New WAB Army

I was informed earlier this week that my friend Andrew was thinking of dropping out of Warhammer Ancient Battles. His reason for doing so was budget constraint.

Another friend of mine, Victor was quite disheartened when he heard of Andrew’s decision and subsequently decided to drop out of this endeavour also. I then decided to inherit Victor’s Mongolian infantry as I do not want the miniatures to go to waste; and also that I felt that I was partially responsible for inviting Victor to WAB in the first place.

So this leaves me with a collection of 24 Mongolian foot archers. I reasoned that since I do not want an ancients army that play similarly to Lawrence’s Selucids and that I always want a significant nomadic contingent in my Byzantine forces, I should thus drop the Bactria project and collect a nomadic force instead. I will pick Alans as my nomadic tribe since they fit the historical as well as aesthetic requirements of both Ancients and Dark Ages.

The Nomadic army list is extremely simple. Players only have four unit types to choose from namely, medium cavalry with bows, light horse archers, infantry skirmishers and open order infantry. An experienced historcal/fantasy gamer can quickly notice that this list has a major weakness, which is the shortage of close combat troops. The horse archers do not even have the option of a spear to let them enjoy some benefits when charging. Personally I would disagree with the list writer that nomad armies lack close combat options. It was my understanding that although nomad soldiers are primarily archers, they are also ferocious in close combats. Unfortunately it was Martin and not myself that wrote the rules so I have no choice but to accept his decision.