BRITCON 2008; Manchester, UK

[philqw78]

swarms these romans were using at britcon......bit like the DBM cheap filla routine I found so dull

There was only 1 BG of cheap filler. The Limitanei. The problem is the size of the army. Too big to break in 3/4 hours, even if you are a good enough player. But in my 2 games against it was used aggresively. There was little terrain on the table, so it had to be... and can be.
Its advantage lay in the manouverability of the Auxilia. 4MU drilled. Lots of turns and pinning on flanks, then interception and flank charges. I was blinded by the effortless display of precision drill in my first game against it.
If it wanted to corner sit in Rough ground it could, but wouldn't win many games and I never saw it against me.

[olivier]

Agreed with Phil... The two armies were used agressivly et competently by two great players. they fully deserve their result!

[chubooga]

There was only 1 BG of cheap filler.

IMHO, and I accept totally that my opinion is only just worth what you have paid for it, is that this army had more than 1 BG of cheap filla, it had 19 BG of cheap filla, as every unit was cheap filla...........

But no worries, the end result is the same, it would be very hard to beat in 3-4 hrs unless the player didnt play well or the game was played so fast that an unusually large amount of turns were played...... same to me as the filla packed DBM armies..............

How aggressive it was used doesnt really matter, it was not going to be beaten so why not be aggressive?

be aggressive for 6-8 turns, if it works out (and it should work out with the flanks) great, if it doesnt work out then so what, it takes a draw at worst.........

Not suggesting anyone was not playing well, or that anyone did not deserve what they got.............

jon

[peterrjohnston]

If it wanted to corner sit in Rough ground it could, but wouldn't win many games and I never saw it against me.

The same was possible with Dailami or Patsies in DBM, but generally that was the least sucessful way
to use either army, as I'm sure you know.

[nikgaukroger]

Saying it is unbeatable is utter bollox - I know that Graham knew it could be beaten. It needs a very good disciplined player to do well with it, in lesser hands it will do poorly.

[chubooga]

Interesting point, and so delicately put................ would you mind enlarging your view on how it gets beaten in 12turns or so?

As a newbie I am keen to learn the intracacies of FOG.

But yep, I can see that any army will need a good player to win a tourney, not saying anything about the players, just talking about the army here.

jon

[carlos]

Fair play to Graham who won 4 games out of 5 scoring 20+ pts, so he definitely was doing more than corner sitting with these guys.

[chubooga]

Fair play to everyone who played and enjoyed the weekend, I thought it was great fun.............

On the dominate roman thing......... 19 BG's............

as far as I can tell, and I am a newbie here, they dont need to corner sit........ push em forwards, kink them as odd angles so there is no consitent battle line and they can intercept charge in support etc then keep on working the flanks with the excess units you have......

This is just 'theory of glory' rather than 'fields of glory' though as I didnt play the swarms,

checking the stats on the BHGS site, and not one player in all 12 games against the swarms was able to get more than a dead draw from them ........... which supports the 'it cant be beaten point' ............ imore stat delving shows that not one other army in the whole tournament was able to never be beaten, including the army superbly handled by the experienced, capable and much fancied top seeded player who came 2nd, by the way he only suffered a single loosing draw, though no surprise though as it was against a roman swarm .............

Heh heh, come on people, I am new to FOG, I enjoyed the tourney a lot, I realise I am on the peripheral of tourney gaming but surely the weight of argument is clearly in favour of the 19BG's is too hard to beat in 3-4hrs, agrressive or not, good players or not despite the excellent point from Nik that its bollocks


The only armies with 19 or so BGs were also the only armies to never be defeated, not even a loosing draw..............

....... or can I invite one of the experienced players who seem to know that this army can be beaten to offer some insight into how, because at this moment I expect an increase in the sales of domroms auxilia figures!

jon

[ethan]

My theory is that there is a lot more rock-paper-scissors in FoG than DBM. So what would beat the "swarm Roman?"

The advantage I see in that list is the basic premise that two battle grouops of four will beat a single battle group of 8 by basically always being able to get to a flank. This is exaggerated by the drilled MF nature of many of the Roman BGs, making them fast and maneuverable.

