Thursday 28 March 2013

Limitations

I have decided to scale down my Assyrians a bit more.

The original points cost of my planned WAB Assyrian army was well over 3500, which is HUGE. But I was using the older v1.0 rules, and the newer ones have some changes, notably in Rank Bonus, that mean large units are perhaps not as useful as they once were. WAB v1.0 had a maximum Rank Bonus of +3 in resolving Close Combat. That meant it was good tactics to have large units with four or more ranks, so that more losses could be absorbed and the Rank Bonus would still not drop for a couple of rounds of Close Combat.

WAB v2.0 drops that maximum Rank Bonus down to +2. Basically that means 20 figure units, arranged in four ranks, are now in real terms just as effective as 25+ figure units arranged in five or more ranks. Few combats will go on long enough for the extra figures to make any difference at all. So I decided I might as well spare myself some of the painting. I also put aside one unit of 12 cavalry, a unit of 12 armoured Slingers and a unit of 12 armoured Archers. That drops the points down to a more realistic level. Cavalry especially are horrendously expensive.

I will paint those back-burner figures up at a later date, but right now I want to concentrate on getting a balanced army fielded as fast as possible,

So now the Assyrian army proper (minus its auxiliaries and/or allies) is as follows.

1 x General/King in Heavy Chariot
1 x Standard Bearer.
1 x Royal Guard unit (20 figures)
1 x Heavy Chariot unit (3 chariots)
1 x Cavalry unit (12 figures)
2 x Armoured Infantry units (20 figures each)
1 x Armoured Slingers unit (12 figures)
1 x Armoured Archers unit (12 figures)

The Auxiliaries / Allies are less affected by the v2.0 changes, as they were going to be small units anyway, albeit with a lot of Archers. They remain the same size.

1 x Infantry unit (20 figures)
2 x Infantry units (18 figures)
2 x Archers unit (10 figures each)
1 x Tribal Skirmishers (Archers) unit (12 figures)




2 comments:

CelticCurmudgeon said...

Dear Chrissie,
Good to see you back. I have a question about your painting. Do you color code the units so that the each line infantry unit is a different color, archers different yet again, etc?
Jerry
A/K/A The Celtic Curmudgeon

Poacher said...

How starnge. I have a post from Jerry, the CC, in my email. It's from a comment he posted on this blog, but it is not here...


OH well, in case it turns up later, I shall answer.

"Dear Chrissie,
Good to see you back. I have a question about your painting. Do you color code the units so that the each line infantry unit is a different color, archers different yet again, etc?
Jerry
A/K/A The Celtic Curmudgeon"

No, the only unit that has any degree of uniformity is the Royal Guard Heavy Infantry. I painted their tunics purple, although the fringes were all different stripes. I also gave them shields of the same colour, a rich deep dark red.

I am adding a bit of variation to the other two heavy infantry units, but again their shields will remain a single colour, dark blue in one case and purple in another.

The Assyrian Archers and Slingers have even more variety, with lots of different colour tunics and kilts and fringes.

The Auxiliaries... Well, no two figures are the same.

I figured that although the Assyrians were well organised I doubted they would match, say, the Romans when it came to uniformity.

And it's been fun... :-)

I must take a few pics soon.

Chrissie
xxxx