Terrain set-up cheese

rbodleyscott · Post by **rbodleyscott** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 1:07 pm

marshalney2000 wrote:Turning the topic slightly should it always be so cut and dried that the winner of the initiative selects the type of location the battle is fought in i.e. Developed, hilly and so on. It is true that the invader would select as far as possible arout of march that suited his army but on occasion things did not go according to plan and they had to pass a bottleneck that could be defended by the enemy. Stirling Bridge and Thermpopylea spring to mind.
Should we think about having a small change of the choice falling on the defender?
John

The PBI does not decide who is the invader/defender, it decides which side chooses the field of battle - which could be either. That is why the side with PBI can choose a territory from either player's list of territories.

babyshark · Post by **babyshark** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 1:39 pm

By the way, I really like the terrain generation system for FoG. I think it gives both players a reasonable chance to get some terrain that they want and, at the same time, decreases the likelihood that there will be a fortress created for cornersitting. Giving both players some control over each terrain piece is genius.

Marc

marshalney2000 · Post by **marshalney2000** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 8:37 pm

OK, I will hold my hand up for this one as I simply had a dbm moment and assumed that if you won the initiative then you were the invader. I will be ok after further dbm withdrawl symptoms treatment. Without this erroneous assumption then I am happy with the current system.
John
ps on the basis that confession is good for the soul then I should say that all of the Scottish FOG community of which there are 6 of us playing FOG at Britcon had missed the fact that the winner could also pick from their own terrain list. Just as well we sorted that out before Friday but unfortunate I did not notice it before submitting my list!!!

rbodleyscott · Post by **rbodleyscott** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:44 pm

marshalney2000 wrote:the fact that the winner could also pick from their own terrain list.

If this were not so, we would not hear so much lamentation about steppes.

jre · Post by **jre** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 6:15 am

I find that rather than actual mistakes, very often we playtesters are living in the past of old versions. So our actual play has some remnants of version 4, the terrain deployment is still version 5, and only those obvious changes in version 6 are really applied.

Coming from the early 4, and now doing a deep rules read, there is a lot of subtle and not so subtle changes in the rules that we had just ignored, using instead the old system.

Which is why the feedback of new people is so useful, because I may often need to have the obvious pointed out.

José

azrael86 · Post by **azrael86** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:05 pm

rbodleyscott wrote:
marshalney2000 wrote:the fact that the winner could also pick from their own terrain list.
If this were not so, we would not hear so much lamentation about steppes.

So exactly how does that work? 'I, Genghis will draw you, the hordes of mighty Ireland/Switzerland/Wessex/etc out into the open....' .

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:27 pm

Si wrote:I feel that Britcon will give the rules a really good run out. With some 90 games over the weekend we will see many trends and topics to think about
I am sure.

Err, only 90 games? There had been more than that by the end of game 3......

There were 186 15mm games and 30 25mm games played in the tournament and a number of practice games as well.

stevesykes · Post by **stevesykes** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:37 pm

Err, only 90 games? There had been more than that by the end of game 3......

Posted for Britcon 2007... what was the outcome on road placement? I should go and look it up in the rules but post-Britcon paralysis has set in.

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:32 pm

stevesykes wrote:
Err, only 90 games? There had been more than that by the end of game 3......
Posted for Britcon 2007... what was the outcome on road placement? I should go and look it up in the rules but post-Britcon paralysis has set in.

Ahh, silly me, a resurected thread

It wpuld appear that in the final rules terrain can be placed closer than 4 MU to a road so there is much less of an issue. I have certainly not seen much use of this 'tactic' on the competition circuit in the UK.

