I remember some time last year, it might have been at HISTORICON 93, Unca Wally mumbling something like "Next year, I'm gonna play in a WRG tournament". I heard this and figured, yah, yah, yah, this is just good ole' Wally doing some mild pulling of my chain, sort of like when I tell him the latest lawyer jokes.
You see, I always got the impression that Wally looked at me and my WRG goons at PW meetings out of the corner of his eye they way you do when you see someone with 6 fingers shaking hands with somebody. I mean you just don't stare at them but you can't help but steal a glance.
Over the years at PW meetings, the number of WRG gamers has pretty much disappeared, actually that's the original reason I started making the great slog from Virginia to the wilds of Silver Spring, to play with the Maryland WRG guys. Well, they all have either started families or drifted into other things. One thing about WRG gamers, we tend to be a single minded lot while "into" the game. So anyway, now I go to the meetings to actually play and have fun doing something else. The only person who seems to have any interest is Jeff Wiltrout and he's new to WRG at least.
So imagine my suprise when I get a letter from Jeff signing him and Wally up for the Mini Open WRG 7th tourney at Cold Wars. Furthermore, Unca Wally is gonna run Patrician Romans, a not too bad army. I mean some guys show up running armies with no hope of doing well and then scratch their heads as to why. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting you should bring armies based on nothing more than crushing your opponents, but at least don't expect to do well if you run something like Early Libyans.
The fact that Wally was bringing Patricians showed the influence of one of Wally's respected English wargaming buddies, Tom Elsworth. I've noticed that while Unca Wally is unfailingly nice to me and Tom, again, I see him get that strange look when Tom launches into a discussion about the esoterica of WRG.
I was also worried since now, for the first time, Wally could actually judge how I do things at a convention and I would hate to be at the receiving end of one of his legendary blasts in the pages of the REVIEW should he find my efforts lacking. Furthermore, it's easier to roll with critisism of WRG by somebody who has never actually played it.
Well now, I expected Wally to play and then justifyably take aim and fire. As you can tell by now, although I know I am associated with a gaming system that does not appeal to Wally, I would still like him to respect me in the morning.
Wally's experiences at Cold Wars were extremely typical of what happens to a first time player at a competitive tournament. It also highlights quite a few things that are wrong with our system and makes it hard to enter. But first, I'll try to answer some of the rules questions that Wally raised in some previous issues of the REVIEW.
On Page 1 in the November 93 issue, three questions were raised, or maybe an eyebrow was raised, at the effect.
- a. Light infantry outrunning cavalry can occur but it depends on how far apart they are at the start of the charge. If they are close, 1" being the closest they can be at the start,
normally the cav will hit the infantry. But WRG makes you roll a die to see if you move slower (I guess the rationale being the guys running away got a late start, tripped over a stray rock or something). If the cav rolls "down" and the infantry rolls "normal", then the infantry outruns the cav. Beats the hell outta me if this is "accurate" or not. I gotta admit that it's not a complaint I hear about WRG (there being so many others I hear repeatedly).
b. Now for elephants and cav meeting. I agree with Unca Wally wholeheartedly on this one and this IS a complaint about the "accuracy" of WRG. Elephants have way too much "command and control" in this system. I do not know of ANY ancients set (other WRG sets like DBA and DBM being the exception) that let elephants operate with the restraint they show in WRG. However, again if the elephants and cav move "normal", the cav outruns the elephants (the former moves 4", the latter 3"; but if one rolls "up" and the other rolls "down", then all kinds of things happen. So the fact that, on many occasions, the big grey beasties catch the cav (I'm sure some anal retentive ancients player can spout out the statistical probability of such an occurance) is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how "oddly" elephants are treated in WRG.
c. As for the scythed chariot issue, I'm a little confused on this one. Wally says the chariot "refuses" to close. Methinks he and whoever he played against (probably Jeff, since he runs an army which uses this gimmick) just got it wrong.
The chariot, once it starts charging, must continue moving straight ahead, only deviating up to 45 degrees to find a new target. Actually, it took Phil Barker 5 tries with 7th Edition to even get that part right. Used to be that scythed chariots were like heat seeking missiles with tons of guidance and control equipment onboard to guide the thing to where the player wanted it to go. For years we struggled with toning down the scythed chariot in the game and have pretty much done so by now. So, the chariot in Wally's game needed to keep going hell bent and if no targets were in its path, it would keep going until exhausted or off the board.
