded). Now however, as players learn their tricks, they are slowly working their way up the scale, and are starting to nudge at a 50/50 record.
While on the subject of win/loss records, actually tracking results of games in this way has done much to dispell the myths surrounding super armies for 40K and Warhammer. For example, the 40k database has shown that the difference between the army with the best record compared to the army with the worst record is about 14-16 percent, with the best army at any time having a win ratio of about 57 to 58 percent, and the lowest having a ratio of about 42-43 percent. The hard data we've collected on Warhammer from tournaments and so on shows the same pattern, with the win/lose ratio for even the oldest army lists being over 40 percent. In other words there is really not all that much difference between armies, and I would expect much the same to apply to the WAB army lists.
Hope that helps,
Jervis
Thanks for the continued feedback on the errata sheet. Here are some answera to some of the questions that have come up:
Expanded Errata/Missing Optional Rules: I haven't put the rules for skirmisher screens or confident and edgy troops on the errata sheet as they are not really errata. If they prove popular enough I'll include them in a future supplement (probably the WAB Annual I mentioned in the last message) as new rules players can use if they wish.
Byzantine Artillery: This is in the allies section because it's fairly rare, and the 25% limit keeps a player from taking an outlandish amount. This said, instead of Allies the catagory should really be called 'Special Troops'.
Samurai: I take the point on the Samurai being too good. I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but one rule I've thought of applying to the Samurai list is to say that they may not have a rank bonus. This would reflect the rather loose and anarchic way the armies fought, and serve to 'reel them back in' quite well too. I must admit I'd forgotten all about this rule, but assuming I don't hear to many screams of protest from you guys, I'll add it in to the errata sheet as follows:
P44, Samurai: Units in a Samurai army do not receive a rank bonus. This reflects the loose formations they fought in and their emphasis on heroic 'single combat'.
That's all for now,
Jervis