Leeds issues,shooty cav armies

[hammy]

We've played a number of games where one side had lots of shooters and the other did not, and it has turned out fine for the non-shooters. A lot depends on context and circumstance. I also wonder how much of this is realtively good players taking bow armies because they like the armies rather than because they think they are over-powered.

I think the latter is a very good point. The mounted ghilman type armies have the sort of flexibility that good players of most ancient wargames seem to prefer.

Possibly true which is why I have been trying to avoid them because I think they are perhaps too good.

Granted Martin and I managed to beat Bruce in Usk but we were a bit lucky and in all the other games I have played with foot against mounted it essentially boils down to the issue that foot' can't hurt mounted unless the mounted want them to or the foot have their own missiles.

Now this might be historical but at the moment my feeling is that mounted missile troops are a bit too good.

As I said earlier I am going to take a mounted shooty army to the club tonight and see what carnage I can wreak.

Hammy

[plewis66]

I will be taking a mounted shooty army to the club tonight and fully expect to massacre my expected Roman opponents.

Hammy

Oi!

[nikgaukroger]

Possibly true which is why I have been trying to avoid them because I think they are perhaps too good.

Bad playtester Surely that's one of the ideas of testing to show what may be too good?

Best thing to do is use them a lot and see if they are too good.

Granted Martin and I managed to beat Bruce in Usk but we were a bit lucky and in all the other games I have played with foot against mounted it essentially boils down to the issue that foot' can't hurt mounted unless the mounted want them to or the foot have their own missiles.

It would appear from Terry & Richard's game at Leeds that you don't need a lot of missile power for a mainly foot army to drive a shooty mounted one from the table - and I think the latter may be the key point, you don't need to damage them just force them off table.

What you will probably get is that a fairly one dimensional infantry army faces a shooty mounted then you've just got a classic army type mis-match. Something like Swiss, which you used at Leeds, will suffer even more to some degree because it is also quite narrow so will have trouble pushing the enemy off table.

[rbodleyscott]

It would appear from Terry & Richard's game at Leeds that you don't need a lot of missile power for a mainly foot army to drive a shooty mounted one from the table - and I think the latter may be the key point, you don't need to damage them just force them off table.

In fact Terry's army did have a lot of missile power. All the infantry were half archers, the chariots were Bow, and the cavalry (which did not do anything much) were Bow*.

Neverthless, a similar army with non shooty foot on the same terrain would also probably have driven me off the table. It wasn't really the shooting that did it, although it did make it harder for me to get much use out of my own shooting.

[hammy]

Possibly true which is why I have been trying to avoid them because I think they are perhaps too good.

Bad playtester Surely that's one of the ideas of testing to show what may be too good?

Best thing to do is use them a lot and see if they are too good.

But if everyone uses them then there is no way of telling if they are too good..

The Visigoth choice was an attempt to put together a ploddy foot army with a bit of support (to give it a chance against the mounted shootys) and it worked after a fashion but it only worked IMO because it got lucky in one game and in the other game against mouted shooters Don was willing to charge our foot.

The scoring system didn't help us much either. We beat Bruce by breaking his army but took more AP's than we infliced which under the scoring system used in Usk meant that the game was a draw despit our army being 8 or 9 AP from breaking and Bruces having been thoroughly battered (oh and half of our losses were LF).

It would appear from Terry & Richard's game at Leeds that you don't need a lot of missile power for a mainly foot army to drive a shooty mounted one from the table - and I think the latter may be the key point, you don't need to damage them just force them off table.

Assyrians are a special case. They are IMO the best anti mounted foot in the game by a big margin. Also pushing a BG off table only gets you one AP and that would mean you need to get most of your opponents army off table to win. If your opponent flank marches things get difficult.

Also bear in mind that the Greeks I was going to use in Leeds only had 28 files of spear and that is a lot less than the width of the table.

I remain to be convinced that mounted shooters are not over effective (perhaps historically effective but if that is the case they are too cheap).

Hammy

Proving I can be bolshy on the AoW list as well as downright nasty on the DBMM one

[paulcummins]

has anyone used a knight army against a shooty cav army yet?

This should be the logical counter - but is it?

[davidandlynda]

I had a go Sunday with Patrician,sorry Foederati Roman,against Ottoman without Serbs .I had 5 BG of foederati cavalry,Protected ,superior,lance ,swordsmen, when they were together they did survive the shooting ,the superior reroll certainly helped the tests,isolated it was a different story.On the occasions we closed we were able to grind them down,the problem was I was outnumbered otherwise I could have chased them off,a couple of my own Equites working alongside the lancers also worked quite well
David

[lawrenceg]

One of my concerns is that changes being proposed will make troop types like superior, armoured, offensive spearmen backed by an IC almost unstoppable by any shooting army.

