Hi!
This post is just a personal reflexion, I am not willing change any rule officialy or something like that.
I have seen that skirmishing infantry units always carry problems when trying to get a safisfactory simulation in the rules (not only warmaster, but every set of rules that I read). These days the active thread of skinks in WMF (fantasy) seems another example of how take advantage of a rule to simulate skirmish. "A group of few infantry troops, with high movility, very few armoured to be a rapid unit and throwing weapons, destinated to bother the enemy armyline while deploying or maneavering. Also troops designed to eliminate routing units more than hitting the enemy".
WMF says they can shoot in 360º and have usually Attack 2.
WMF Empire skirmishers, are not the same unit style, the work as Greek/macedonian Hyspapist or what is the same as arquebusiers/hallberdiers in the historic Tercio o "cuadrado" (squares) Renaissance tactics. (At least is what I understood this unit)
WMA is a diferent stuff. I remember when WMA was realesed we quickly build up an egyptian army, and start to develop a nubian army to play the conflicts in the borderland near the second river fall for the miens of gold. They Nubian army was mainly an skirmishing army, so again the rules to simulate skirmish take advantage over the simulation, and I remember a lot of egyptian defeats. During these days I remember a lot of possible changes in WMA community, so something was going bad with skirmishing rule. At last WMAArmies was released with changes, quite sophisticated to fix that advantage of the rules.
They work well, but doesn’t satisfy completely. In WMA skirmishers attack with 2 dice (if I rememeber well).
In our gaming group think that skirmisers could be simulated better giving an Attack of 1 dice, and/or reducing the number of stands per unit to 2 instead the normal 3. That represents the few people of them. Those house-changes apply for WMF and WMA.
Does some of you have ever think something like that?
Does some of you have tried it? How was the experience? (in terms of simulation, in terms of winning-at-all-cost this changes will be a catastrophe, I know).
I always been talking about infantry skirmishers. Mounted or cavalry skirmisher are other story!
I play less of what I liked to, so we did not test it, because when came the real moment we prefer to follow the normal rules and have lot of fun, instead trying to evaluate the changes, so all of the above expose cames from just talking and chatting.
(what a long post!… sorry for the grammar and the length of the message, I could not sum up better the ideas)
