Romans what are they good for absolutely nothing

[bilugo]

Well this is my rant.

Played romans in a tournament last weekend with late roman republic, and found the Romans lacking in every department.

From a cost to effectiveness level, they are well over priced.

Average legions don't even bother in every combat they got in they lost, except 1. Unit of 6
They fought pike, elephants and cataphracts
They finally beat some long bowmen who were pursuing broken lf, and ran into the legions after 4 rounds.


Superior not much better lost every combat Unit of 4
They fought pike, offensive spear men, cataphracts, knights

Elite legions Unit of 4
Lost to catapharacts, defeated LH bow who hit me on the flank to prevent me charging cataphracts on the flank.
Defeated average pike. drew with 1 cataphract charge

Rest of the time did not get into combat

Romans to slow, easily outmaneuvered, by every enemy I fought against.

I fought against Palmyran (wiped me out), Selecuids (they asked if my men were a speed hump), Anglo Irish (is your army already dead), Later Serbs (once the knights hit all over), and Italian with swiss allies.

Being skilled swordsmen does not give you 1 once of benefit ( i know if you fight barbarian foot swordsmen, how many of those exist).

Anyway I learnt a few new things about the rules which I will be posting in the rules questions.

Roman armies just don't have it against nearly every type of units in the game.
Beats me how they beat the greeks.

Problem is at melee you are usually at a negative poa, unless you can do something on the impact when things are even they are pretty much useless.

Spear and pike are very cheap with the extra points you save it provides you units to flank the romans.

Being hit on the flank by LH Bow seems not right somehow, if someone can prove me wrong historically. i.e did parthian bow ever charge romans?

Ok rant over

Thank god the guys I played with at least balanced out the bad quality of using romans, they at least lasted longer to talk to me when we finished each game early.

[Andy1972]

Please post your army list.. I was looking to build a Later Republic army.. I was thinking when Ceasar went and fought in Anatolia pensulia.

My list is as follows

1x IC = 80
2x TC = 70
4x Elite Legionaries = 68
4x Elite Legionaries = 68
4x Elite Legionaries = 68
4x Elite Legionaries = 68
6x LF archers = 30
4x Cav arm,sup = 64
4x Cav arm,sup = 64
4x Syrian LH = 32

Early Armeinan Ally
1xTC =25
4x Cataphracts =72
6xLh =48
4xLh =32

11BG at 789pts

Thats just a start.. I will tweak it as i play.

My thinking is the Legionaries in the center.. the Roman Cav and Lh on one flank and the Armenians on the other flank.

[bilugo]

List was

1x elite legions 4 off
2 x superior legions 4 off
1 x average legions 6 off
1 x slingers 8 off
1 x bow 8 off
1 x cretan 6 off
1 x cav avearge armoured 4 off
1 x mf spansih 8 off
1 x fortified camp

tourney was 550 points

[carlos]

Bad workman always blames his tools.

[SirGarnet]

Sounds like you were privileged to fight in succession a variety of the troops Romans didn't like, and in the open. Even uneven ground defangs Pikes and Knights.

Someone wrote to the effect that if you need Elite Legionaries rather than Superior Legionaries for the job, they're doing the wrong job. Spears would have been nice facing those opponents in the open.

I think 550 pts is low for Romans. If you used higher point totals you might look at Allies - the LRRoman/Jewish Spearmen allies AARs in the AAR subforum ("IWF" series on 6 games at the world championship, posted in June) are instructive.

viewtopic.php?t=7032

And some others:

viewtopic.php?t=8085

h[url]ttp://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7604[/url]


Cheers,

Mike

[Andy1972]

oh, 550 is a bit low.. was you doing 25mm or 15mm? 25mm should be between 650-700pts and 15mm should be around 800pts..

[madmike111]

When faced with enemy that need open terrain, i.e. knights and pikes, its worth maxing out the terrain. A great option is to place lots of open fields, while they disorder both sides their impact is much worse on the other armies, particularly spear and pike based.

I am in the process of building a Roman army and have test run different sized BGs, I think the best size for the Roman are BGs of 4 using superiors. With these you need to loss 3 bases before they are destroyed. Also they are much harder to kill than a large BG because being small they will on average only take 1 or 2 hits so in a tie or win the +2 to the roll means they don’t take any hits.

[daleivan]

When faced with enemy that need open terrain, i.e. knights and pikes, its worth maxing out the terrain. A great option is to place lots of open fields, while they disorder both sides their impact is much worse on the other armies, particularly spear and pike based.

