Are bow too good or am I just useless

[hammy]

I have faced bow heavy armies twice now, once when using Later Swedish and once using early Early Hugenots. In both cases I thought I had a way to make a dent in the bow (who were hiding in rough ground). The Swedish sent detached salvo bayonet infantry to get them and the Hugenots sent gendarmes. In both cases I got shot to pieces on the way in then was unable to make a dent in close combat. Granted my dice were not great but given the volume of shooting I was on the wrong end of there was a very good chance that my troops would have been chewed up on the way in (which they were).

Looking at it bow seem to me to be better than shot and cost less. Am I missing something, is there a trick to dealing with them or should I simply have not gone anywhere near the terrain and forced the bow to advance and fight in the open? If the later then I suspect that the games may have ended up as very dull draws which from a scoring point of view would have been a good thing but from an enjoying the game POV would have been garbage.

[madaxeman]

Bow's weakness is the +2 on death rolls, so they need to wheel in and combine several units of shooting to achieve casulaties. Go at them in a coherent line and it should therefore be very hard for them to inflict losses on a 2 or 3 base wide formation as they will only roll 4 or 6 dice at you.

Or don't even initiate combat - stand and shoot at them with shot and you will outshoot them quite easily.

But attacking into rough ground with Gendarmes... probably not going to be very good in any set of rules - would you attack massed bowmen in RGo with knights in AM?

Detached shotte are also perhaps not as good as standard pike and shotte, as the pikemen will perhaps be up +1 or +2 in melee, and if you are proper Swedish Brigades you will also count the whole formation as armoured for shooting.

[hammy]

Bow's weakness is the +2 on death rolls, so they need to wheel in and combine several units of shooting to achieve casulaties. Go at them in a coherent line and it should therefore be very hard for them to inflict losses on a 2 or 3 base wide formation as they will only roll 4 or 6 dice at you.

Or don't even initiate combat - stand and shoot at them with shot and you will outshoot them quite easily.

But attacking into rough ground with Gendarmes... probably not going to be very good in any set of rules - would you attack massed bowmen in RGo with knights in AM?

Detached shotte are also perhaps not as good as standard pike and shotte, as the pikemen will perhaps be up +1 or +2 in melee, and if you are proper Swedish Brigades you will also count the whole formation as armoured for shooting.

So essentially if you have a 'normal' army and your opponent puts their bow in terrain just stand well back and ignore them. Sounds rather dull to me.

I honestly think that the points for bow are wrong. I know they get the +2 on a death roll but when they get 8 hits that doesn't help a whole lot. The extra effective range and better POA against mounted are easily worth the lesser death roll IMO.

As for pikemen, if the bow are in the open then you have a decent chance but if the bow are in terrain you have almost zero chance because you will be shot to pieces before you get in.

The Gendarmes idea was on the assumption that heavily armoured mounted would not be hit on 4+ by the bow that +2 on the death roll would mean I might not lose a load of bases and that superior troops with support plus a commander might be able to pass the odd cohesion test Once you get into melee you are looking at 2/3rds the number of dice on ++ with a higher quality so you should win. In FoG:AM bow in uneven terrain are far from invulnerable to decent mounted.

[list_lurker]

You can always command out your muskets. Avoids the penalties of dispordering terrain. That way you'd be commiting a 16pt file vs a 10 point file. Bow in the Rgo are in their ideal position remember, out in open things might not be so good.

Bow 'mostly' are warriors, so don't like artillery.

Eastern type armies have a better arsenal to deal with bow. MF with SW or HW, all chop the Bow up.

I'm not sure what looking at an anachronistic match up in isolation tells us. For 'open' play you probaly need to take a wider view on all the interactions. There are lots of things that beat bow, maybe just not european P&S

I'm not advocating period play either. Ironically period competition can lead to dour matchups. Open play does conjure up some interesting challenges.

[hammy]

I'm not sure what looking at an anachronistic match up in isolation tells us. For 'open' play you probaly need to take a wider view on all the interactions.

Possibly but I am still struggling to see how for example MF arquebus are better than MF bow yet the bow are a point cheaper and that is quite a lot.

At the moment I am considering getting a bow based army together which just feels wrong.

[list_lurker]

ARQ - 6pts
pros
no one counts better armour VS shot
no + 2 on death roll
cons
shoot 3"

Bow - 5pts
pros
shoot 4"/6"
cons
-2 on death rolls

'other' considerations
Bow usually warriors (some good, some bad things there... mostly bad)
firearm foot normally MF - so can brigade move

I think 5pts vs 6pts is reasonable from a costing perspective

[Selaurant]

Possibly but I am still struggling to see how for example MF arquebus are better than MF bow yet the bow are a point cheaper and that is quite a lot.

Overall yes I agree bow are a little too good, or at least too cheap. However I think your example raises another point. In my view arquebus (and LF Musket) are too dear, especially compared to shot. Shot and Bow are clearly the "best value" shooters IMO. LF Musket are the worst, being inferior to Dragoons, yet not much cheaper than MF Shot.

A combination of Bow and Shot is especially deadly, since you can get lots of shooting hits and no negative modifier.

