(PLEASE ADD THIS TO THE ERRATA)
I bought the army lists book Legions Triumphiant and spotted what seems as an error on page 39, in the Later Sarmation List under Core Troops. The Cavalry don't seem to be armed with bows aswell as a lance. Should they not be armed with a lance and a bow? Your Troop notes on page 38 actually say they were armed with bow and lance as does the picture on page 39. Even though they cant use both at the same time they would have the option of wether or not in the middle of a battle to use a bow to shoot instead of charging with a lance. I feel this should be altered and added to the Errata on the site with some kind of option to be bow and lance armed for an extra point or two per base. If you play to the present rules it simply stops the main flexibility of the army and renders the figures produced by most companys useless. Please add this to the errata.
Yours Faithfully,
Alex Purvis
Legions Triumphiant :Later Sarm Can Someone Please add this?
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rbodleyscott
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This is not an erratum, it is intentional. Sarmatians were primarily lancers and did not make much use of their bows in battle. Hence the flexibility you are seeking would not be historical.
It is fundamental to the design philosophy of FOG that troops are classified according to their primary fighting style, not according to equipment carried. They don't automatically get a capability because they carried a weapon.
There is no evidence that Sarmatian heavy cavalry made any significant use of their bows in battle, hence they don't get Bow capability. Sarmatians with lance and Bow are classified as Lancers, Swordsmen because they were primarily lancers, whereas Avars similarly equipped with lance and bow are classified as Bow, Swordsmen because they were primarily horse archers.
Some Byzantine cavalry are classified as Bow*, Lancers, Swordsmen (which gives reduced bow effect) or as 1/2 Lancers, Swordsmen, 1/2 Bow, Swordsmen, because they had some ranks primarily armed with lance and some primarily armed with bow.
There are no troops at all in any FOG list classified as Bow, Lancers, Swordsmen, because our interpretation of the evidence is that troops used one or the other as their primary weapon. The Byzantines in the 6th century attempted to equip and train all their cavalry with lance and bow, but found that in practice it was impossible to train all the men to be equally proficient with both. Hence they put the best lancers in the front ranks and the best horse archers in the rear ranks, which gave them something approaching the same effect - which we represent in the rules accordingly, as above.
Even if troops were equally proficient with both weapons - a difficult thing to achieve as the Byzantines found - they still tended to have a tactical doctrine that favoured the use of one or the other weapon most of the time. Hence the Byzantines (according to the Strategikon) favoured an early charge with couched lance (despite being equipped with lance and bow) whereas the Avars favoured fighting at a distance with bows (despite being equipped with lance and bow).
Of course, this design philosophy requires a judgement to be made by the list authors, and not everyone will agree with our judgement in every case. However, we feel that this is infinitely preferable to the 1970s/1980s style wargamers' scramble to equip every unit with as many weapons as possible. This led to players straining the historical evidence for some armies to allow them to field such units, and rendered other armies useless under the prevailing rules because their army lists happened not to allow multi-arming - even though often the historical performance of armies with or without the sought after multi-arming was in fact indistiguishable.
The Sarmatian figures carrying lance and bow are correct, and you should use them for Sarmatians graded as Lancers, Swordsmen.
It is fundamental to the design philosophy of FOG that troops are classified according to their primary fighting style, not according to equipment carried. They don't automatically get a capability because they carried a weapon.
There is no evidence that Sarmatian heavy cavalry made any significant use of their bows in battle, hence they don't get Bow capability. Sarmatians with lance and Bow are classified as Lancers, Swordsmen because they were primarily lancers, whereas Avars similarly equipped with lance and bow are classified as Bow, Swordsmen because they were primarily horse archers.
Some Byzantine cavalry are classified as Bow*, Lancers, Swordsmen (which gives reduced bow effect) or as 1/2 Lancers, Swordsmen, 1/2 Bow, Swordsmen, because they had some ranks primarily armed with lance and some primarily armed with bow.
There are no troops at all in any FOG list classified as Bow, Lancers, Swordsmen, because our interpretation of the evidence is that troops used one or the other as their primary weapon. The Byzantines in the 6th century attempted to equip and train all their cavalry with lance and bow, but found that in practice it was impossible to train all the men to be equally proficient with both. Hence they put the best lancers in the front ranks and the best horse archers in the rear ranks, which gave them something approaching the same effect - which we represent in the rules accordingly, as above.
Even if troops were equally proficient with both weapons - a difficult thing to achieve as the Byzantines found - they still tended to have a tactical doctrine that favoured the use of one or the other weapon most of the time. Hence the Byzantines (according to the Strategikon) favoured an early charge with couched lance (despite being equipped with lance and bow) whereas the Avars favoured fighting at a distance with bows (despite being equipped with lance and bow).
Of course, this design philosophy requires a judgement to be made by the list authors, and not everyone will agree with our judgement in every case. However, we feel that this is infinitely preferable to the 1970s/1980s style wargamers' scramble to equip every unit with as many weapons as possible. This led to players straining the historical evidence for some armies to allow them to field such units, and rendered other armies useless under the prevailing rules because their army lists happened not to allow multi-arming - even though often the historical performance of armies with or without the sought after multi-arming was in fact indistiguishable.
The Sarmatian figures carrying lance and bow are correct, and you should use them for Sarmatians graded as Lancers, Swordsmen.
Last edited by rbodleyscott on Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:25 pm, edited 14 times in total.
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rbodleyscott
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The list allows 8 bases of "scouts" with bow capability. The existence of these as BG sized bodies is admittedly highly speculative.Alex123 wrote:I agree totally with what you are saying but shouldn't there be an option for perhaps eg 0-6 bases allowed in the whole army?
However, we would require some historical evidence of special bodies of heavy cavalry operating as horse archers in order to allow some of the heavy cavalry to be bow, swordsmen. "Maybe they did" wouldn't be enough.
Ultimately, we have to make judgements all the time when writing lists. It is inevitable that some people won't agree with all of our judgements. However, giving every list every conceivable option is not, in our opinion, beneficial, as it tends to have the paradoxical effect of making all table-top armies the same and hence reducing the historical flavour of each army.