It seems to me the easy answer is that it would come unstuck against the large irregular foot armies. Imagine a big Gallic/German/etc type army largely of Irr HF, protected, Impact foot, swordsmen in BGs of 8-10. Very dangerous going into Impact foot with BGs of 4, even if you think you ultimately have the advantage. Losing on impact and losing a stand is pretty lethal to BGs of that size, even if they don't disrupt at impact. IIRC these are 7AP each so you are looking at something like 660AP of them after taking an IC, 2xTC to match the Roman command corp. Let's say 100AP of mounted an lights (a couple BGs of Cv, some LF), leaving 560AP for foot, which is 80 elements or a 40 element frontage or 1.6m of HF (about 62" of table covered by HF) plus another 160mm of Cv gives a total frontage of 68" (out of 72) covered by troops the romans can't easily defeat, not much in the way of flanks to work...

What the Romans are really good against are Medievals and probably some classicals that are small, not overly maneuverable and armies that rely on small thrusts to win that must open up flanks as they driver forward. I know I wouldn't want to fight them with my 100YW English...

It is very noticeable that the "roman swarm's" only superior troops are the skirmishers and archers which combined give them a powerful anti-skirmisher force to open up a path for the flank attackers. I suspect they wind up having a tough time against a well handled Ghilman type army (see 2nd place Ayyubids, I am guessing the Ayyubids played an aggressive game 6 to try and take the lead).

[neilhammond]

Well, the Dominate Romans was an intersting and unusual army design that took everyone by surprise. And I'm sure it will be much imitated. However, I think that much of the success is down to the skill of the two players - who happen to be very good players.

Small units of MF are flexible but brittle. The success was, I suspect, down to combined arms. The front of the enemy needs to be pinned with sufficient force that the enemy can't just afford to ignore the frontal attack and swing around to overwhealm the flanks.

True, 19 BG will take some beating, but it does need to be used aggressively to win. At first glance, the counter to this army looks similar to the counter to shooty cavalry armies when using HF armies - keep the flanks well covered and try and swing the game around 90 degrees. It'll probably mean a draw. In order for a Dominate Roman player to win a comp he needs to risk combats. And that is where the heavier foot may win.

Alternatively, an army with cheap hvy weapon may work (Thracians, Dacians) or cheap offensive spears (Thracians again, Illyrians). 80 bases of this type of MF cost 560 pts and will cover the table. A few skirmishers would help to protect against the Romans shooters.

All credit to Keith and Graham for coming up with this army. And it gives people a reason to take Thracians / Dacians / Illyrians to comps.

"Roman Swarms" adds to the mix of army types you may face in a comp, but I think this adds to the diversity, rather than signals the end of FOG.

Neil

[olivier]

Very dangerous going into Impact foot with BGs of 4, even if you think you ultimately have the advantage. Losing on impact and losing a stand is pretty lethal to BGs of that size, even if they don't disrupt at impact.

Hmmm! Even against impact foot with BG of 4 you risk only four hit against you. If impact foot are average, they only score two hit on average in the impact. You risk to lose a base is only 33%.

As you take only undrilled BG, your manoeuvrability with your BG is equal to a tanker on battle zone!
Combined with the minima of 8 for a standard HF undrilled imp sw barbarian. I'll bet on the roman on each battle !
BTW it's historical!

I suspect they wind up having a tough time against a well handled Ghilman type army (see 2nd place Ayyubids, I am guessing the Ayyubids played an aggressive game 6 to try and take the lead).

Alas, no ! I lose the PBI and terrain landed on the perfect diagonal of brush and steep hill
Dissapointed with terrain placement and knowing I had lose all possiblity of win, I deployed poorly and play the first turn badly. Keith was very agressive and played very well.
As I saw it in a practice game, I knew I can't lose a game in 3/4 h00 timing against this army but my bad deployement and my casual first move put me in a very bad position and I must clawed my draw against Keith.

With the levelling of expertise, I don't think this type of armies to continue. I think it's too easy to make a draw against them and
Too many draw it's a sure way to lose a comp! [/quote]

[ethan]

Very dangerous going into Impact foot with BGs of 4, even if you think you ultimately have the advantage. Losing on impact and losing a stand is pretty lethal to BGs of that size, even if they don't disrupt at impact.

