An apt description, given to our rules by one of our visitors at Historicon this July. Heretical because we strive to get back to the days of tactical wargaming where armor, morale and weaponry are relevent and where generalship is the prime decision maker for victory. Heretical as well because of the departure from stylized, strategic or grand-tactical wargaming and an emphasis on hands-on decision making, from deciding how to resupply your units with missiles to formulating an all important off board flank maneuver.

People often ask me about my 'rules philosophy'. It's basically very simple. Provide an understandable wargame system that is fun to play and rewards historical tactics. There are several different styles and types of wargames, each having their adherents and detractors. I have drawn from each of them.

First are the simple, silly and fun style games that rely on heavy doses of dice to decide victory, can be put on two sides of a sheet of paper and really don't require a whole lot of energy, mental or otherwise. These often are referred to as 'beer and pretzels' games, quick to learn and play. Many wargamers like these types of games as they are an easy way to get introduced to a new period of history and are great for demos and conventions. Wargamers by and large like to throw dice. Large numbers of dice. These games often have dice by the bucketful. Detractors often deride their lack of historical basis, the oversimplified mechanisms, heavily reliant on the six-sided die to determine most situations, and the fact that they do not really involve the players doing any research or study on their own to any great degree.

Next are the quasi-historical scenario type games, much more complex than the beer and pretzels games, and based around a particular campaign or battle. This type of game can have all sorts of historical precedence built into it. If you are writing rules specifically for the Plains Indian Wars, you can have every type of firearm, horse, Indian tribe, etc. with its' own cross-referenced tables that will give you every nuance of battle and combat result. These are often very complete and complex, but cannot be played outside of the period for which they are written.

Then we have the tournament systems. These have to be written very carefully with an eye over your shoulder for any loose threads or open-ended rules that wary players will look for and exploit as they find them. The tournament systems are the most complex. Wargamers want a mentally stimulating game that allows them to challenge any and all opponents fighting with balanced army lists. Each potential problem has to be addressed and dealt with, sometimes with layers of more rules to 'explain' the original one! Tournament rules also have to have a very real and definite historical feel, results must reflect historical outcomes and to keep players interested and give everyone a chance at winning, they must include balanced army lists. Individual player research may or may not be encouraged because of this.

Ancient Warfare, Medieval Warfare and Renaissance Warfare have facets of all three of these systems. We employ numbers of dice, not to decide the game, but to diminish the effect of a single die roll on the game. We also use quick reference sheets, two sided, with all the pertinent information a player may need to complete his game. There is not much more similarity to the beer and pretzels type of game except that they are a lot of fun to play.

History wise, our rules resemble the campaign rules, with the weaponry and armor variations as well as many period specifics unique to each historical era. Each system is complete and stands alone but once you have learned to play one set of our rules you can then visit another historical period and feel at home as well.

Finally, we wrote our rules with the tournament gamer in mind as well. This meant years of playtesting, establishing a rules discussion group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GoreAMwar and providing feedback on a daily basis on any rules questions. It also meant writing hundreds of historically balanced army lists. Perry Gray has taken on this task for AW/MW and Jeff Ball likewise for RW. This has required hundreds of hours of research and further playtesting, but we had to make the rules work for the discriminating tournament wargamer. In my opinion, we have succeeded.

So, my rules philosophy would have to be summed up by saying that our rules are fun, playable, readable, accurate and will give you a good, mentally stimulating wargame. After six years and hundreds of games, several tournaments and attention to player concerns, we have now cracked the level where our rules are accepted into the pantheon of the major tournament rules sets and NASAMW sponsorship. Thanks to our supporters and I look forward to hearing from any and all new players who decide to give our heretical rules a try.

Some Final Thoughts

Last year and earlier this year we discussed the possibility of having an 'Advanced Tournament and Demonstration Game Rules' booklet available for potential games masters to use. This booklet would include all of the current optional and advanced rules for AW/MW/RW as well as a section on pre-set terrain, a points cost for 'purchasing' your terrain pick(s), another points cost for uprading your generals, etc. The tournament organizer or demo games master could pick and choose from the available options to make his game more interesting and varied.

Now that things have settled down a bit, at least as far as MW goes, perhaps we can once again look at some of these issues.

The primary problem with allowing you to pick and place your terrain without rolling is that is may give an unfair advantage, so the cost would have to be enough to offset this. What point cost would be fair? 25 points per piece? More? The same for raising your quality of generals. To advance one ability level...25 points? Double that for two ability levels?

Rich Knapton sent in an example of pre-set terrain maps a year ago April. I liked his ideas them and I still like them now. He suggested having 30-40 maps, broken down into geographical areas, each army then being assigned to a geopraphical area suited to them. We would then assign each army a rating to determine who was the attacker and who would be the defender.

Other items could also be included, as well as a campaign and siege warfare section (anyone who would like to tackle this is welcome to give it a go!)Anyway, I welcome any and all thoughts on this.

On a relevent note, we have decided to go with a suggestion from Alex Aimette to use a comprehensive tournament rule for dismounting cavalry. Perry and I hashed this one over for quite a while before coming up with something that seemed fair to everyone.

First of all, if you wish to use your mounted troops (or just some of them) as dismounted infantry BEFORE the game starts, you simply pay the points for the equivalently armored foot, not the cavalry, BUT you are limited in how many you can 'buy'.

You may only buy one foot stand for each two allowed cavalry stands (some of the cavalry would remain behind in camp with the horses or off the field as horse-holders and the foot were more densely packed together...4 per stand rather than 3 for the cavalry).

Thus, if your army has "6-12 FMC Veteran Irregular Lance & Shield" the most foot you can buy will be 6 stands of FMI. The advantage is, of course that you are not spending 14 points per mounted unit and only getting an 8 point stand of foot. You pay for the foot, not the cavalry.

Disadvantage? You cannot mount up during the game. Your troops are on foot for the duration.

Let's say you want to dismount your cavalry DURING the game. This gets expensive. You will exchange two stands of cavalry you've paid for already for each stand of foot...OUCH! Yet, you will be able to remount and will have the advantage of mobility before dismounting or after remounting.

We feel this is a fair rule to everyone and does not favor the mounted over the foot armies. It also is historically accurate as most armies that dismounted did so before battle and remained so throughout. The instances where mounted managed to remount usually did so after the battle in order to pursue the broken enemy or run away themselves.