Missile fire at contact with medium foot bows/longbows/xbows

Xiggy · Post by **Xiggy** » Fri May 13, 2011 2:14 pm

When you charge in frontally, are you suppose to take additional hits from missile fire? Or is that only with mixed units?

Do mixed units lose a melee dice because the formation is less dense? Or are they handled like pikes where at 25 percent casualties or when you are disordered you take a penalty?

The reason I am asking this, is I just won a match with Ilkanids vs Free Comany and I took very few casulties when I charged it. Most of the charges were frontal. I expected to lose more men at contact.

TheGrayMouser · Post by **TheGrayMouser** » Fri May 13, 2011 2:29 pm

It depends

a pure medium missle unit charged frontally gets 4 melee dice at normal value and 2 missle dice at a -1 poa (for some reason the 2 missle attacks dont display on the dice roll window)

a mixed unit with medium missle support same EXCEPT if the impact/melee weapon depends on ranks for a POA ie spears/pikes it wont get the xtra rank POA

a mixed unit with light foot missle support only gets the 2 missle dice at impact vs CAVALRY , however it doesnt lose any rank POA if spears / pikes

I am 95% sure the above is correct but so many things have changed one nver knows for sure:)

Xiggy · Post by **Xiggy** » Fri May 13, 2011 2:58 pm

I charged about 10 LB and XBOW medium foot in the open. (Not upkill or in a swamp) I charged through some LC. The mounted were armed with sw,bow and protected. I had no choice or I would have to engage the tiger 2's oops, I mean dismounted knights. I took very few hits across the board (maybe 10+ charges) I was up over 21 BP's before I had to engage the dismounted knights.

I was surprised how successful I was.

TheGrayMouser · Post by **TheGrayMouser** » Fri May 13, 2011 3:14 pm

Sounds like you rolled very well:)

Also , my guess is your cavalry were superior and the re-rolls they got slightly offset the two xtra dice the archers had....

IMHO medium foot missle should get the opposite benefit @ impact: 2 melee dice and 4 missle , its not like they had bayonets lashed onto their bows/x-bows

pantherboy · Post by **pantherboy** » Fri May 13, 2011 3:58 pm

The bow has 4 dice at 0 POA plus 2 support at -1 POA. You have 1 POA for charging MF. Basically he needs 5 or 6 on 6 dice thus averaging 2 hits. You have 4 dice at 4, 5 or 6 with 1's being rerolled so a slightly better chance to average just over 2 hits. If the bow was poor then they drop in ability dramatically as every 6 needs to be rerolled. In the SAS environment a lot of armies have access to poor MF bows and if that is what you were up against then you would slaughter them. Also if you had disrupted them before charge then that swings it quite a bit in your favor as you pick who and where to charge.

Cheers,

Steve

TheGrayMouser · Post by **TheGrayMouser** » Fri May 13, 2011 4:29 pm

Hey PB, do know what POA chart support missle fire even uses? Does it roll on the impact or the missle( it matters as the die roll needed to get a hit is differnt)? If it does roll on the missle, is the -1 the absolute POA or is it a netted effect of whatver the missle weapon normallly uses?
Example, LB's get a ++ vs unprotected lancers, if they are charged frontally by same, do the two "missle dice" roll at a + or they just drop down to a - ??

pantherboy · Post by **pantherboy** » Fri May 13, 2011 4:36 pm

It goes off of the impact POA. I always play with the verbose games log open and by watching there plus looking at the basic number of hits you can score from the brief dialog you are able to determine that.

Xiggy · Post by **Xiggy** » Fri May 13, 2011 8:58 pm

These were average cav sw/bow protected. This was a free company army, so I dont know what the bow moral was. But at 600 pts he had 51 BP and I had 38 (Ilkanids inspired general)

I could have rolled well, It does happen every 100 games or so. I was surprised at the results, so wondered if they got 6 dice or 3 for medium.