Hmmm! Even against impact foot with BG of 4 you risk only four hit against you. If impact foot are average, they only score two hit on average in the impact. You risk to lose a base is only 33%.

I think that is high enough actually. If you think about this across a line and to figure in the chance of being disrupted on impact as well.

Let's imagine the heavy foot win the impact phase 2 hits to 1 (probably the most likely result, don't feel like doing the math, but there are more scenarios with the Barbarians winning the impact than the Romans). The Romans have take 1 hit per 2 bases and lost Impact foot in the Impact Phase. So they are testing for losing impact at -2 and have a 33% chance of losing a base. Testing at -2 means they need a 9 or better to not go disrupted (10/36 chance).

So the likely outcomes for each 4 group of MF are (roughly):

9.25% not disrupted, lose a base
24%% disrupted, lose a base
18.5% not disrupted, no base loss
48% disrupted, no base loss

So if both sides roll about expected combat dice the romans will lose at least one dice in the melee phase 90% of the time and a quarter of the Roman line will be down 2 dice in melee.

Once a 4 block of romans are down a die the score 1.5 hits in melee on average to the barbarians 1.333 so they will just barely win even so, but if they lose they are likely to break (being either disrupted or down 25% casaulties already and beng MF losing to HF in the open) and of course 24% of the roman line is down 2 dice (disrupted and lost a base) which is probably a very bad thing.

And the barbarins can make up that 1/6th of a die on average by putting a general in that gives a bonus to 8 stands (so effectively against 2 Roman BGs) while the Romans can only support a single 4 stand BG (or the 6 stand HI). Probably the barbarians want 4 TCs and to put them all into combat which gives them a frontage of 16 that are effectively superior.

Now the barbarian army will get killed by a lot of things the romans can handle pretty well...but I would back them agains the romans.

[chubooga]

Now those are great posts gents, it certainly explores the options and depth of FOG much better than labelling views as bollocks

So, after checking the lists etc and considering the comments above............

The only army which has a chance to win is a HF impact type thingy, which it would seem has about about 25% chance of beating individual BG's.... the other 75% of the BGs go in Roman favour??............ and the roman swarms I saw were nto battle lines but lots of little BG;s spread out and mutually supporting........... so no benefit from having generals in big units rather than small..........

suppose its reasonably even in melee, as the Romans get the POA but will have less bases assuming they havent used the drilled MU4 to roll the barbarians flank...........

Hmmmm, overall, I still think the Romans edge it comfortably over the barbarians types due to the control........ and of course the barbarians have to kill 10 units to win, in less than 3-5hrs ............unlikey against all that drilled manouvering and terrain.

The BIG issue though, is even accepting that the HF impact has the edge and can take the Romans down in the open, in reality the HF impact barbarian effort may not compete in the overall tourney, so theres not a lot of them about, certainly theres wasnt at Britcon, so if the only army the swarms fear is not used then in reality the swarms have little to fear.

Hopefully FOG isnt about which army beats which army, but more that most armies have a reasonable chance against most armies, so how about this for a puzzler...........

do most armies have a reasonable chance of beating the swarm?

Cos if they dont, then the swarm is the army of choice!

Not sure roman swarm will dissappear due to getting draws, as most tourney players want a game and will go for a win rather than a dull draw, I think some of the superior tourney players call these 'bunnys', so theyre happy to draw against threatening armies and then tonk the 'bunnys' to win the tourney...............at least in the UK anyway.

Nope, on the evidence to date, I think the swarms here to stay.............

bollocks indeed

jon

[ethan]

Something like Ancient British might be tough as well...(4xTC)

Chariots LCh - Superior Undrilled - Light spear - - 4
Chariots LCh - Superior Undrilled - Light spear - - 4
Chariots LCh - Superior Undrilled - Light spear - - 4
Chariots LCh - Superior Undrilled - Light spear - - 4
Chariots LCh - Superior Undrilled - Light spear - - 4
Chariots LCh - Superior Undrilled - Light spear - - 4
Slingers LF Unprotected Average Undrilled Sling - - - 6
Warriors MF Protected Average Undrilled - Impact foot Swordmen - 10
Warriors MF Protected Average Undrilled - Impact foot Swordmen - 10
Warriors MF Protected Average Undrilled - Impact foot Swordmen - 10
Slingers LF Unprotected Average Undrilled Sling - - - 6
Cavalry LH Unprotected Average Undrilled Javelins Light spear - - 6

The superior LCh are very hard on the MF auxiliaries. The chariots are superior and get a PoA in impact (so will get 1 1/12 hits per file to the romans 2/3 of a hit) so the average roman 4 element BG loses 2 1/6 hits to 1 1/3 hits on impact. The romans still have a PoA in melee but are more likely to lose impact and of course teh chariots will break off...

