Artillery in open competitions

[david53]

Wasn't it not long ago people were saying LH/LH armies were too good. Oh and pike too good then too bad, and Roman Legio useless, then brill, Dom Romans, shooty Cav, Swiss.

What is too good today?

Mob. The extra base depth when they are just glorified MF. Bloody liberty.

But then again they are rubbish. And i'm sure someone will argue the point either way.

You forgot to say Knights are too good, longbows are too good English Halberds are too good(just english cause they can run through their bow mates)MF armies are too good.......
And I've not said anything about those Picts.............
Dave

Say something

I just finished basing up a ton of them

John

To be honest I've only seen Phil play them at the club against a Dave R shooty/cav army, from what I saw they seemed to be okey if they stayed in terrain. Its the unprotected being hit on a three thats not nice. Tell me how you get on with them.. but Phill did say he got a lot of troops and sometimes numbers do count.
Dave

[DaiSho]

LH are overrated, I've decided. You really can't use them in FoG to slap people in the flank, like in the DBx rules, as they don't cause the cohesion drop for non-skirmishers for flank contact , and their shooting is anemic.

Large numbers of them may be annoying to be sure, but if you've got any foot bows or real cavalry, you just chase them away.

I tend to agree with you. It's in part why I'm considering taking a Frankish or Breton ally in my Viking army. The concept being that a single unit of moderate quality cavalry hovering around the back of the battle line is enough to keep anyone from playing silly buggers. An unwary opponent may even be suckered into moving a few troops into the 'exposed flank' and become dinner for some hungry cavalry.

One thing that I believe Field of Glory has done extremely 'right' is making 'throw away units' cost the same in victory. No more DBX 'they're cheap I don't care'. If you throw a unit into my flank it had better win, because if it loses you're going to be down an extra BG and I'll be that much closer to final victory.

I'm interested in trying my cavalry option out... it's a total change of direction for my Viking concept.

Ian

[Dyeeles]

Seems to me that Arty could be good for denying an area to your opponents. Even if he doesn't come near them he's restricting himself where he can go. If the terrain layout works for you they could deny a vital gap that your opponent might be able to utilise or at least make him hesitate to use it. Note that I've never used them myself, just speculating.

[SirGarnet]

Seems to me that Arty could be good for denying an area to your opponents. Even if he doesn't come near them he's restricting himself where he can go. If the terrain layout works for you they could deny a vital gap that your opponent might be able to utilise or at least make him hesitate to use it. Note that I've never used them myself, just speculating.

This could happen in a campaign or scenario, or even if you know the foe and can pick your position from a map, but getting a critical defile or other key beaten ground for artillery in the standard game is not frequent. They will have great importance in campaigns with sieges.

The ones that roll around on battle wagons can be useful since they can be positioned.

[fredrik]

I took some Heavy Art with my Carthaginians in my last game vs Later Seleucid. The rationale was that my OS, of which the larger part of my army was composed, could not handle the solid pikewall, of which the opposition largely consisted. Hence, I took the HART and deployed it right across from the pikemen, the result being that my opponent was unable to just march up and beat the snot out of my spearmen, but fretted around just outside of range of the catapults.

I believe the value of artillery is this: either as area denial on a flank, or as a softener/pinner in an area of the battlefield where you intend to play defensively. I think they are alright for the points they cost.

Note that non-fragmented artillery will be quite safe from Light Horse, who will still just get 1dp2b without any POA modifiers, unless of course the LH can outflank the art and shoot them down to fragmented without taking return fire.