I am in the process of building a Roman army and have test run different sized BGs, I think the best size for the Roman are BGs of 4 using superiors. With these you need to loss 3 bases before they are destroyed. Also they are much harder to kill than a large BG because being small they will on average only take 1 or 2 hits so in a tie or win the +2 to the roll means they don’t take any hits.

I agree. I am also building a Roman army (Late Republican). The legions are armored. The cavalry can be armored. Armored is a nice advantage against missile fire. I've played the Romans against several Hellenistic armies and find that the legions can hold their own in close combat. They are even up at impact vs. pikes on flat ground. Being superior allows rerolls. If the pikes go disrupted (or are in disordering terrain) then the legions count their swords in melee.

The smaller BGs are more maneuverable then the phalanx. The Late Republicans have a nice mix of cavalry, light horse, missile foot and a choice of different MF. Plus a variety of allies. I've found it to be an excellent army in period--either versus historical opponents or against other armies from the same "theme (Rise of Rome plus some Immortal Fire and Legions Triumphant).

Cheers,

Dale

[marty]

My personal suspicion is that Impact foot are not going to form the core of any comp winning favourites. They cost the same as off spear, are not much (if at all) better against foot and are much worse against mounted. Their slight advantage in broken ground is not really doing them any great favours (ie my expensive HF are ok if they enter bad terrain, slow themselves to a crawl and my opponent is dumb enough to come after them with spear or pike)

If this worries you pick armies where the heavy foot are spear or pike. If you like impact foot armies you should be used to a fairly depressing time from previous rules sets (getting outmanouvered and/or speed humped). At least with Romans you can be armoured and drilled (usually points well spent). If you want to be really depressed I suspect you would have to try the Romans barbarian opponents in open comp. I was bringing Early Visigoth to the comp you were at on the weekend until I had to pull out at the last minute (and I believes there was a gallic MF army there (brave , foolish man ) so the superior sword may occaisionally come in to play.

The results listings suggest people have done well with Romans although as I understand it generally using lists with little or no legionaries.

Martin

[bilugo]

Terrain was pre-set

I have gone through the links were listed.

They just confirmed my viewpoint, legions don't stand a chance against pike, offensive spear, cataphracts or knights.
Of all the reports I read only one was when the legions beat knights in rough terrain.

Having legions in uneven ground is a moot point really because pike and knights don't need to charge in them, so can just sit outside.

Bring in some LF and try to get you out with complex move tests.

Having allies instead of taking legions is also silly, why play romans then if you need allies who have pike to beat other pike armies for example. The main point is still not addressed.

It is better to have avg protected pike then superior legions, why is simple easier to hit with the average and costs less. Why worry about the re-roll you only need to do so if you lose and it is more likely the legions will.

A unit of 8 average pike protected costs 48 points
A unit of 6 average legions is 40 points with a - in melee phase of the game
A unit of 4 superior is 56 points with a - in melee

As a cost to effective ratio its not there.

I got the elite legions as I wanted something to be able to push harder and if I attached a general to it will re-roll 1,2,3 and hopefully steam roll an enemy unit.

But as I said to slow, and to weak to hold up against anything but gauls and other similar type units who cost even less.

[bilugo]

Martin

I just wanted to give the romans a try not an army I usually use, but I thought with smaller table they could get into a fight and hold there ground at least, as the knights, cataphracts and pike hit you could see the legions fly off with the blow they were receiving.

In fact I think the longest combat I had was MF long bowmen, knights and cataphracts carved me a new one. The worst thing was that I could not even really put any pressure on my opponents in any of the games because it seemed there units were better than mine in nearly every match up.

The few contests that I did win were all late in the game, when the results were obvious.

I was not lucky enough to play the Gallic army.

As I said in the beginning there seems something wrong when legions can't even hold up pike or spear men and seem to be fighting on a negative POA and it cost you more to boot.

[Omar]

Disappointing. I am busy building my Principate Roman army, so no turning back now.. but disappointing that they dont work better than that. Hopefully I can have better luck than you have had so far. I just cant believe that the Roman Legions wouldnt do well.

[SirGarnet]

The advice to pick an army you can love even when it loses is still good - if you don't love it, shelve it for themes and pick another army you will love. Different armies and styles suit different people, and some people's historical affection for an army will outweigh other considerations.

Bilugo, it sounds like tough, hard hitting, all-around-useful Knights and Armoured Spearmen might be the right mix for you rather than playing cat and mouse match-up games with legionaries. Storm of Arrows or Eternal Empire maybe? They can give those Cataphracts and Pikes a hard time.

Or read AARs and see what armies sound attractive and ask for further opinions on them in the forums.