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 7:32 am

Since I never played until the rules were published I used this at Britcon this year. Put your road on the table edge , the only way terrain is then going on that edge is if the dice roll is hi enough to move it far enough to get your terrain in the gap made. Stops huge bits of terrain going on the flank. A normal size bit would fit and lots of variables around it. But it worked for me.

azrael86 · Post by **azrael86** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 11:58 am

hammy wrote: Ahh, silly me, a resurected thread

It wpuld appear that in the final rules terrain can be placed closer than 4 MU to a road so there is much less of an issue. I have certainly not seen much use of this 'tactic' on the competition circuit in the UK.

resurrected because I can't find the discussion where the ability to taunt foresters (sherwood or otherwise) to the point of making them invade the steppe is justified....

rbodleyscott · Post by **rbodleyscott** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:45 pm

azrael86 wrote:resurrected because I can't find the discussion where the ability to taunt foresters (sherwood or otherwise) to the point of making them invade the steppe is justified....

You are absolutely correct. The likeliest historical outcome is that the foresters would stay in the forest, the nomads would stay in the steppe, and no battle would occur.

However, the premise of our games is that a battle must occur (so we can have our game) - even though pitched battles were fairly rare throughout our period of interest and certain types of army rarely fought pitched battles against each other.

Having decided that a battle must occur (however historically unlikely), it is reasonable that it should occur in the territory of one or other of the protagonists. That being the case, it seems reasonable that the side with better command/scouting should have a better chance than the other of dictating the site of the battle.

The historical anomaly comes from dictating that a battle must occur even though strategically unlikely. And this is a requisite of table-top battle games.

azrael86 · Post by **azrael86** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 9:14 pm

Aside from IPR, what is wrong with the concept of aggression ?

Note that the IPR on aggression clearly belongs to Alexander of Macedon.

Certainly you might expect an invader to seek a battlefield to their advantage, but surely this is catered for by the most favourable of the defender's terrain?

Conversely you could identify armies those that didn't fight outside of their home environs and limit it specifically to anyone who fights these must be an invader and can't choose from their list..

As it stands it is difficult to see whyor how anyone would use a terrain based army (Viking or Dacian, say) in an open comp.

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:03 am

As it stands it is difficult to see whyor how anyone would use a terrain based army in an open comp

See the Britcon thread where 2 Roman armies came at the top. These armies had minimum, 1 Bg, HF the remainder being MF (12), LF (1) and LH (5)

azrael86 · Post by **azrael86** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 3:04 pm

philqw78 wrote:
As it stands it is difficult to see whyor how anyone would use a terrain based army in an open comp
See the Britcon thread where 2 Roman armies came at the top. These armies had minimum, 1 Bg, HF the remainder being MF (12), LF (1) and LH (5)

It is not really relevant, as Dominate Roman doesn't HAVE to be MF. Which means it is very different from armies that are forced to rely on MF, like my earlier examples or a myriad of others (Pict, scots-irish, etc). Secondly, being roman it is drilled, which also makes a substantial difference.

lawrenceg · Post by **lawrenceg** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 6:35 pm

azrael86 wrote:
philqw78 wrote:
As it stands it is difficult to see whyor how anyone would use a terrain based army in an open comp
See the Britcon thread where 2 Roman armies came at the top. These armies had minimum, 1 Bg, HF the remainder being MF (12), LF (1) and LH (5)
It is not really relevant, as Dominate Roman doesn't HAVE to be MF. Which means it is very different from armies that are forced to rely on MF, like my earlier examples or a myriad of others (Pict, scots-irish, etc). Secondly, being roman it is drilled, which also makes a substantial difference.

MF superior armoured light spear swordsmen are pretty competent troops, even in the open. I suggest that this army does not rely on terrain against many opponents - probably only knights and armoured lance/sword cavalry. Against better infantry it can use manoeuvre with drilled MF and skirmishing with the LH.

neilhammond · Post by **neilhammond** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 6:57 pm

azrael86 wrote:As it stands it is difficult to see whyor how anyone would use a terrain based army (Viking or Dacian, say) in an open comp.

I'd be happy to use Dacians in an open comp. It'd be a hoot.

Neil

jlopez · Post by **jlopez** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 8:09 pm

Dacians with a BG of 4 Bastarnae cavalry and a BG of 6 Dacian LH and an IC have an initiative of +3. That's only one off the usual +4 for cavalry armies. Most armies will let you have 10 cav or LH bases or allies with them so if you are willing to buy an IC you have a fairly good chance of selecting terrain.

Julian