middle plantagenet

[marco]

i'm searching help
i'm painting a middle plantagenet army (ed 1 army) and i try to make it as competitive as possible
any advice ?
thanks

[hazelbark]

Longbows and Knights. Advance and kill all before you.

Just don't turn to manuver. I experimented with the Irish allly to bulk it up and give it something to break enemy armoured spear. I think if you take the Irish you amx the kerns to bulk on size too.

[IanB3406]

I played this a few times......it moves like a pregnant sow. Often found my longbow trying to chase down the enemy on one flank but needed my generals elsewhere where the fight was, so they were unable to make CMTs to turn.

I also did the Irish ally, and found more maneuverable armies targeted them. My list had the one BG of lancer Cav and the crossbow Cav...I would not take the undrilled lancer Cav as they actually cost me a few games, and I am debating re-tooling with more longbow and no irish allies.

Just about all my games went like this:

enemy mass on irish....
longbow on flank chase something running away.....
enemy tries to screen knights.....

A battle would erupt around the Irish with what ever support I could get in, which was typically a flanking longbow unit, the battlegroup of drilled knights (only 2), the stupid lancer Cav who would fail there CMT and charge a turn early. The BG of drilled Knights, lancer cav, and Crossbow Cav are the only real maneuverable parts of the army, and I typically deployed them in reserve. In the end the Irish did sterling duty at worst trading battlegroups....this was often not enough esp if the knights failed.

[grahambriggs]

I have found the best version for me is:

Irish ally; 4 LH, 8 HW MF, 2 LF BGs
2x8 proper longbow plus 4 MF rear support
4x4Undrilled knights
1x2 drilled knights
4 TCs

I've found a good approach is push on a flank with longbows, line of 16 knights wheeling round with them, LH delay on the other flank and the Irish HW engaging any terrain. Royal Guard as reserve.

It's a bit of a brute force approach but I've found there are quite a few armies that can cope with 3 groups of knights but not 4

[marco]

thanks
i give a try next week
after i 'll tell you what i prefer

thanks for the advice

[BlackPrince]

Awesome I have been looking for a knight heavy army that can handle a bit of rough going. Are your longbows protected or unprotected and do you take the swordsmen option?

[bertalucci]

A couple of weeks ago in a club 'competitive' game I fould my Middle Plantagenets (Royal Household Knights, 3x4 Knights, 5x6 Unprotected Longow, 2x6 Def Spears & 1x4 Sergeants) up against Middle Plantagenet with the Irish option, less knights and more Def Spears and his longbows were protected.

Deploying the mass of my Knights last I chose to swamp the left hand wing, this required one unit of knights and the sergeants to force march across the width of the table to join up with their fellows, while the other knights dawdled around and the longbows sought to ensure that they were outnumbering their opposite numbers in any shooting match and my def spears paraded about doing nothing but looking aggressive. My opponent who had a line of woods and a hill in his deployment area had initially chosen to defend these obtacles so he obliged me in regard to the marching troops, although in truth they did little service in the battle.

Eventually my 3 units of knights charged in against 2 units of bow and 1 unit of knights.
From the left, the unit facing longbows got a draw, while the unit who had march across the table got disordered by the enemy shooting and in turn routed eventually. Crucially, a General had joined the centre unit of knights, and won the impact and melee.

On the rest of the board my opponent had came out of his defensive position to face me off across the length of the board, bow strings twanged and the sky darkened with the thousands of feathered shafts crossing the divide between the opposing armies. But because I had many more bows I won the shooting match disordering and subsequently fragging several units.

His unit of knights then broke, my knights persued into a second unit, this time led by his CiC, The longbows on either flank and the Irish all becoming disrupted from seeing the rout.

Next Turn- on the far right his spears charged my two units of bow and a unit of spears with my spears routing in due course, in the centre my bows charged his fragged units, two of which routed, a further unit of bow became fragged on seeing this, on the left the remaining unit of archers routed, and the Irish once again failed their test becoming fragged, the second unit of knights also succomed although this time I did lose a base or two.

At that point we had to end it as his army was in rout.

The Royal Knights as befits so prestigious a unit marched up and surveyed the outcome of the battle on the left, deciding to let their lesser fellows get all muddy and unkempt - I just couldn't find anywhere to get them into a charging position, although they did provide rear support to the unit fighting the far left longbows.

Well at least I enjoyed it.

Lessons - in this arena protected bow was not cost effective as you are odds on going to be fighting someone with better armour, the defensive spears were in my view a liability and the terrain can and could be ignored so the Irish were wasted points also. Had my opponent stayed in the woods and on the hill he would have still lost his right flank and probably the unit on the hill to shooting and that would still have been enough for me to win overall.

