Art De La Guerre

[KevinD]

Here’s a question - how far out of period do you figure figures can be and still he used in tournaments? I know many people (myself included) have used the 16th c Samurai for 11th c Samurai armies. (I think that was more excusable 25 years ago - but now that Khurasan and others have v nice early Samurai perhaps we shouldn’t be doing that so much anymore.)

How far out of period can knights be?

Is it kosher to use late 13th c. mounted knights (great helms, sugarloaf helms, some coat of plates or plate reinforced knees, etc. with heater shields) for 11th c Normans? What about 14th c dismounts in plate, jupon, aketon, with bassinets, carrying pike axes or great swords for 11th c dismounted Norman era knights or late 15th c knights in white metal w/o shields.

I suppose I don’t see Samurai 500 years out of period as being as offensive as knights because I know a bit more about the development and look of Western armor (although that’s not quite so true anymore as I have a good idea of what century or two Japanese or other Far Eastern military fashions belong too now). However, for Arabs, Persians or Turks I’d notice have even fewer issues for guts bring 700-800 years out of date, say 700 AD to 1500 AD, even though I now know the difference between early or later ones, within a couple of hundred years or so.

(For Romans I broadly define as pre 100 BC, Caesar era, early-mid empire and mid-empire to early Byzantine.)

In any case, where would you draw the line at:

(1) what would you feel comfortable using yourself at a tournament?

(2) at what point would you complain about someone at tournament using something so anachronistic?

[ethan]

At least in the case of Samurai I think this is a bit of the "rule of cool." Everyone has seen Kurosawa films (which tend to be in the 16th Century vein) and the sashimono banners, etc. There is I think a tendency to "yes I know it is wrong, but it is really cool looking." There tends not to be a place to actually field those troops so you get these ahistorical armies.

think this is a more widespread problem with Asian armies in general which are not as well known and (importantly IMO) tend not to have as well developed army lists leaving them with fewer "viable" tournament lists. Thus a tendency to have a "Chinese" army with all the troops recycled for many centuries. Some is probably ok - peasant archers probably didn't vary all that much (nor did they really in long periods of Western history) but the elite troops are more distinctive...

I think most people do tend to shy away from using 14-15 Century knights as Normans...but there is more ambiguity around 13th century as 15th.

More broadly though this is a tournament problem. I think most people put together reasonably historical armies, but given cost and time involved can't do that for every tournament army they might want to field. So you get some level of morphing which I think most people just accept as long as it isn't too outrageous...

[Mark G Fry]

It really depends upon the views of the organizers (& a players opponents).

For example, I played against a player recently in a competition who had used a couple of Biblical mixed Spear/Bow foot units in his Byzantine army.
It was not ideal, as he explained, but in reality it made no real difference to me as long as it was very clear what the troop type was (which was the same as the representative Byzantine mixed Spear/Bow units).

It also depends on the complexity of your army - if you have a Roman army with Armoured Legionaries, some with Rear Support & some without and maybe even some without Armour, it might be at least helpful to your opponent that you provide some means of differentiating the different types.
But if all your Knights are either Heavy or Medium I certainly wouldn't object if they all had mail instead of plate if you designated them as Heavy Knights rather than Mediums.

Where I might object is where it is impossible to tell what a unit is (or keep that in your mind). However, even then there are options available to you.

Again, many years ago I played against a particularly well known 'character' in the UK wargaming circuit. Let us just call him 'Old Nigel', as he sadly been dead nearly 10 years now.
He was fielding an Anglo-Saxon army (of some sort) but all the figures were the same in each unit - all 1:72 scale Airfix plastic Robin Hood figures, all painted the same dull brown!
About half-way through him telling me what each unit type was I'd already forgotten the earlier ones, so we agreed that we'd stick sticky yellow post-it notes under each base for one type of troop type and different coloured ones to represent others and I'd write what was what on each sticky note.
There was no point in me complaining to anybody about it and 'Old Nigel' and I had a perfectly convivial game - I cannot even remember who won in the end. But as long as I knew which unit type was which it didn't really matter (to me anyway).
Some 3 or 4 years later I played Old Nigel again, and he used the same army, and there were the same sticky yellow post-it notes, with my hand-writing on them, still attached to the bases of his army

Obviously it is all part of the game - having beautiful figures, that exactly represent what we (currently) think that the troops they are supposed to represent look like. That is why we don't generally play with coloured wooden or plastic tokens. And ideally it is helpful and courteous to play with representative figures & some competitions do stress this as being an important criteria for entry - but we are not at the level of the Flames of War or Games Workshop competitions (thankfully).

But unless something was deceptively unrepresentative (say - an Elephant model being used to represent a chariot for example) I'm just pleased to get as many games in as I can.

Just my views
Cheers
Mark
_________________
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

[MarkK]

'He was fielding an Anglo-Saxon army (of some sort) but all the figures were the same in each unit - all 1:72 scale Airfix plastic Robin Hood figures, all painted the same dull brown!'

I feel sick. Out of interest how about basing? So if you 4 inf. models on a 40mm x 30mm instead of 8?

[Mark G Fry]

[DarkBlack]

The most important thing is that I can tell what troop type something, in terms of rules, is by looking at it. It's the minimum below which I might complain.

I would be less keen to play someone again if troops don't look like what they're supposed to represent historically.
Even if it's quite generic or "morphed".
Steppe nomads should look like stepp nomads, barbarians like barbarians, knights like knights.
Using Goths as Franks or Gauls as Galatians wouldn't bother me. Legionaries as Vikings or Helleistic phalanx as Swiss would very much.

For myself, it very much depends on my interest and how distinct something would be. I can't research and have specific figures for everything.
For example: have a generic and intentionally vague feudal medieval army that's intended to let me run Europeans in themes around the 13th century.
My 15th Century army is specifically German though and I would only ever use them as such.
Ditto Early Imperial Romans.

[Mark G Fry]