heavy chariots Vs light chariots

[rbodleyscott]

so back to the original topic, has anyone actually played much with (or against) a variety of chariots? What do they think of the virtues of heavies

Martin

I have used the bow-armed Heavy Chariots on several occasions and found them quite effective. I have also fought against them in Olivier Joucla's Assyrian army and found them even more effective.

[maxigoth]

Dear Marty,

I have just, yesterday, finished working on a Late Dynastic Eygptian army. I will be using Heavy Chariots (bow) soon. I will report back in early December on how they (HChBow) fare. My view is that they are not overcosted as in many situations that can occur in FoG what you pay for may not always be useful. Roman Heavy Armoured infantry will benefit from their Armour against the bow, however, their Armour investment gives no return in melee against Chariots.

If you have HCh painted up use them and see how they fare. If on the other hand you as yet do not have Chariots then wait till Biblical list arrive and buy only minimum chariots untill you feel they give a fair return on point cost investment.

Albainian unprotected Cav are cost effective in Impact, however, not so in Melee. I suspect it is the cost of a unit and its friends who may support it in a battlelines cost effectiveness holisticaly that counts. Any prolonged melee will benefit as much from the fighting effectiveness of a particlar unit - say HCh as its side support units.

The combination cost of units within an army may well be worth the high cost of the Hch unit/s you may field.

The style of play for different armies and personalities of players mean you may have to experiment for yourself to assertain the strengths and weaknesses of particular troop type.

Please let us hear more about Chariots both Heavy and Light in this post as I suspect many potential Charioteers are out there waiting to hear about Chariot performance in FoG.

Regards

[philqw78]

Sorry to hijack this again, but it is still about performance of shock mounted with bow.

Had a game last night Maurikian Byzantine against Arab Conquest. The Byzantine cavalry were awful. What more proof do I need than their woeful inadaquacies last night.

2 BG of 4 Byzantine Elite cavalry (Superior 1/2 Lance, 1/2 bow) managed to shoot a BG of Arab Superior Prot Off Spear to disruption. They were at the end of the line and got a bit isolated. The units of LH and the LF protecting the Arab flank had to get out of the way of a mass of Byzantine cav heading their way, leaving a unit of Optimates in position to charge the Arab spears' flank. Both units of Elite Cav charged and the Optimates charged into the flank. The Arab spear dropped to fragmented.

At impact the Byzantines had 10 dice at +/++, scoring 4 hits. The Arabs, 5 dice at -/--, scored 4 hits, a draw and didn't lose a base. They could not do enough hits on any of the cav to cause a base loss. In the ensuing melee the Byzantines had 12 dice at ++ scoring 11 hits. The arabs didn't need to bother rolling as they could not score enough hits on any unit to kill a base or alter the following cohesion test. They passed the CT and only lost one base. In the following bound the Byzantine cav only caused 10 hits. Again the Arabs didn't bother rolling their combat dice, as it could make no difference. They passed the CT and lost 2 bases this time. The game ended that bound with an Arab win.

QED Byzantine Cavalry is rubbish

Or I'm a jammy bugger

sorry Dan

[stenic]

I've used my Sargonids once so far and had success with the HCh vs English 100Yr war. A BG of 6 HCh got up close to a BG of 4 knights, shot them down to disrupted and the knights then failed their CMT and charged in with +POA but less dice. The Impact was a draw. In melee POAs were even but the HCh had overlaps and knights still disrupted. It wasn't pretty for the knights I can tell you and we were pleasantly surprised having expected to get whooped.

For the record the Cavalry and LF skirmished out the other BGs of knights and the Sargonid foot hid behind fortifications.

This was ages ago and the first game we cottoned on to the -1 for non-skirmishers being near the table edge, the Scythians had a field day against the knights trying to come up the edge

[daleivan]

I'm going to get the opportunity to field heavy chariots in my soon to be painted Classical Indian army and look forward to seeing how they work against historical opponents.

I agree that light chariots with light spear don't have the potential that light chariots with bow do yet I wonder if they are completely rubbish, especially in period (i.e. Brit or Pictish chariots versus Romans). They can still evade, and serve as a threat against lights and flanks.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

Dale

[Evamike]

I have used both heavy and light chariots with the classical Indians, but not together. The heavies did charge some Ospears at the end of a battle to see how they might work and lost badly. But 4 Li chars took on 6 Cats and with a combination of shoot and evade kept them busy while the rest of the army won. The advantage is the cats could not ignore the L chars as they could the cav, after impact the cav are doomed.
I plan to use them as something different from the eleies and bow.
Mike.

