Fall of the West
By Jeff Jonas 3-28-01

Recently I corresponded with Mr. Lambshead about whether there is a typographic error on some of the stats on the Fall of the West Roman list. Here was his response:

Jeff's  question:
The Palatine troops are separated from the pedes by a single +1 Leadership point, some are speculating that these troops should be "stubborn" and that stat was left off the chart. The same issue applies to the Veteran Palatina which also seem to be a bit 'pricey' in WAB game terms if not stubborn. If you have a moment to respond to this query I would appreciate it as there is considerable debate ("storms in teacups", Jervis would call them) over this issue.

John's response:
Hmmm, yes. Leslie and I pondered long and hard over these issues. In the end, we decided on the following. Note that I claim no insight into some truth denied to others. I think that these questions are unanswerable on the data available so it comes down to a guess. We saw most Roman soldiers as pretty interchangable - we liked the idea of experienced veterans who could be from any infantry 'group'. Palatines got a leadership bonus because of the morale boost of belonging to 'famous regiments'. The infantry are deliberately not 'stubborn'. This was a complex decision. As you know there is much debate about how good late Roman infantry really were. We decided to go more for Elton than Ferril and see them as pretty good but perhaps not quite as robust as their predecessors - hence no 'stubborn'. An additional reason was that it gives barbarian infantry a chance to sweep away Roman
infantry on a charge,i.e. it seemed to balance a Roman-Barbarian battle better.

It was no more intelligent than that. I think one ends up doing this with the minimal data available. In the end you end up creating a plausible and internally consistent story that leads to a reasonable game. Which isn't to say that other people cannot produce equally plausible cases that make equally good games.

Hope that helps and was not too much of a let down.
Best wishes
John