TBQH, I've been playing no oracles for combat res on unformed units for
awhile. That may be the difference in our experience. I've also been playing
with the newer version of the list for awhile, so worries about armor or
drilled/stubborn on the general.
Peltasts and other light infantry are awesome in WAB1.5 oracles or no.
Again, WAB 2 fixes this issue pretty well for every army, and probably does
a bunch to kill all the light troop armies that were rather too good in the
past. As far as fielding Thracian and Theban cav, in the army I have tested
on and off I had a decent sized unit backed up by equal sized units of
standard cav for both heavy and light versions. Works pretty well, and
honestly isn't what people expect from a Greek army.
WAB is a game that's pretty trivially broken by asshats, so I'm uncertain
why we're worried about fixing this small hole when much bigger ones exist.
Ray
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Jonas, Jeff <jjonas@soe.sony.com> wrote:
>
> Not broken??
>
>
>
> The Greek list was broken.. it has been fixed over and over but never to
> a complete satisfactory fix until WB2.
>
> Oracles were slightly broken--- the many years of no errata was
> confounding and frustrating. Basic game tenets were exacerbated by the
> lack of coherency in the special rules. This compounded other WAB issues
> in old lists.
>
> For instance- it took years for them to release errata that figured out
> that a heavy armored hoplite commander f'ed up the whole army-- and then
> they realized that a 25 point addition was needed for a Spartan general
> who is simply Stubborn and Drilled, in order that he did not F up his
> army.... why 25 points?? That was crazy.
>
> They never bothered to ever issue any direction of what happens when a
> general breaks from a Sacred Band (He has to check but the unit
> doesn't--- it's a weird special case that has ramifications-- or it
> would be better to fix the rules- which they never did.)
>
> They never allowed a General to ride a horse... which precluded the
> ability to make some Greek variants. The Composition values made it
> almost entirely impossible to field Thessalian/Thracian or Theban
> cavalry.
>
> They never fixed it so oracles could not affect skirmishers... thus
> making Greek skirmishers the best anti-elephant troops in the world--
> even if they feared them, they could drive them off with a +2 oracle..
> not to mention the fact that any player at any time could use an oracle
> to have his lowly psiloi destroy expensive enemy skirmisher units since
> they were not allowed standards.. this was a ridiculous "double
> standard".
>
> There is no credible reason why this should have been allowed. It lead
> to savvy players using peltasts as their supreme troops. Why have
> cavalry when peltasts are three times cheaper and twice as effective?
>
> Large units of peltasts would infiltrate the enemy line, reform and then
> hit the enemy flank, add in a +2 and wham-O how come peltasts aren't
> more famous than hoplites? Oh yes, the hoplites, just place them in a
> solid line on your 5 foot wide tournament table sandwiched by your two 1
> foot wide each obstacles that you were able to pre-set on either side,
> and place your line of slingers and Cretans firing "overwatch"... then
> if the enemy penetrates tot eh sacred band or the Spartans, you can
> hammer them with the peltasts....
>
> Or worse watch the 20 figure peltast unit in column blast through
> cavalry with oracles.... and if they lose, they simply FBIGO...
>
> Not all these problems were problems exclusive to Oracles, but the lax
> rules about oracles gave players ways to create ahistorical tactics.
> WAB2 has at least removed these other issues so I reckon that oracles
> will now work better for both the Greeks and RoM lists because they can
> no longer rely on a steady diet of loopholes and crazy antics to gain
> advantages. WAB2 finally makes it more reasonable to have cavalry, and
> units can no longer charge while in 3 wide columns, that helps remove
> some of the most effective loophole tactics from the Greek army.
> I actually do believe that the WAB2 rules will make the oracles work a
> lot better, and the best thing is the removal of oracles affecting
> skirmishers.
> You all might have noticed that I never used a Greek army at Historicon
> or any tournament-- precisely because these loopholes were not 'fun ' to
> hoist on unsuspecting other players. I felt bad for the players in
> England who had a very savvy Greek player winning all their cons, by
> squeezing every trick out of them allowed by the holes in the rules.
> JJ
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I 100% agree with Mike here. The AoA Greek list is really capable of
> bunches of different (historically supported) styles, and the list still
> works well with WAB2. The only problem I see with it is distributing the
> list to new players, since it's only printed in two discontinued books.
>
> Ray
>
>
>
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