[marco]

i don't have any precised idea of how to play it

the first choice is protected or unpro bw ?
swodmen or not ?
max bow or max knight ?
spearmen ?
irish ally ? or welsh !



i painted 54 bow and 8 knight
(some are already in my blog
some other knight will follow

fog work like this in my point of view : fist look : you find you have no choice, all army look the same
but when you start to make your army you find so munch option....
and i like it because it give me a lot of reason to paint

first time for my nearly finish army this week, i'll tell you

thanks for the answer
i try to share my point of view after

[hazelbark]

i don't have any precised idea of how to play it

the first choice is protected or unpro bw ?
swodmen or not ?
max bow or max knight ?
spearmen ?
irish ally ? or welsh !

I prefer protected. Unprotected need to be in 8s and not left exposesd, but unprotected is an option.

Swordsmen I think yes the longbow having swords mean you will only be -POA at melee against mounted not --

Bow vs Kn are preference. But I've always thought of the mid plant as 2 or 3 KN.

[marco]

i realized that early anglo-irish are maybe a bit better
maybe...

[ethan]

i realized that early anglo-irish are maybe a bit better
maybe...

I like Early Anglo-Irish better, but mostly as it gets you more variety of troops types. if you want to max out longbows go for the English.

I quite like Unprotected, Swords, Longbows. They can get shot up pretty badly - but if you take them in 8s they should do all right. Protected doesn't help you in melee against most things that are dangerous (i.e. mounted) but swords do.

[marco]

thanks for the answer
but i have been disapointed by mass longbowmen
take 54, all shoot
and during my last game :
kill two elements (not bg)
disrupted some
fragmented one but it recovered....
maybe i wasn't lucky this time....
they have been touched in hand to hand fight and all disapeared
oups

[bertalucci]

thanks for the answer
but i have been disapointed by mass longbowmen
take 54, all shoot
and during my last game :
kill two elements (not bg)
disrupted some
fragmented one but it recovered....
maybe i wasn't lucky this time....
they have been touched in hand to hand fight and all disapeared
oups

In FoGAM you should not expect to shoot away the enemy its enough to disorder / frag them, although it does sometimes go that way.
Try to mass your shooting, so although I agree 8's are stolid 6's can be more easily manouvered.
Once the enemy is disordered or fragged you should charge in either with other units (Knights, Spears or Irish if you must) or with the bowmen if the opposition is fragged.

The advantage in dice created by this should make the difference.

Rule No 1 - Have a Plan
Rule No 2 - Expect the Plan to go wrong

Bert

[philqw78]

Rule No 1 - Have a Plan
Rule No 2 - Expect the Plan to go wrong

No 3 Roll a bucket load of sixes

[AndrewMoray]

Hello!

I also play the Middle Plantagenets and it is a bit difficult for me against Later Turkish Ottoman tha tI often have to face...

Timariots shoot on my knights and eventually evades
Janissaries are better than the longbowmen and frag them
Tatars shoot on the other flank and evades as soon as I try to charge them

I use to play :

2*4 Undrilled Kn
3*8 Protected swordsmen Longbowmen
1* Sergeants (I have now removed these kamikaze...)
1* Mounted Crossbowmen
2*10 Welsh Spearmen (as Offensive Spearmen, good against cav)
1* Welsh cav
1*4 Javelinmen

I wish to change for :
3*4 Undrilled knights instead of 2
no Sergeants
2*8 Irish HW (instead of Welsh)
1* Irish Cav

I don't rely very much on the Irish, however I will test it for my next battle
I also plan to replace the Irish with more longbowmen and defensive spearmen to support them. The main problem is that the defensive spearmen are easy to frag with shooty cav but I expect to mass fire with the longbows and to outnumber the Tatar cav...

To be continued after more tests

[grahambriggs]

I find with this army that you must have the longbow as protected swordsmen. You need to decide which is your main weapon, longbows or knights?

For me, the longbow are undrilled so there are better massed longbow armies. Hence I go for massed Knights - 4x4 plus 2 drilled. It is easy to avoid 2 BGs of knights, not so easy with 4 plus a reserve, with longbow pressing a flank

[ancientsgamer]

You want drilled longbow and this list doesn't have it. Undrilled is not fast enough and you will have times where you want to retreat some units. Drilled can do this, undrilled is too slow.

Later armies allow you to have HW armed foot. You will want the drilled variety if you can have them. I find that 100YW English or War of the Roses English to be better lists if you want to use longbow. Also, HW men-at-arms can freely interpenetrate your longbow units. The debate on protected vs. unprotected longbow will continue. The benefit of 8 element units is they put out 50% more dice with the addition of just 2 elements. 6 element units shoot only 4 dice at effective range. 8 element units put out 6 dice and 3 dice at long range increasing your odds of causing a CMT test on your opponent.

The problem with the Irish lists is still undrilled longbow. Not easy to move around. Your HW foot is also undrilled.

The Anglo-Irish list is better because of getting more drilled troops.

Just my opinions....

[ravenflight]

No 3 Roll a bucket load of sixes

You people are so wasteful.

5's are more than enough...