[hazelbark]

so back to the original topic, has anyone actually played much with (or against) a variety of chariots? What do they think of the virtues of heavies

The heavy in my saitic are awesome. Shooting and tough versus all mounted in period.

Light chariots can carve up a lot of foes.

In the beta list days the interaction between the Hittite and NKE was truely a pleasure. It felt right and had a tactical ebb and flow with some nice skirmishing.

I think they are actually quite nice.

[maxigoth]

26th Dynasty V Alexandrian Macadonians.

A win was achieved by the Late Dynasty Egyptians using all 12 Heavy Chariots. The Heavy Chariots passed all Complex Move Tests made upon them not to charge. Forcing Two Phalanx units to charge. One Phalanx being routed the other forced to fragmented. The HCh were ablely supported by two units of Drilled Light Spear. One of these Egptian LSp units was the only Egyptian unit put to route in the game.

Two support Nubian Bows routed a Thracian unit and one assisted HCh rout a Thessalian HC unit.

The Agema lost to a HCh unit after a long fight that involved additional units by each side.

The Macadonian Elephants were kept busy by and kept busy a unit of Egptian LH.

Overall with a fair amount of good die the Egyptians prevailed to earn a clear victory. The game, however, at lunch time - half way through- may have gone either way.

In my opinion HCh are reasonably priced and on this occasion perford well.

[madmike111]

I fielded a classical Indian army vs an early Persian on the weekend. The best performing unit in my army was the heavy chariots, they destroyed a unit of armoured spearmen, scythe chariot BG and routed a BG of elite cav.

Each combat went similar with an initial volley from the chariots that disrupted the enemy followed by a charge.

Shame my elephants performed like WW1 British battle cruisers failing apart on every death roll, but the chariots where great.

Had fun with 2 BGs of poor unprotected, Lt spear Indian cav, at 4 pts each. Both got stream rolled as I was unlucky and could have handled them better, however they are definitely worth fielding.

[daleivan]

I fielded a classical Indian army vs an early Persian on the weekend. The best performing unit in my army was the heavy chariots, they destroyed a unit of armoured spearmen, scythe chariot BG and routed a BG of elite cav.

Each combat went similar with an initial volley from the chariots that disrupted the enemy followed by a charge.

Shame my elephants performed like WW1 British battle cruisers failing apart on every death roll, but the chariots where great.

Had fun with 2 BGs of poor unprotected, Lt spear Indian cav, at 4 pts each. Both got stream rolled as I was unlucky and could have handled them better, however they are definitely worth fielding.

The heavy chariots would give a lot of the Early Persian foot real problems IMHO and your account seems to bear that out. What part of the early Persian army gave your Classical Indians pause?

Cheers,

Dale

[madmike111]

The Persian cav rode down my Indian MF archers. Also I thought the Persian normal foot which is MF, Lt spear (no melee weapon) and second rank MF bow reasonably effective for their very low price as they got 3 dice per base width on impact (2 for the front and one for the rear archer), also being Lt spear they got a + POA against most targets.

The immortals bulldozed their way through 3 Indian BGs and were only stopped when they ran out Indians to kill.

My poor (quality) Indian cav had a death match up with a BG of poor camels, the camels where half way out of an enclosed field and where disordered so the Indians had the advantage with their lt spear, unfortunately the Arab fell back on their training and out rolled the Indians.

If introducing new players to FOG I would strongly recommend starting them with a classical Indian vs early Persian game. Both sides have an equal chance of winning, in my game it literally went down to the wire with a BGs difference between winning and losing. Also all the elephants and heavy chariots look great and on the Persian side there were scythe chariots and battle wagons (great big towers, that while being useless are very impressive).

[marty]

chariots breaking pike ? Even with the pike charging the dice gods must have been very kind indeed. Still I am glad to hear there are some chariots out there having a good time. I will just have to await the oriental lists to get most of mine in to action.

Martin

[maxigoth]

Dear Martin,

The Pike were the chargers and the HCh the chargee as they passed their complex move test not to charge and shot at the Pike causing a Cohesion test - passed by the pikes.