Limiting shooting to causing FRAGMENTED at most would not make the spearmen unstoppable. Once they are Fragmented they can't charge. Eventually they will autobreak. They will have more time to rally or win elsewhere (unless the shooting side charges in). My personal view is that this gives a more historical feel. It also gives the player another decision - charge for a quick win and risk casualties or shoot for a slow win and risk running out of time. And it is more interesting for the non-shooting player if the shooter charges, otherwise he is playing a pointless game in which he has no chance at all of hurting the enemy.

Has anybody tested this yet?

[dave_r]

has anyone used a knight army against a shooty cav army yet?

Last night I had a game with Medieval French v Kushite Egyptian. The Froggies are Heavily Armoured Knights, they deployed basically opposite a mass of cavalry and chariots - all single ranked. I ran across the table and slaughtered them. Shooting was completely inconsequential.

[nikgaukroger]

Do you think this was the correct result historically?

(As far as any such matchup can be rated on histircal accuracy )

[rbodleyscott]

Do you think this was the correct result historically?

[dave_r]

Do you think this was the correct result historically?

I was tempted to deploy all of the (rubbish) crossbowmen infront of the Knights, but decided against it. Incidentally, I think that crossbowmen should only suffer a -ve in shooting when shooting at people who are returning fire.

I decided not to replace all of my knights with obviously more effective chariots.

[hammy]

I played Seljuk against Swiss last night with me using the Seljuks. The centre of the battlefield was open and the Swiss deployed with a long lone of handgun BG's infront of 6 or so BG's of pike. A single BG of knights was on the Swiss left with a BG of mounted crossbow as it's only support. The Swiss also had a few BG's of halberdiers in reserve.

The Seljuks held their centre with a few BG's of light horse and swamped the Swiss left with 4 BG's of ghilmen and lancers while 2 BG's of ghilmen went past the Swiss right. As the Swiss advanced they wheeled their centre outwards but it wasn't enough.

The Swiss knights charged a BG of ghilmen how evaded but this allowed a BG of lancers to possition itself on the flank of the knights. Trapped with the ghilmen to their front and lancers to their flank the knights quickly broke when the lancers hit them in the flank.

The handgunners proved relatively ineffective against the light horse but as the Swiss were pulled appart shooting became more and more intense on certain exposed pike blocks. One pike block suffered 5 hits then 4 hits and dropped from steady to FRG then broke when the ghilmen charged it. The pike didn't get a chance to be bolstered despite the presence of a general and the fact the pike charged one BG of ghilmen. There was a second BG of ghilmen that the charge didn't reach and it was the second BG that caused the FRG and break.

Overall we only played about 8 turns but at the end the Swiss had lost three BG's broken, one FRG and their camp. The Seljuks had lost one base of Turkoman light horse from shooting, two bases of ghilmen from a BG that decided to risk it when charged by 2 deep pike and two bases of Syrian lancers who got very unlucky against a BG of halberdiers.

The game played perfectly reasonably from a believability point of view but there was essentially nothing the Swiss could do to hurt the Seljuks.

I will see if I can get someone to run my Greek list with armoured hoplites against the Seljuks next week and see if armoured foot that fight 2 deep are better against shooty mounted.

Hammy

[nikgaukroger]

The game played perfectly reasonably from a believability point of view but there was essentially nothing the Swiss could do to hurt the Seljuks.

Is there anything that can/should be done with these sorts of mis-matches that does not deform history? Or do we accept that its going to happen (as it does in other rules as we demonstrated in the first game at Burton)?

If, as you seem to say, that the history is right is there anything that can make a game of such encounters?

[rbodleyscott]

The game played perfectly reasonably from a believability point of view but there was essentially nothing the Swiss could do to hurt the Seljuks.

Of course this is an extreme example of a narrow foot army against a fully mounted shooty army, played in 15mm scale. As you say the result was entirely historically reasonable. You might then say -"Ah, but then the points values are wrong".

The problem with adjusting the points values to counteract the obvious superiority of the Seljuk (type) army over the Swiss (type) army (in 15mm scale), is that to be fair you would have to have a different points system for 15mm and 25mm games.

Cavalry armies find it much harder in 25mm (on 6 x 4) table to win against an infantry army, and, in fact, it can be as frustrating for the cavalry army in 25mm as it is for the Pike army in 15mm.

