WARHAMMER: SIEGE, draft II

I think that wining a round of combat is overall more fair as well. I was looking over the siege rules for Warhammer: Ancients and to negate the attacker penalties the attacker must win a round of combat as well.

TheREALricksalamone, dannytee, wilsonthenarc???

Cool. I can actually download and read the docx attachment without a problem. [!]

Outnumbering and Ogres
Ogres (or anything else on 40 or 50mm squares) should count as four infantry, e.g.: four empire archers = one Ogre. But large targets should double that, e.g.: eight empire spearmen = one Giant.

Physics Rearing it's Ugly Head
There should be a section of rules that specifically disallows or bans all ludicrous effects. FREX:
—A falling giant should do no damage to a stone wall section or a tower.
—A falling giant could smash wooden things like Belfreys (Siege towers), catapults, or covered rams.
—Arrows, Bullets and Xbow bolts should have no discernible effects on Belfreys built of timber (and they should absolutely bounce off that Dwarf iron tower.)
—Gnoblars should not be able to push a Belfrey that is weighted down with Ogres.

That is not ^ an exhaustive list.

That and rock lobber fire doing the same thing...both probably belong on my PRIUH list.

Neither should be able to bring a stone wall down in six shots. (Six turns: best case six shots) Creating a big hole in a wall is a process needing days/weeks. But, IF...

...the besieging army has Cannon, The Final Assault battle scenario should probably start with a shattered gate and a breached wall or a fallen tower.

Because given enough time the outcome is certain: shattered walls. But that makes a really boring tabletop game.

(I know of one historical scenario where the stone walls defeated the Cannon. One in all of real history.

Admiral Sir Francis Drake v. The fort at St. Augustine Florida, when that was a Spanish possession.

The Spanish built their fort from marine limestone quarried out of the bay, because it was the only local source of stone. Turns out it when it is fresh it absorbs cannonballs like ballistic gel absorbs bullets. Oops. Drake landed guns and tried bombarding the Spaniards for two weeks but bailed when a hurricane approached.)

The goal here is to get the siege rules to work as best as possible as the same time as being as fare as possible.

The Giant template causes a S6 hit with D3 wounds, it can crush a siege tower, and it can hurt a severely damaged wall. With a max total of 9, it's not normally going to be able to damage a wall, though. There is no reason to make addition rules regarding any of this.

Regarding the missiles, they all need 6 to wound T7, so they pretty much bounce off siege towers.

Lastly, if a mob of Gnoblars can lift up Greasus Goldtooth and carry him around, enough of them can push a heavy siege tower. They are like ants. Or else imagine they have a Rhinox helping them out, etc.

It's important to remember that game rules don't translate exactly to real world practicality.

Regarding Monstrous infantry, you can come up with all kinds of reasons for representing an equal number of infantry sized models. Perhaps they count as 3 because they have 3 Wounds each, for example. In my eyes the simplest, most practical, and fair way is to simply count monstrous infantry as two infantry models for purposes of using siege equipment. You only need two Ogres to carry a ladder at normal speed for example. That seems right, especially since Ogres would need larger ladders than men do.

I know I am very late in commenting on this but I just got around to reading the updated file. A few comments.

I think the rules you wrote in regards to monsters attacking the walls are good. It eliminates the confusion we had with giants in our last game. Plus it gives armies that don't have access to regular giants the option to use their regular monsters in a similar way.

In regards to seizing the ramparts I think that if we want to change to winning a combat we should play test this (which could be play testing during campaign). It is really difficult to say based on theory alone if it would be better. I think both ways favor certain armies and builds. The outnumbering your opponent favors defenders who can put a lot of bodies on the walls. This is why in our most recent siege game Rich and I took zero warmachines. It is simply more important to have bodies because it keeps you from being outnumbered. Horde armies such as goblins, skaven, empire can make great defenders. Kevin can afford to put a unit of 50 goblins on a wall because they are cheap and if he looses 6 in a round so what. So the other option is winning a round of combat and in siege all that counts toward combat resolution is kills. So high damage output armies or builds now have the upper hand. Dwarf hammerers, chaos warriors, witch elves, executioners, swordmasters, white lions, grave guard come to my mind as units that have high damage output. These units against the same 50 goblins from before should be able to win the first round of combat (even needing 6's to hit). Then they go to hitting normal and the goblins are done in no time. So in a way it seems like trading one somewhat off balance system for another.

But again I think it is worthwhile to try and if it proves worse for some reason we can always change it back.

It's the one with the O&G's on the cover right? There's a couple on ebay in the UK going for around $35 US, I'm considering picking one up. Just wanted to make sure before I do.

I have a buddy with the castle set, I wanted to play a siege game with my WoC attacking his castles sometime.

Going to need to build some towers, battering rams, and ladders that are suitably Chaos first though