The Pike charged at a net poa of -1 the HCh had a net poa + 1; The Average Pikes needed to roll 5+ on their dice and the Superior chariots whom had a general fighting in the front rank needed a 4+ on their dice rolls with a re roll on 1 and 2. Not much help was required from the Dice Gods other than for the Piles to go dirupted on impact, and they did.

The Chariot would have been able to break off at JAP if things had not gone well. It is risky, however, the main point is that HCh Bow armed, drilled and with a General are a formidable opposition to All hand to hand armed medium foot and a threat to even all Heavy foot, who must be hand to hand armed troops.

In my view HCh are cost effective - neither to costly or cheap.

Lance sword armed Superior HC cavalry @ 16p or 17p, although better at impact, are bettered by the chariots in hand to hand as in hand to hand they all have same factory, yet, HCh roll two die per base.

Go on and use HCh Bow armed and you will see they are great fun and exciting to use as you roll your CMT not to charge. Remember to put a general with them - to help pass them CMTs and fight as Elites.

By the way in the game Late Dynastic Egyptians v Macadonians I lost a general to a box car roll by my opponent!

[marty]

So the pike were only 3 deep? Fair enough given he was facing shooting. You're quite right though, even four deep he'd have struggled to win.

I wouldn't compare anything to lance equipped cav to work out their points effectiveness (I dont consider the cav a good buy). A more obvious comparison is with the more popular and similiar knight.

Still I'm glad the Heavies seem to work. I suspect the early chinese chariots I'm mainly interested in will be undrilled (a bit less ideal than the Saite ones as they have more trouble not charging undesirable targets) but hopefully the shang/zhou foot will be reasonable (or at least numerous) enough to make them a viable army. I do feel some rebasing coming on though as most of my Chinese foot are based as heavies and I suspect they may (probably quite rightly) be considered mediums under FOG.

Martin

[rbodleyscott]

Still I'm glad the Heavies seem to work. I suspect the early chinese chariots I'm mainly interested in will be undrilled (a bit less ideal than the Saite ones as they have more trouble not charging undesirable targets) but hopefully the shang/zhou foot will be reasonable (or at least numerous) enough to make them a viable army. I do feel some rebasing coming on though as most of my Chinese foot are based as heavies and I suspect they may (probably quite rightly) be considered mediums under FOG.

From 700 BC the foot BGs can be 1/2 Heavy Weapon, 1/2 Bow. Protected, MF. Is that good enough?

From 350 BC the shooters become crossbows and the chariots are also armed with crossbows - could be interesting vs knights.

[Intothevalley]

From 700 BC the foot BGs can be 1/2 Heavy Weapon, 1/2 Bow. Protected, MF. Is that good enough?

Groovy. Will there be separate categories for troops with short spears, or will these just be assumed to be mixed in?

From 350 BC the shooters become crossbows and the chariots are also armed with crossbows - could be interesting vs knights.

Will the chariots be obliged to have Xbows from 350? I know that the Tai Kung et al mention crossbows in chariots, but wasn't it a requirement of the 'officer classes' to be competent with the bow as well?

[rbodleyscott]

From 700 BC the foot BGs can be 1/2 Heavy Weapon, 1/2 Bow. Protected, MF. Is that good enough?

Groovy. Will there be separate categories for troops with short spears, or will these just be assumed to be mixed in?

Separate categories for long and short spears.

From 350 BC the shooters become crossbows and the chariots are also armed with crossbows - could be interesting vs knights.

Will the chariots be obliged to have Xbows from 350? I know that the Tai Kung et al mention crossbows in chariots, but wasn't it a requirement of the 'officer classes' to be competent with the bow as well?

All XBows after 350. If a mixture of weapons was used (au choix) within each BG we would assume that crossbows would predominate and so the overall classification would be Crossbows.

[marty]

Thanks for the tips

sounds like a reasonably effective combo to me. Certainly worth the trouble of rebasing for

How about pre 700BC?

Martin

[rbodleyscott]

Thanks for the tips

sounds like a reasonably effective combo to me. Certainly worth the trouble of rebasing for

How about pre 700BC?

Only for masochists I fear. The close combat troops are armed with short dagger-axes and hence graded as only having Swordsmen capbility.

[marty]

That really is exceptionally bad, unfortunately this is what the figures I have are (ie shou and zhang). The figures (essex) are, however, all armed with spears (long and short). Its starting to sound depressingly like my figures arent going to match any of the available armies (especially as 1/2 my chariots are the early 2 horse variety which had probably disappeared by 700BC)

A very depressed

Martin