Four Horsemen Enterprises

Warrior Rules and
Bronze and Early Iron Age
Army Lists

by John M. Boehm

Bronze and Early Iron Age Army Lists

This is a booklet for use with the Warrior rules system by Four Horsemen Enterprises, LLC. It is available as above for the rules. It is one of seven such lists, the others which will cover classical, imperial, dark age, holy, feudal and oriental armies or eras. The book is roughly 7 x 9 in a card stock cover consisting of 57 pages and 36 different army lists covering the early Sumerian armies (2800 B.C./2300 B.C.) through Kushite Egyptians (715 B.C. to 660 B.C.), with some of the army lists extending further to 600, 500 and 74 B.C. respectively. In order to provide historical flavor to the period “list rules” are incorporated in each booklet under appropriate army lists to make the rules more period specific. Each army list defines the troop types, the minimums and maximum required/permitted and variations for those types, as well as the climate the army operated in, a listing of its opponents from the booklet, various “list rules” and notes covering the individual armies. The notes are interesting and informative reading in their own right, covering armies which are well outside my own period of interest and some of which I previously had very little knowledge. There are available from the publishers of the rules. The price is $12.00.

Warrior Rules: 3000 B.C. TO 1485 A.D.

This set of rules is produced by Four Horsemen Enterprises, LLC, which consists of Scott Holder, Jon Cleaves, Jake Kovel and Bill Low. This set of rules is obviously a labor of love. It derives from the original WRG 7th Edition Rules, under license to this group, and is an extension and further development of that foundational basis. The book itself consists of a spiral bound card stock cover, 8½ x 11 booklet, of 122 pages plus a two-sided play sheet. It uses the current element basing system used by most of today’s rules and therefore will require no re-basing. Additionally, the authors note that there will be no subsequent editions, merely corrections or clarifications required by any errors in editing. There will be no changes to the basic rules themselves. Experimental rules may be available on a web site for free, and the rules and accompanying army lists are supported by an e-group at www.groups.yahoo.com,group: WarriorRules.

As indicated, the rules will be supplemented by army list booklets totaling seven in number which specify a common time period or geographical region. There will also be four supplemental rules booklets covering sieges, fleets, fantasy and campaigns.

I am not that familiar with the WRG 7th rules; suffice to say that my old unused booklet comprised only 48 pages compared to the work at hand. This set is well organized and divided in sections and subsections all of which are carefully cross referenced throughout the book. There are numerous diagrams and examples of play interspersed throughout the rules and I do not believe there was any mechanism or facet of play that I was unable to grasp with the aid of the diagrams and explanations. Much attention to detail and an effort at thorough explanation has quite notably gone into these rules.

The introductory section defines the figure and ground scale for 25, 15 and 6 mm figures. The per figure scale is approximately 1 to 50. The next section deals with the various troop types and their organization. Those familiar with the old WRG nomenclature will find the descriptions generally familiar. The next section deals with the sequence of play which consists of an orders phase, events phase, approach phrase, counter/retirement phase, march phase, prepatory shooting phase, charge phase, hand-to-hand combat phase and end phase. Section four deals with command, control and communications, and covers generals, orders, communications and prompts. Section five covers “troop state” which deals with moral, cohesion, fatigue, rallying, and waver tests. Section six covers all aspects of movement; section seven the use of shields cover, defenses and obstacles. Section eight and nine deal with shooting and hand-to-hand combat. Sections ten and eleven cover casualties and combat results. Section twelve deals with battlefield conditions including time of day, weather, fordability and visibility. Section thirteen deals with special troop types such as elephants, chariots and transport. Section fourteen covers competition battles and involves choosing armies, terrain, deployment and victory conditions. Section fifteen discusses scenario and campaign battles. Section sixteen covers various stratagems such as fires and expendable troops. Section seventeen covers troop point costs, suggests unit sizes and how to use the army lists. This all very roughly parallels the organization of the WRG 7th Edition Rules. Section Eighteen is a new section called Fast Warrior which is designed to allow people to learn the rules with pre-constructed army lists of a relatively small size. Included are 276 such lists.

These rules are a thorough and exhaustive effort to cover all aspects of ancient and medieval warfare as understood by the authors. Clearly they are intended to clarify any doubt, remove the need for any interpretation, and will thus lend themselves well to competition style gaming, although, there is a section on using rules for scenarios and campaigns. Those looking for a clearly written and well structured set of rules covering the full scope of ancient and medieval wargaming will not be disappointed. The rules are available from Silver Eagle Wargames Supplies, http://members.aol.com/eaglewarriers/private/sews.html, which I can attest gives good service. The price is $16.00.

On a lighter note, the rules apparently include a new terrain type I had not previously encountered, “olives”, Section 6.71. These are included in the category of very rough areas, and may well be the ancient equivalent of the banana peel; very disordering indeed! When combined with hills this will undoubtedly give new meaning to the term “slippery slope.” (My apologies to the authors, but my weird sense of humor could not be restrained. Of course, they meant olive groves but the mental image conjured up was too much to keep to myself.)

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