Assuming that we don't want to have two different points systems (and we don't), we probably have to accept that the points system (if we get it right) will relatively advantage cavalry-heavy armies in 15mm and foot-heavy (and probably knight-heavy) armies in 25mm.

We can't just balance it for 15mm and assume the balance will be right for 25mm - it wouldn't be.

Maybe our best solution is to use the (themed - unlike DBM) AoW army list books as the basis of tournaments, and then these mis-match issues largely disappear.

[nikgaukroger]

Assuming that we don't want to have two different points systems (and we don't), we probably have to accept that the points system (if we get it right) will relatively advantage cavalry-heavy armies in 15mm and foot-heavy (and probably knight-heavy) armies in 25mm.

Reminds me of another rules set, now which one was it again ...

Maybe our best solution is to use the (themed - unlike DBM) AoW army list books as the basis of tournaments, and then these mis-match issues largely disappear.

AoW is better placed to do this than, say, DBM(M) as it is going to have more army list books and these are relatively themed. However, I'd expect that most DBM players will be expecting to be able to play any army against any opponent - not that they are the whole of the target market, of course, but they currently represent a lot of the play testers.

[plewis66]

Or adjust the points system, and play 25mm on 8 foot tables?
Or adjust the points system and play 700pts at 25mm?

I don't personally fancy either of these, but they are options, none the less.

Though I saw 25mm AoW for the first time last night, and, from an observers perspective, it looked ridiculously crowded in 6 feet...

[rbodleyscott]

AoW is better placed to do this than, say, DBM(M) as it is going to have more army list books and these are relatively themed. However, I'd expect that most DBM players will be expecting to be able to play any army against any opponent - not that they are the whole of the target market, of course, but they currently represent a lot of the play testers.

Indeed, but they cannot reasonably expect to get a good game with Swiss vs Seljuks in 15mm. It is really asking too much of any rules system to make this a worthwhile game.

However, as has been stated, AoW does give the anticipated historical result.

As Hammy said at Leeds, he would take the Swiss to a themed tournament but not to an open tournament. Is this unreasonable? The Swiss are relatively disadvantaged in an open tournament, but almost certainly relatively advantaged in a themed tournament.

There are plenty of more balanced armies that could cope in both.

I submit that if we want to test out the relative efficacy of horse and foot, Swiss is not the best army to use for the test.

[lawrenceg]

The problem with adjusting the points values to counteract the obvious superiority of the Seljuk (type) army over the Swiss (type) army (in 15mm scale), is that to be fair you would have to have a different points system for 15mm and 25mm games.

Cavalry armies find it much harder in 25mm (on 6 x 4) table to win against an infantry army, and, in fact, it can be as frustrating for the cavalry army in 25mm as it is for the Pike army in 15mm.

Assuming that we don't want to have two different points systems (and we don't), we probably have to accept that the points system (if we get it right) will relatively advantage cavalry-heavy armies in 15mm and foot-heavy (and probably knight-heavy) armies in 25mm.

We can't just balance it for 15mm and assume the balance will be right for 25mm - it wouldn't be.

As far as I can see (from reading the rules) 25 mm is the same as 15 mm except the base frontage is 50% larger. The base depth is larger too, but has no significant effect on the game. The 25 mm game should therefore be the same as the 15 mm game with 50% more points. There will be a slight difference in that the frontage of small BGs wil be larger. So balance for 15 mm @800 pts on 6x4 should work for 25 mm @ 532 pts.

This begs the question "Do the army lists work at c. 500 pts ?"

There are a number of interacting issues, e.g.

Points per frontage (in distance, not elements)
Frontage of troops per battlefield width
Points needed to meet compulsory troop requirements

I think we can accept some degree of change in balance according to these factors as long as things are not wildly out. We ought to be testing the envelope and set guidelines accordingly. If we are looking for reasonable balance at 800 pts on 6x4 with both 15 mm and 25 mm then perhaps we should be testing at 1000 pts, 15 mm to get the ideal balanced point values for troops. The envelope limits would be where there is still no "obvious best buy" troop type.

Although themes avoid some mismatches, there will still be Romans vs Parthians, Alexander vs Skythians, Rus vs Mongols and a few others.

[hammy]

There are plenty of more balanced armies that could cope in both.

I submit that if we want to test out the relative efficacy of horse and foot, Swiss is not the best army to use for the test.

I agree but Martin my opponent wanted to use his Swiss and I was keen to use the Seljuks

Would you think that the armoured Greek idea is a better test ? Would Principate Roman be more like it? Should I try against a Dominate Roman?

I need to sort out a game for next week and trying the Seljuks agaisnt something else appeals.

Hammy