Skythian cavalry

bobm · Post by **bobm** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:32 am

Skythian horsemen pop up in several army lists.
The lists always say LH or Cavalry.
Does this mean all in your army must be taken as one or the other?
It's not very clear as it could be covering different interpretations of the sources or allowing for horsemen who modified how they fought according to the situation.
I do think this is where the list books are very weak.....background info and sources add interest. It will surely affect sales that there is so little to "read".
Losing the starter armies would have created the space for this.

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:23 am

No you can have both LH and Cavalry. It says in the notes if all must be one type or the other. See Roman Auxilia.

bobm · Post by **bobm** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:32 am

I did wonder about that, but then couldn't figure why each option didn't get its own line in the table since it wouldn't use up any more space (as it takes up 2 lines to print "Light Horse or cavalry"). Am I missing something?

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:38 am

It would use up slightly more space due to the spacing between rows being greater than the spacing between lines and extra ink would be used to put the row dividing line in and write Unprotected, undrilled, bow, swordsmen again and JD is Scottish

bobm · Post by **bobm** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 11:02 am

However on the Graeco Bactrian list mountain Indian archers (LF or MF) options are dealt with in a much clearer way, two lines with shared boxes at start and end. This is only three entries after Saka have the all in one box with an "or" option as mentioned above. There must be something to explain this surely?

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 11:14 am

bobm wrote:However on the Graeco Bactrian list mountain Indian archers (LF or MF) options are dealt with in a much clearer way, two lines with shared boxes at start and end. This is only three entries after Saka have the all in one box with an "or" option as mentioned above. There must be something to explain this surely?

I was going to say that the reason that the horse archers aren't split is because they cost the same but that also applies to the archers.

There are a lot of places where or is used in the lists, unless it says "All X or All Y" like it does for Thureophoroi in the Helenistic list or there is a note like there is regarding Auxilia in the later Roman lists then you can have a mix.

I am not entirely sure why the same notation wasn't used for light foot and medium foot.

dave_r · Post by **dave_r** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 3:17 pm

Is this because of the minima? i.e. if you separated out the Cav and Light Horse then presumably one of them would have to have had a minima, which currently they don't.

i.e. you can have all unprotected cavalry or all unprotected light horse if you wish

nikgaukroger · Post by **nikgaukroger** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 6:13 pm

[quote="hammy]

I am not entirely sure why the same notation wasn't used for light foot and medium foot.

[/quote]

I think it was something to do with those LH/CV where the Cv can be Protected which do need separate lines and Richard wanted to keep the same basic format.

Anyway, as Hammy said unless it says explicitly that it is all one or the other you can have BGs of both.