[ethan]

I think bow are a little too good (foot bow at least). The simplest solution IMO would be to have the shoot like musket* types so only get 3 dice instead of 4 at close range.

I also think there is a "bug" in the combat system that makes it very difficult to get a PoA charging, mostly this is fine, but it can in practice mean that something like 6 bases of bow are just as good as a pike and shot brigade in close combat and can potentially out shoot them...I wonder if a PoA for protected shoot (and associated pike) against MF (lacking bayonets perhaps) would be useful...

[hammy]

ARQ - 6pts
pros
no one counts better armour VS shot
no + 2 on death roll
cons
shoot 3"

Bow - 5pts
pros
shoot 4"/6"
cons
-2 on death rolls

'other' considerations
Bow usually warriors (some good, some bad things there... mostly bad)
firearm foot normally MF - so can brigade move

I think 5pts vs 6pts is reasonable from a costing perspective

You missed a fairly big one in that bow are on an even POA against most mounted while Arquebus are on a -
Not all bow are warriors by a loooooong way. I am looking at several armies that have medium foot bow.

Good point on the negating armour POA advantage but that is not a huge one IMO.

[hammy]

Possibly but I am still struggling to see how for example MF arquebus are better than MF bow yet the bow are a point cheaper and that is quite a lot.

Overall yes I agree bow are a little too good, or at least too cheap. However I think your example raises another point. In my view arquebus (and LF Musket) are too dear, especially compared to shot. Shot and Bow are clearly the "best value" shooters IMO. LF Musket are the worst, being inferior to Dragoons, yet not much cheaper than MF Shot.

A combination of Bow and Shot is especially deadly, since you can get lots of shooting hits and no negative modifier.

I agree that arquebus is not good and LF arquebus doubly so. I had three BGs of LF arquebus and they were garbage. I would have had dragoons but I don't have the figures so was limited in my choice.

[list_lurker]

You missed a fairly big one in that bow are on an even POA against most mounted while Arquebus are on a -

You're changing the parameters of the discussion now! they were shooting at each other a minute ago, now we're shooting at mounted.

Cavalry get a - on the CoH test when shot at by firearms

[hammy]

You missed a fairly big one in that bow are on an even POA against most mounted while Arquebus are on a -

You're changing the parameters of the discussion now! they were shooting at each other a minute ago, now we're shooting at mounted.

Mounted get a - on the CoH test when shot at by firearms

I am worried about comparing bow and arquebus where one troop type costs 5 and the other 6. I am new to FoG:R and have played a total of only 9 games. I have only faced two bow armies and both of them beat me 25-0. In all the other games I have managed to do some damage even if I lost.

I am trying to understand if bow are as good as I think they are. I am still not convinced that bow are worse than arquebus, certainly not enough worse to justify a lower points cost.

Interestingly the -1 for mounted shot at by firearms has never been mentioned by any of my opponents.... even when I shot mounted with firearms :O Perhaps I should read the rules again.

[list_lurker]

it may yet come to pass, but I would worry when bow armies dominate the tournaments. What I like about FoG:R is that there are a lot of troops that aren't very good!

I think the mounted think is a bit of a 'phase' too. They are easy to win with against unexpectant players. But I think we are seeing a but of cavalry 'nullification' now.

[list_lurker]

negating armour POA advantage but that is not a huge one IMO.

say that when you fight the Swiss or Japanese

[hammy]

negating armour POA advantage but that is not a huge one IMO.

say that when you fight the Swiss or Japanese

Well against Swiss as far as I can tell it mean you drop from triple minus to double minus and against Japanese is it not the difference between double minus and minus?

[list_lurker]

The Swiss have 1 poa for fourth rank of pike. Nothing else assuming against shot

The samurai will have 1poa for spear ,UNLESS, the shot are protected.. Either by pike or terrain. Again not armoured against . So either level or minus.

The bowmen will be at -- against both of these guys

[rbodleyscott]

I agree that arquebus is not good and LF arquebus doubly so. I had three BGs of LF arquebus and they were garbage. I would have had dragoons but I don't have the figures so was limited in my choice.

Actually LF with arquebus are really useful (not against bows) - but I will leave you to figure it out for yourself.

[marty]

In a world populated by 6 element pike and shot units 8 el bow units are truly awesome. Even better if they have a free Lightspear or a sword!

Not so good against some of the other similiarly "less advanced" foot types and many types of mounted will often ride right through them (even after getting hit on a 4 by masses of shooting dice).

I suspect the only hope for later european armies against armies dominated by foot bow is not to deploy in a standard "foot in middle horse on the side" kind of way but to try something different more likely to allow the mounted to get in to the enemy archers. Of course how easy this is depends entirely on how much mounted you have and what the archers have supporting them, especially out on the flanks.

Martin

[hazelbark]

Interestingly the -1 for mounted shot at by firearms has never been mentioned by any of my opponents.... even when I shot mounted with firearms :O Perhaps I should read the rules again.

Well people would suspect a rules fiend like you would know. But it is cavalry NOT mounted.

[hazelbark]

In a world populated by 6 element pike and shot units 8 el bow units are truly awesome.

I think the advantages of being in 8s in general is very high in any sort of roughly even exchange.

Now armoured keils would work over bow well.