Cheers,

Mike

[philqw78]

A unit of 8 average pike protected costs 48 points
A unit of 6 average legions is 40 points with a - in melee phase of the game
A unit of 4 superior is 56 points with a - in melee

So your average legionaries will be rolling 6 dice needing 5+, against the pike rolling 4 dice needing 4+. Sounds like 2 hits each on average. Also if you win the impact, just under 50% of the time, the pike take a minus on the Cohesion test. If they disrupt you will be 6 dice against 3 dice on evens, 3 hits against 1 and a bit.
But if you just want to roll your legions forward instead of trying to outmanouver him you will always be on an equal number of dice at a minus and onto a loser.
Did the Republican Romans ever beat Phalanx/Spear on an equal frontage?

[nikgaukroger]

Hum, I don't think that 550 points is good for most Roman armies (amongst others) to be honest, so I'm not terribly surprised it did badly.

I also think pre-set terrain can mess things up for a number of armies as well - they need that chance of being able to dictate the general density of terrain.

[madmike111]

the 550pts isn't going to help the Romans much as they have to waste 24 pts on a fortified camp.

[marty]

Just to clarify, I'm not been quite as negative as some of the replies suggest. Legions can beat pike and offensive spear (especially if they are protected), but dont do it anywhere near consistently (or in the case of legions, cheaply) enough to make up for how easily the spear and pike beat mounted.

What I'm saying is that in general if you are designing an army to do well in comps against a range of opponents (even in a theme comp) the pike and spear are a better buy for the points. Legions are still a better buy than most other impact foot (i've even mangaed to lose to them with knights on at least two occaisions). Its just that armies with more than a couple of units of impact foot probably aren't a great bet in general. Some types of fairly one dimensional armies (eg shooters whether on foot or mounted) can work, impact foot armies are not, in my opinion, one of them.

I'm just going to hope I roll really well at impact and give it a go anyway.

Martin

[Polkovnik]

I think the "bad workman" coment is on the mark here. You say you have some rules questions so I assume your not that experienced, so why would you expect to do well at a tournament with any army ? Roman legionaries are very solid troops in FOG, and the various Roman army lists give good, tough, all-round armies. I have used Romans twice recently - last week I beat Palmyran, losing one BG of poor slingers and 2 other bases. A couple of weeks ago I beat a Gallic army, losing just one base of legionaries and my camp. Both times the opposing army reached it's break point, so I broke half the enemy BGs.
Rather than complaining about the army or the rules or points sytem, get some advice on here about using the army well, play some more games and get some experience using the rules. Then any comments you have about the effectiveness of the army will have more validity.
To any other would-be Roman generals - don't let this thread put you off - Romans make good FOG armies.

[hammy]

The key here is IMO to consider what Romans are good at and what they are not so good at.

Romans are impact foot (very good against foot at impact)
Skilled swordsmen (very good in melee against swordsmen but not so hot against steady spear, pike or mounted swordsmen. Infact they are no better than swordsmen in these cases)
Armoured (good against protected troops, no better than unarmoured against cataphracts)

Looking at the list of troops your legionaries fought very few of them are troops where the Roman advantages actually count for anything. As a result you are right that the Romans seemed underpowered.

If you change your opponents to Light spear/swordsmen or barbarian impact foot the whole thing changes massively in favour of the legionaries.

At the Luncarty doubles Martin and I did very well with a Slave Revolt army. Essentially the army is not that different from a Roman army but not all our troops are as good as the legionaries. We won games by making sure that our good troops were getting the advantageous matchups and where we were likely to be on the downside we made sure we weren't wasting effort.

So for example we used our proected impact foot swordsmen against cataphracts but made sure we had rear support and generals to keep us steady and force another charge (impact is even and bloody, we had more numbers). Our armoured impact foot swordsmen fought pikes and most of the time lost slowly leaving us a chance to exploit with other troops.

If you put Romans into an even frontal fight with steady pikes you are fairly likely to end up with the short straw. Of course should you win the impact (a fair chance as the odds are you are better quality then the melee will be at even POA and things look really rather rosy.

Romans are good but specialist. Spear are solid all rounders. Superior armoured spear are really really good but cost much the same as legionaries.

[firefalluk]

Looking at the list of troops your legionaries fought very few of them are troops where the Roman advantages actually count for anything. As a result you are right that the Romans seemed underpowered.

If you change your opponents to Light spear/swordsmen or barbarian impact foot the whole thing changes massively in favour of the legionaries.

See a lot of those at tournaments, do you, hammy? I beat barbarian impact foot are real popular, as they can't even beat Romans...