Medieval Design Thoughts

[ethan]

Going to try a Storm of Arrows contest tonight for the first time. Any general thoughts on medieval battles and who they are different from classical fights?

[babyshark]

Going to try a Storm of Arrows contest tonight for the first time. Any general thoughts on medieval battles and who they are different from classical fights?

The obvious difference is the presence of knights, who pack a mighty wallop. The down side to them--and it is a significant one, I think--is that they have little staying power due to the fact that they lose two dice per failed death roll. They are great against other mounted and against isolated or non-steady foot BGs. Against a line of steady foot Kn will have problems.

That is my--limited--experience, anyhow. There has been concern expressed that Kn make out-of-period fights seriously unbalanced. I do not think this will turn out to be the case.

Marc

[andy63]

Going to try a Storm of Arrows contest tonight for the first time. Any general thoughts on medieval battles and who they are different from classical fights?

Hi ethan, Knights are a big difference get them in the right place at the right time and victory is yours for the taking,also if you get into a knight verses knight contest its a blood bath and hope the dice is with you. Lot of the lists let you dismount your knights so if facing some think you don't like just dismount and fight as Heavily armoured foot with hvy weapon which are also hard bugger's. Longbow BG`s are a formidable troop type if armed with stakes they can hold themselves in the open from any mounted,and in terrain they are pretty effective with them being swordsmen and very maneuverable as i found out this weekend at Leeds using my Swiss against Bruce`s HYW English (A GOOD LESSON LEARNT)
Anyway good luck tonight.

Andy.

[andy63]

Going to try a Storm of Arrows contest tonight for the first time. Any general thoughts on medieval battles and who they are different from classical fights?

Hi ethan, Knights are a big difference get them in the right place at the right time and victory is yours for the taking,also if you get into a knight verses knight contest its a blood bath and hope the dice is with you. Lot of the lists let you dismount your knights so if facing some think you don't like just dismount and fight as Heavily armoured foot with hvy weapon which are also hard bugger's. Longbow BG`s are a formidable troop type if armed with stakes they can hold themselves in the open from any mounted,and in terrain they are pretty effective with them being swordsmen and very maneuverable as i found out this weekend at Leeds using my Swiss against Bruce`s HYW English (A GOOD LESSON LEARNT)
Anyway good luck tonight.

Andy.

[babyshark]

Ethan:

I am curious to know whether you saw any significant differences from Rise of Rome to Storm of Arrows. Other than the knights that the rest of us have been blathering on about.

Marc

[spike]

Going to try a Storm of Arrows contest tonight for the first time. Any general thoughts on medieval battles and who they are different from classical fights?

The obvious difference is the presence of knights, who pack a mighty wallop. The down side to them--and it is a significant one, I think--is that they have little staying power due to the fact that they lose two dice per failed death roll. They are great against other mounted and against isolated or non-steady foot BGs. Against a line of steady foot Kn will have problems.

That is my--limited--experience, anyhow. There has been concern expressed that Kn make out-of-period fights seriously unbalanced. I do not think this will turn out to be the case.

Marc

My knight quote - "there like a big glass sledge hammer: Dangerous but Fragile to base losses"

[ethan]

Ethan:

I am curious to know whether you saw any significant differences from Rise of Rome to Storm of Arrows. Other than the knights that the rest of us have been blathering on about.

Marc

I will let you know after tomorrow night. I am going to try out Medieval Aragon.

One thing I can't quite decide is if the Military Order drilled knights are worth it or not. I had gotten in the habit of deploying things like the Agema in reserve and they can obviously perform the same role, but they are pricey.

Also not sure on whether to have armoured or protected offensive spear, it works out to be a significant cost difference. Last thing I am debating is the value of crossbowmen as LF or MF....

[ethan]

Ethan:

I am curious to know whether you saw any significant differences from Rise of Rome to Storm of Arrows. Other than the knights that the rest of us have been blathering on about.

Marc

I will let you know after tomorrow night. I am going to try out Medieval Aragon.

One thing I can't quite decide is if the Military Order drilled knights are worth it or not. I had gotten in the habit of deploying things like the Agema in reserve and they can obviously perform the same role, but they are pricey.

Also not sure on whether to have armoured or protected offensive spear, it works out to be a significant cost difference. Last thing I am debating is the value of crossbowmen as LF or MF....

One significant difference I see is a big size difference in armies. Medievals have a lot more expensive troops so it seems like Medieval armies are tending towards smaller numbers. Exceptiosn of course for things like Scots which probably go the other direction. Most classical armies seem to come in at around 12 BGs, Medievals seem more like 10.

[hammy]

OK, a couple of things from the Leeds comp.

1) Knights in the right place can be game winners. In most of our four games our knights repeatedly charged enemy foot and eventually ground them down or broke them.

2) Undrilled knights in the wrong place are fodder. Our army had a single BG of drilled medium foot crossbows and over four games this one BG broke three BG's of knights (one by shooting aided by light horse then a flank charge, the other two with a single devastating flank charge)

3) Medium foot crossbow if drilled and in smallish BGs can be very effective. If they are not going to be effective they can still provide rear support. Light foot crossbow are pretty good if you are facing mounted armies but still need looking after and are almost worthless against large foot BGs.