This army is also much faster than the HI army making it harder to "dance" with teh romans and the LCH will chase off the skirmishers in a hurry.

[ethan]

Hopefully FOG isnt about which army beats which army, but more that most armies have a reasonable chance against most armies,

I think FoG isn't like DBM in that you can easily find a "moderate" army with a good chance against all comers. As I said, I think it is much more rock-papers-scissors.

Sure it isn't as simple as I present, but then that is why we play the game.

[madaxeman]

1. Armoured is a great value "must have" with benefits against nearly all types
2. Light spear is likewise
3. MF can occupy the types of terrain which disorder hf and remove POAs from spears, pikes and lancers and which are easy to get 5 biggish bits of in most terrain types
4. Small drilled units have superhuman maneuverability, even when pinned. Staying "partly in front" is not much of a restriction in an igougo system when MF move as fast or faster than anyone who can take them on in terrain where they live.
5. Interception charges are cool
6. Lots of BGs make your army hard to kill
&
7. Someone spotted all of the above!

I actually think 3 and 4 are the ones that may cause most issues in "competition balance" and "gameyness" now they are starting to get spotted and used by successful players.

[willb]

1 aux MF Armoured Average Drilled - Light spear Swordmen - 4
2 aux MF Armoured Average Drilled - Light spear Swordmen - 4
3 aux MF Armoured Average Drilled - Light spear Swordmen - 4
4 aux MF Armoured Average Drilled - Light spear Swordmen - 4
5 aux MF Armoured Average Drilled - Light spear Swordmen - 4
6 aux MF Armoured Average Drilled - Light spear Swordmen - 4
7 aux MF Armoured Average Drilled - Light spear Swordmen - 4
8 aux MF Armoured Average Drilled - Light spear Swordmen - 4
9 aux MF Armoured Average Drilled - Light spear Swordmen - 4
10 Legio HF Protected Average Drilled - Light spear Swordmen - 6
11 Bow MF Unprotected Superior Drilled Bow - - - 4
12 Bow MF Unprotected Superior Drilled Bow - - - 4
13 LH LH Unprotected Average Drilled Bow - - - 4
14 LH LH Unprotected Superior Drilled Javelins Light spear - - 4
15 sling LF Unprotected Superior Drilled Sling - - - 4
16 LH LH Unprotected Superior Drilled Bow - - - 4
17 LH LH Unprotected Superior Undrilled Bow - Swordmen - 4
18 LH LH Unprotected Superior Drilled Javelins Light spear - - 4
19 Limitanei MF Protected Poor Drilled Javelins Light spear - - 4
CinC IC - - - - - - CinC 1
Subs TC - - - - - - - 2

Not the correct OOM

some of the descriptions must be different from those listed above as tthe limitanei are listed as light spear/swordsmen in the book instead of javelins/light spear and the point total seems off.

[philqw78]

some of the descriptions must be different from those listed above

There were 2 ever so slightly different versions. I thought I had this one right, Graham's, and exactly 800, but the Limitanei have swords. Not bad off the top of my head without a list book though. I can't see where the limitanei 4 points gets taken off though . There are lots of options, but only one of the shooting BG's was average. You'd have to ask the owner and I didn't want to infringe his copyright.

[jlopez]

All I can say to those who think "Swarm" armies are invincible is to give it a try and see how well they do in an open tournament. Graham and Keith will do well whether they use Dominate or a mob because they are excellent players.

I suspect that they benefited from a certain element of surprise as most players hadn't come across such armies before. That seems to me the hallmark of a good general. It will be interesting to see if they use it again...

Julian

[philqw78]

benefited from a certain element of surprise

As I said earlier I was a rabbit in the headlights the first time. The second time I did much better and think I could do even better if given a third. But then they would have had more practice as well