Now for Wally's actual time at the tournament.
As I said, it was very typical. First let's start with the army selection. As he said in the Feb 94 issue of the REVIEW, Patrician Romans have lots o' wedges, and as Wally accurately pointed out, a capability which ancients players drool over.
However, Patrician Roman is not a beginner's army. I have seen this a lot over the years, mainly new players, who don't fall in love with a particular historical period, end up trying out an army that has a "reputation". Such armies are generally harder and more complex to run. They are deadly when run by experienced players but tend to overwhelm the beginner.
I usually suggest that beginners run barbarian armies with lots of infantry where all you literally do is point them in a direction and see what the melee dice roll for you. That way you don't get hammered by the intricacies (and ambiguity) of WRG and thus the game can be reduced to what experienced players hate: luck. But since Unca Wally was using a loaner army, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt this time.
For his first game, I did indeed hand pick his opponent knowing full well that he (Wally) would most likely get the crapola beat outta him. However, there was a method to my madness or so I thought. His Most Worthy Opponent (MWO) was the guy who always runs our beginner's demo games at the major conventions, so he's had a ton of experience in bringing along new players. I figured that while he would punch Wally around, he would also teach him a few things and be fairly nice about it.
Yeah, Burmese elephants with 2 infantry on the base do soak up a lot in order to get one casualty per figure. What's worse, they shoot like machine guns. And that's after they, too, had been toned down in one of the iterations of 7th. Wally accurately picks up on the major theme in success or failure in WRG, waiver tests. Even if his proud Franks had been "A" class (the best in this game), they would have flunked the test on a roll of 1. However, the Franks could have moved while shaken, it would just had to have been away from the enemy.
Unfortunately, the dreaded elephant wrap around shown in the diagram was incorrect (I'll beat up his MWO for that one later).
If the pachyderms had charged in at an angle to the units, a wraparound is allowed. But at straight on contact, which was implied by the locations in Sketch 2 of the March 94 Review, the units contact straight on (what a radical concept!). What would have happened, in the first bound of melee, only the one elephant stand would have fought the Franks. In the second bound, then the elephant next in line would also have fought. The last elephant in the line would never fight in the hand to hand in the melee Wally portrays.
Be that as it may, Wally learned another important lesson about the right to left nature of melee and how you NEVER want to take waiver tests. One minute you are fine, the next, most of your army is routing. The fact that his light cav did little to the elephants is also normal in the WRG version of "reality". They are really only there to pin the elephants so that you can bring up better units to beat them up. Alas, Unca Wally had little else to use at that point.
I would say that at least half of competition ancients players are very methodical, which is my polite way of saying they is slow. About 1/4 are REALLY slow, while the rest move along at a very brisk pace. My guess is that Wally probably saw the just-regular slow players which probably makes you shudder to think of how slow the really-slow guys are. I've toyed with the idea of using chess clocks to speed things up but instead have developed a point system that makes it worth your while to speed things up. If you take too long, you don't kill enough stuff and hence, don't get enough points. I guess some people never learn.
In Wally's second game, his MWO also got the "behind the flank" business wrong. Wally was correct in that if you can contact the flank (and there is a geometric way I determine this), you then do the dreaded wrap-around move. This is a case where instead of bobbing your head up and down like one of those little dogs you used to see in the backs of cars with their necks on a wire, you call the CHIEF UMPIRE (humble me) over.
Now in Wally's defense, I start every tournament by stating that although I am there to help in any way I can, the best way to resolve a question about the rules is to decide it amongst yourselves. Unfortunately, some players still don't know the rules that well, although they think they do. Wally hit this little problem in both games.
His MWO in the second game also royally screwed up the the timing of the resulting melee that Wally discusses. The combat should have been resolved in this melee phase. I bet his MWO felt the movement was a "converted" charge, which means that, yes, melee is resolved next bound. However, converted charges only occur if, for example, in Bound 3, you melee and rout a unit. In the resulting rout and pursuit move (still in bound 3), you contact a new enemy body. That is a converted charge.