4) A medieval army needs a good solid core ideally of more than one troop type to give you a few options

5) Drilled troops are great if you can take advantage of their maneuverability but if you just follow route 1 you will fall to the higher numbers of an undrilled opponent.

[hammy]

One significant difference I see is a big size difference in armies. Medievals have a lot more expensive troops so it seems like Medieval armies are tending towards smaller numbers. Exceptiosn of course for things like Scots which probably go the other direction. Most classical armies seem to come in at around 12 BGs, Medievals seem more like 10.

Well at 1000 points in Leeds we fielded 17 BGs and our opponents ranged from 11 to 19 BGs!!

[ethan]

Interesting thoughts. I had looked at things like 4 element BGs of Drilled X-bow and thought they were too small to be effective. Do you think those are worthwhile?

I could see deploying them in a safeish place and counting on them moving somewhere useful, or just acting as rear support.

[hammy]

Interesting thoughts. I had looked at things like 4 element BGs of Drilled X-bow and thought they were too small to be effective. Do you think those are worthwhile?

I could see deploying them in a safeish place and counting on them moving somewhere useful, or just acting as rear support.

4 or 6 base BG's of drilled crossbow can be very handy simply because of how maneuverable they are. If you deploy 2 wide and 3 deep they can turn 90 and still have a frontage of 2 which can give some interesting shooting options. Rear support is not to be sniffed at if there is no other use for them and if you provide rear support with drilled crossbow you have something relativley effective against the most likley troops to get round your flanks... mounted.

Rear support overall is something a lot of people overlook but in one game at Leeds we missed breaking our opponents army because of rear support (they just missed a double drop) and they managed to hold on for another 5 turns as a result taking us from 4 AP lost out of 17 to 15 AP lost out of 17 in the process

[paulcummins]

...and we would have had you too, if it wasnt for those medaling sword and buckler men

[Scrumpy]

I remember an early game when my some crossbowmen managed to bounce some Roman legionaries in combat. They couldn't hit the side of a barn with their shooting though.

[ethan]

Medieval Aragon 1365AD

1 - HF Drilled Protect Offensive Spear (8 )
2 - HF Drilled Protect Offensive Spear (8 )
3 - LF Average Crossbows (6)
4 - MF Drilled Average Crossbows (4)
5 - Knights, undrilled superior (4)
6 - LF Javelins, Light Spear (6)
7 - MF, Superior, Protected, Impact Foot, Swordsmen (6)
8 - MF, Superior, Protected, Impact Foot, Swordsmen (6)
9 - MF Drilled Average Crossbows (6)
10 - Knights, undrilled superior (4)
11 - Knights, Drilled, Superior (4)

Generals were IC, 2xTC

I would do a few things differently in the future (or at least consider them):

I think teh Spear could drop down to undrilled, defensive and perform about the same role which is blocking off parts of the enemy line. The Almughavars and Knights are the battle winners here. This is a reasonably signficant points savings.

Upgrade Almughavars to 2x8s. I think these are pretty interesting troops.

Move teh Military Order up in the deployment order and move all the Feudal knights to the bottom. Plan to deply military order in reserve initially behind spears.

I am unconvinced you need both the 4 and 6 element crossbow group. Maybe a group of LH instead. Not sure how AP work out but something like:

1 - HF Defensive Spear (8 )
2 - HF Defensive Spear (8 )
3 - LF Average Crossbows (6)
4 - LH Jinetes
5 - Knights, drilled superior (4)
6 - LF Javelins, Light Spear (6)
7 - MF, Superior, Protected, Impact Foot, Swordsmen (8 )
8 - MF, Superior, Protected, Impact Foot, Swordsmen (8 )
9 - MF Drilled Average Crossbows (6)
10 - Knights, undrilled superior (4)
11 - Knights, undrilled, Superior (4)

[hammy]

I found that without light horse you can be very vulnerable to light foot with medieval armies, especially ones with mostly protected troops. If you can get the jinettes then that would be good.

I agree about putting the MO knights higher up the deployment. They are a lot more manoueverable than the other knights.

[babyshark]

Upgrade Almughavars to 2x8s. I think these are pretty interesting troops.

Agreed. Good POAs plus the better movement and terrain abilities of MF. They really are potential game winners.

Marc

[hammy]

Upgrade Almughavars to 2x8s. I think these are pretty interesting troops.

Agreed. Good POAs plus the better movement and terrain abilities of MF. They really are potential game winners.

Marc

Just wait untill you see Dailami

[nikgaukroger]

Just wait untill you see Dailami

Of which there are a couple of lists at http://www.endoftime.pwp.blueyonder.co. ... ylists.htm

[marshalney2000]

We have played a few games of storms of arrows where knights and indeed mounted have been missing. Scots Isles v 100 years war english and Wars of the roses vs Scots continental. In both games the feel was totally different with much more stand up and fight and less manouvre as well as a lot of shooting. Very enjoyable but so differwent from battle sfought from the first book.
John