HYW English looking for opinions on list design

Templar · Post by **Templar** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:46 pm

I am piecing together a HYW English (Continental) army at 650 points for this weekend. I already have an idea of what I am going to be bringing but I have only played a single game of FoG and that was against a HYW English (Continental) army with a HYW Medieval French army.

My question mainly concerns that of the quantity of Longbowmen people are putting into their lists. I plan on running 2 BG of 8 stand and 1 BG of 6 stands.

Other shooting includes 1 BG of 2 Light guns.

I have seen people put up lists and discuss lists with easily twice that number of Longbowmen. The thing is that I will be taking the BG of 6 stands out as soon as I get my Welsh Spearmen done so I will have even less.

What would be the advantages of doing that over my approach which is to have the Longbowmen backed up by good dismounted men-at-arms?

I am thinking I am missing something but I can't see what it is.

I can post my list if required but I am mostly just looking for thoughts on the Longbow BGs.

paulcummins · Post by **paulcummins** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:59 pm

The longbowmen are the real killers in this army.
I used 3 BG of 8 and 2 Bg of 6 in my last list at 800 points.
4 of 8 would be quite solid as well.
Dont worry about guns - you need to use the Drilled MF manouverability to hunt down anything squidgy in the enemy army.
Standing out in the open and hoping that the enemy is stupid enough to launch an unsuported knight attack is wishful thinking.
A BG of 8 longbowmen can take on almost anything in the rough.
The almost is armoured MF skilled swordsmen or spearmen. Not because you cant shoot them, but they are lethal when they get to you, and they probably will get to you. If you can get an overlapping BG of longbow on them and a BG of Men at arms in support it all changes. Not a lot can get through / survive that.
The heavy foot is there to stop you losing. The longbowmen are the game winners.

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Tue Apr 29, 2008 9:15 pm

paulcummins wrote:The longbowmen are the real killers in this army.
I used 3 BG of 8 and 2 Bg of 6 in my last list at 800 points.
4 of 8 would be quite solid as well.
Dont worry about guns - you need to use the Drilled MF manouverability to hunt down anything squidgy in the enemy army.
Standing out in the open and hoping that the enemy is stupid enough to launch an unsuported knight attack is wishful thinking.
A BG of 8 longbowmen can take on almost anything in the rough.
The almost is armoured MF skilled swordsmen or spearmen. Not because you cant shoot them, but they are lethal when they get to you, and they probably will get to you. If you can get an overlapping BG of longbow on them and a BG of Men at arms in support it all changes. Not a lot can get through / survive that.
The heavy foot is there to stop you losing. The longbowmen are the game winners.

I agree that the Longbow are the best bit of the army but there are a few more troops out there that scare them witless. Dailami are pretty good, superior, armoured, impact foot swordsmen......

paulcummins · Post by **paulcummins** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:47 am

ahh, havent met any of them

let me slightly rephrase - the scary stuff is armoured MF with a decent combat capacity.

Protected impact foot are less of a problem - the extra dice you get from overhead shooting at impact give you a chance to survive, then be equal at melee. Especially if you managed to disrupt them before they got to you.

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 8:00 am

paulcummins wrote:ahh, havent met any of them

let me slightly rephrase - the scary stuff is armoured MF with a decent combat capacity.

Protected impact foot are less of a problem - the extra dice you get from overhead shooting at impact give you a chance to survive, then be equal at melee. Especially if you managed to disrupt them before they got to you.

It's not the shooting difference vs protected foot (mainly because armoured foot are just as vulnerable to longbow as protected), what hurts longbow is getting into melee with better troops at which point they are usually in trouble.

Armoured sword and buckler men once they get in are very bad news indeed. I have beaten BGs twice the size of my sword and bucklermen even with the sword and bucklers being disrupted and in one case fragmented. Leading a BG of superiors on ++ with a general is very nice

paulcummins · Post by **paulcummins** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 3:27 pm

exactly - the longbowmen as protected swordsmen can face up to most MF in melee. As soon as they are armoured it gets nasty, then the sword and buckler types rip them apart.
And the overhead shooting really helps take the edge of impact troops.