What happened with Wally was nothing of the kind. Charging a target which evades and thusly oncovers a new target just means that you now have a new target of opportunity, so to speak. So poor Wally should have hit the guy and hit him in the flank to boot.
At least Wally was the recipient of one of my benevolent rulings. I've been doing this for 7+ years now and there are players who swear they've never gotten a ruling in their favor so Wally beat the odds.
I really wish I could have actually sat down at Wally's second game. His MWO has only been playing for about a year and I usually get a letter or two from him with a slew of questions. He seems to really want to learn the rules and is apparently having a hard time grasping some of the basic esoterica.
I don't think he was trying to browbeat Wally with the rules, a problem often encountered in tournament play. That's a real problem with WRG and over eager competitive types, the kind we tend to attract by the very nature of ancients tournaments. Not much you can do about it and newcomers often cannot discern the difference between a slimeball player and one who is just playing wrong.
Summing Up
So, how to sum up all of this. First, Wally's strategy of charging everything everytime would have been better suited to playing an army with mostly irregular barbarian foot which he could put shoulder to shoulder from board edge to board edge (Gauls are an excellent beginner's army). Also, making them "A" or "B" morale grades minimizes the impact of lots of waver tests. Then he just moves across like a big lawn mower across the board.
Wally also hit the myth that WRG is played the same way by everybody. If that were the case, my position would not be needed. If that were the case, people would not have constantly complained about how WRG is written. If that were the case, Wally would not have had 3 different interpretations for any given situation. It's a bit depressing from my perspective, since I've struggled hard for a long time to try and bring some uniformity into how WRG is played. I've published 3 interpretations booklets and worked extensively with Phil and yet, new players are still subjected to differing rulings depending on who they play.
Phil Barker's style, write by clause, has been criticized since the 1st edition. It makes things very hard for the beginner. And unless you want to call the umpire over every half minute, you just go with the flow and remember for next time. At least, that's if you get bit by the ancients bug.
Almost every first-time tournament player gets his head handed to him on a platter. Jeff Wiltrout is a real good example of this. Last year at HISTORICON, he played in his first tourney and predictably came in last. This year, in only his second, he comes in 5th, outta 12 players. Not bad at all.
Nonetheless, Wally's experience shows how hard it is to break into ancients, at least WRG ancients. I mean no one wants to feel that they are losing and potentially getting jerked around by their opponent. That's especially true if the person has spent time (or money) painting or obtaining an army to run. That's why it's probably much better to play DBA or DBM at first.
Actually, DBM is also not one of Wally's favorite systems, at least that was the gist of his comments when I was running playtest games at PW meetings in 1992. However, it's easier to learn, has fewer quirks, and a lighter figure requirement.
I find Wally's initial dissatisfaction with DBM a bit ironic considering his comments in the Jan 94 Review. DBM does a pretty good job simulating the latest "craze" in ultimate ancients simulation, that of parallel lines slamming into each other. He is right in that WRG tends to have units flying all over the place which, in our current revisionist thinking, is not "right". I think that what we see in WRG has more to do with the relationship between table and army size. Nonetheless, he is right that even if you make the table smaller in WRG so as to try and get that lineon-line feel, the game still breaks down a bit into pieces flying everywhere.
So even if you think DBM might meet your needs (and reading about Wally's attempts to implement an ancients set suggests his mechanics and DBM's, while different on the surface, have pretty much the same end result), that still does not address the basic problem of mastering WRG, or why anybody would want to.
My only answer is that you literally do have to get the bug and be willing to put up with the crap, uncertainty, general humiliation, and seemingly herculean effort to "understand" the system. And that's what makes it so much harder to play this kind of ancients than just about any other miniature wargame (Napoleonics might be an exception; with that comment I'm sure I've just offended somebody). Furthermore, WRG is like a foreign lanquage... if you don't use it regularly, you forget big portions. Players who take a year or two off come back and don't remember half of what they knew before they left. Yet it always amazes me that new people come out of the woodwork every year to play. These people in turn, replace the ones who understandably get burnt out on the system.
Go figure. So unless you are really hooked, it's probably not worth the effort. Wally's experiment was a good one since I've never really had anybody just "try out". So now I figure Wally will no longer look at me like I've got 6 fingers. Now he will look at me like I've got 7.
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© Copyright 1994 Wally Simon
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