Support shooting

[hammy]

While answering a question on the open forum it struck me that while DBM has something for nothing for Romans with supporting Ps, AoW has the reverse . I realise why the supporting light foot needed to be changed but they now seem very poor value for money. After using them last night I think I would probably not bother with the 5 points per base they cost for avertage troops.

Hammy

[nikgaukroger]

I seem to recall Terry saying the same after the game Si ran over him with Ancient British.

As their shooting is so negligible what they are effectively doing is adding a cheap 3rd base per file that most of the time doesn't fight. So is that worth 5 points?

[hammy]

I seem to recall Terry saying the same after the game Si ran over him with Ancient British.

As their shooting is so negligible what they are effectively doing is adding a cheap 3rd base per file that most of the time doesn't fight. So is that worth 5 points?

True but as all you are doing is taking a 4 base BG to a 6 it doesn't make any difference on 1HP3B grounds so the only change is that you need to lose 2 bases to lose 25% and 3 for an average BG to autobreak.

Consider a BG of 4 average HF and 2 LF compared to 4 superior HF. The HF are cheaper!

When I next field Dominate Roman I will drop the LF, upgrade the legionaries and have a couple of points spare for something else.

Hammy

[nikgaukroger]

Is this a feature of small sized BGs or does it apply if you had 9 or 12 base BGs?

On BG size, BTW, I have the distinct impression from Leeds and other reports that players are pretty much taking minimum or near minimum sized BGs. Is there a reason for this and is it an issue?

[hammy]

Is this a feature of small sized BGs or does it apply if you had 9 or 12 base BGs?

Not really. If you have a BG of 9 bases (6 & 3) it is only 5 points cheaper (assuming average armoured etc.) than a BG of 8 bases of legionaries. There is a BG size issue but the thing with LF support is that it always ends up with a BG with a size that is a multiple of 3 so they never benefit from rounding effects.

On BG size, BTW, I have the distinct impression from Leeds and other reports that players are pretty much taking minimum or near minimum sized BGs. Is there a reason for this and is it an issue?

It may be a fad. In the early playtests everyone went for FC,TC,TC,TC. At Leeds quite a few people had IC,TC,TC and Alan had TC,TC,TC.

If I run the Visogoths again I will definitely go for 8 or even 10 base BG's but I think that 8 is the minimum. To be honest if I had the option of 6 base BG's I wouldn't take it for Visigoth foot.

I am leaning towards 8's for LF BG's and 6's for LH so I think it is a learning curve. Minimum sized BG's are nippy but fragile and a 4 base BG really suffers once it has lost a base.

Hammy

[paulcummins]

I went for minimum sized bgs so i could afford all the sooper doooper troops
next time I will be making sure I have decent sized BGs - 4 is far too risky

[sagji]

Battle group size is dependant on type.
I took 4 base BGs of superior/elite drilled armoured as they are very tough and a BG of 4 suffers very little from being disordered.
I think 4 is also optimum for cavalry as this is the only size that can expand to 1 rank from fully 2 deep, or contract back again, in a single move - alllowing the cavalry to swap between skirmish and combat mode.
But for Knights 4s are very fragile as they can fight 4 wide so are at significant risk of taking casulties even when they win.
With average undrilled protected troups then the ratio of generals to BGs becomes more important so bigger BGs help.
For LF Bow, x-bow or sling, 6 is good as it's 2 or 3 dice depending on range.