Even if the Immortals lose and go DISR, melee is then 6 dice for the Immortals vs 4 for the Lancers, and the Immortals are also a POA up and effectively elite.

actually from memory the Immortals don't get a melee weapon so they are evens at melee. Also your example assumes a general on the ...

The unprotected lancers are meant to go in single rank to avoid the nasty arrows.

The point of my example is a cheap and nasty unit at 40pts can do 50/50 on the immortals, if they win impact then the immortals are in a bad place. If a lancer base dies then the rear support lancers charges in with ...

All the immortals I've fought have light spear, putting them at evens in impact and armour puts them at evens in melee, you need 2 group of lancers to take 8 immortals.

I don't have my rule's in front of me but don't the lancers get an additional POA against MF, giving them a +POA?

So Impact ...

I've seen a few people starting to use massed bedouin lancers, which are similar I believe. You do get lots of them. I imagine there are two issues:

- can you bring your numbers to bear?
- They won't like being shot at.

I think my Immortals would like to fight them...

I am not finding them hard ...

I have been using my Arabs a bit lately and have to say that I am now maxing out the unprotected, undrilled, superior lancers/swords. In units of 4 they are giving excellent value for money.

Used in single rank they chase off armoured horse archers, just too risky normally for the horse archers to ...

I am not aware of any other troops in this period still using arquebus. It looks more like a typo to me, the French army for the previous period has exactly the same Forlorn hope troops.

Why would one group of dragoons use muskets while another use weapons from an earlier period?

The army list says they are armed with arquebus if brought out of the core troop area (0 - 4) but with muskets if selected out of the option troop group.

Is this an error? I would have thought by the 30yrs war they would have all been musket.

There is a big hole in the figures for this army in 15mm Old/Middle Kingdom Egypt I had to use NKE.

But, the army is possibly in the top of worst 10 armies in FOG for playability. Apart from a couple of battle groups of heavy weapon guys the rest is junk. The close fighters don't get a lt spear as ...

Not sure how well all those LH lancers would work out, maybe one for sneaky stuff but 3?

the ability of the MF bow and MF Lt spear/swordsmen to move through each other can be very useful.

don't ignore those poor HF defensive spearmen, so cheap.

They act as a magnet to the enemy pulling in their troops freeing up your own cav to play on his flanks. Also being spear they have a +1 against enemy cav and knights at impact.

I would change the IC for 2 TC, with that many longbows you are going to out shoot everyone so really don't need the IC benefit for cohesion testing.

Also could consider fielding the HF in a column placed behind the MF, with half a base split behind 2 BG of MF. That way you get the rear support ...

Galations only have one trick and that is charging foot, after that they are dead-protected-swords meat.

Lancers are good against both their foot and cav.

I haven't got the army list in front of me but assuming there isn't any year restriction issue armoured impact/skilled swordsmen are just ...

Summary is there is no advantage of charging, assumed the non moving players troops would in fact counter charge even if its only a short distance, this isn't represented on the top.

Interestingly there can be disadvantages in charging, such as some foot charging lancers.

Played a game on the weekend where I discovered that my elephants ignore the stakes placed by longbow men. While this was a pleasant surprise is this correct as I would have thought that stakes would work just as well on elephants as they do against knights?

I actually liked the very first army the most. While others don;t like elites having one BG of 4 isn't that much more in pts.

Keep a few cav unarmoured or protected units as LH can't really do much but shoot. The cav can be useful for actually fighting.

I have already brought the figures for a ...

To be fair random or semi random scenarios works well in Flames of War but I have to agree that the vast majority of Ancient battles (with a few notable exceptions) were line them up and fight affairs.

An example - battle like Hastings comes to mind, under the terrain placement system you can't ...

I fall to see what is wrong with suggesting that FOG would benefit from having rules covering different scenarios. I dabble in FOW and they have an excellent scenario generator system which provides many gaming variations.

My group plays FOG to the exclusion of any other sets of ancients rules, we ...

I am thinking more about the poor Dacians or similar irregular army with large battle groups than MF Romans. For all DBMM terrain placement faults I always thought that the end result was a table with much more pleasing, realistically evenly spaced terrain.

I play miniatures for the visual aspects ...

I think one of the worst things in FOG is the terrain selection and placement.

Seems that whenever an army that is mostly medium foot fights against a cav army the MF end up fighting on the steppes. Also what terrain does end up on the table gets pushed to the sides. The player not wanting much ...