Templar · Post by **Templar** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 4:37 pm

Why should I not include light guns?

I thought they would be a good cheap backup to the Longbowmen.

rbodleyscott · Post by **rbodleyscott** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 4:53 pm

Templar wrote:Why should I not include light guns?

I thought they would be a good cheap backup to the Longbowmen.

No reason except that their lack of manoeuvreability may tempt you into an over-defensive plan which will achieve nothing unless your opponent cooperates by attacking your position.

To gain victory against a non-suicidal opponent you need to be able to force him to do battle by advancing into longbow range - if possible using the terrain to your advantage, but not just the terrain near your baseline. Stakes also come in handy, allowing you to fight enemy mounted in open terrain.

Templar · Post by **Templar** » Mon May 05, 2008 3:23 am

I played today and suffered a horrible defeat serving nothing more than a speedbump for my opponent. Part of it was the four turns where I rolled nothing higher than a 2, but I also made some deployment errors.

One thing I can't figure out is the Men-at-arms ability to interpenetrate the Longbowmen. ithought that would come in handy as a means of deploying the Longbow outfront and then when it came time to enter into hand-to-hand the men-at-arms could move up preventing the Longbow units from getting trampled under in the Impact phase. However, the opposite happened and the Longbow units got overran in the impact and the men-at-arms was left in the back doing nothing.

In short I guess my question is; what is the point of the men-at-arms being able to interpenetrate the Longbowmen?

Kiwi · Post by **Kiwi** » Fri May 23, 2008 2:10 am

I've been experimenting a fair bit with my HYW Cont English and have kind of learnt this so far

LB should only be BG's of 8, anything less and you lose to many dice to be effective; 6 base BG are good for the extra attrition points but thats about it
HF should be in BG's of 6 or more, the starter lists say 4 but it doesnt give you enough dice in combat
If you are facing HF especially impact foot or pikes dont move your LB too far fwd, position to get 2+ shooting rounds in then retreat them back as LB do not last long in melee against HF especially armoured
You definately need an IC as CnC to help with the CMT rolls for your bowman, especially against better infantry - good CMT rolls can actually help them stand longer
Armoured average is suffucient when putting your HF together, with a TC in the front rank you get the move up to Superior anyway

There are other things i am still struggling with though

The interpenetration rule - not sure how to maximise it, having HF behind your bows adds +1 for rear support, but its difficult if not impossible to time their move fwd to prevent the enemy charging your bows
Whether to have Knights or not - 4 bases with lancers costs you upto 96 pts which is a lot
How many HF groups to have - I seem to find at least 1, sometimes more, left completely out of the battle.

Anyway my current list for HYW Continental English is
3 x TC
4BG Longbowmen 8 bases per BG with portable defences
2BG Dismounted men-at-arms HF Armoured Average x 8 bases per BG
2BG Gascon dismounted men-at-arms HF Armoured Average x 8 bases per BG

I played this against a Swiss army full of Pikes and destroyed - so I am going to tweak it to include (once i get the right figures) Pikes, an IC, and maybe some Cavalry.

BlackPrince · Post by **BlackPrince** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 1:05 pm

Kiwi with only 8 BGs in your entire army, isn't a bit small and easily out maneuvered?

petedalby · Post by **petedalby** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 3:54 pm

I agree with the earlier comments about the potency of the LB. I used this army at Britcon - it won 5 and lost 1.

I had an IC, 2 TC's, 6 x 8 BGs of LB - no stakes. Plus the 2 BGs of Irish and 3 BGs of 4 HF - 2 armd 1 Hvy Armed - all Superior. Without the stakes it looks very attractive to cavalry in the open so you need the HF as rear support.

Had a fantastic last game against Sassanids. 3 BGs of LB in a battleline were charged by 7 BGs of enemy cav. I did nothing at all in the shooting - he had an IC which helped - and despite having Commanders with all 3 BGs, plus rear support, 2 of my BGs were swept away!! Still not sure how I won!

It's a great army - you just need to find a composition that works for you.

Pete