Slitherine

Early Medieval Division A

Frankish 751-887 AD with Croatian 625-849 AD allies

So the idea was to pick "best of the worst" army, something non-meta and unlikely to be taken, but it proved to be surpisingly good.

You get a very solid infantry line - a lot of defensive shieldwalls for the frontline, pretty good offensive infantry (4 units of dismounted armoured lancers for situations when you really need things done and 4 units of 48 points above average offensive spears), some massed archers and irregulars provided by Croatians - pretty bad, but there's a lot of them and even garbage medium foot is much better than none.

Cavalry wing is also good and includes both cheap spammable and expensive units - lots of 42 point lancers, 38 point light spear cav and some classic armoured noble lancers. Frankish cavalry easily outnumbers what most opponents can bring and if you wish can be spammed at almost Andalusian level (I usualy had 10 to 14 units, I think).

Skirmishers are somewhere in the "not great, not terrible" category - 8 foot units, 2 javelin horse. They'll usually be outnumbered or at least equal to enemy, but you've got massed archers to support them.

Overall the army is pretty straightforward and plays similar to the more popular Arab lists - usually you form a big line of defensive shieldwalls, add some dismounted lancers for extra resilience, grab some cavalry for general utility and then either get more of the heavy-hitting infantry or even more cavalry if the map is good for it.

Throw in some massed archers on the flank to support your cavalry or weaken the enemy line before attack
- once the infantry battle starts they can be used to flank the enemy or to be generally annoying with ZoCs - after all they are the only maneuverable infantry you get apart from irregulars, so you'd better use it.

Since majority of Frankish units are on the cheaper side you usually would outnumber your opponent and lots of cheap cavalry make it quite easy to put pressure on flanks - even if by ZoCing and distraction and not outright flank attacks.

The only real weakness of this army is pretty bad medium foot - irregulars are mostly useful for sitting in terrain amid the battleline or serving as speedbump for enemy mf trying to encircle you through the forest or something like that.
You get a lot of them, though (12 I think?), so if you really need to contest a critical piece of terrain just throwing bodies at it may work.

Early Middle Ages Division F

Sassanid Persian 591-628 AD

This is a list that asks for a very offensive and aggressive play. My army in each battle was build around elephants (all 6 units of them) and lots of armoured horse archers. These made the core. I supplemented it with superior Veteran Dailami Foot and some Sassanid Heavy Foot. I also employed 3-4 units of Massed Archers and some skirmishers. I didn’t use cataphracts (or rather tanurigs, hehe) at all.

I was trying to create a flexible formation loosely based on historical Sassanid savaran tactics: skirmishers in front, elephants and bowmen and close-combat infantry combined in a formation I metaphorically called a ‘fist’, horse archers in three independent divisions situated depending on terrain either in front or on wings. The fist was a checker-board style formation composed of two lines of elephant and infantry units mixed and screening each other. I placed bowmen in the first line so they could disrupt (or at least try to) any unit that got too close.

Theoretically I could just pull back any front unit (risking disruption, but I didn’t care too much) and advance any other from the rear line – making adjustments in my battle line depending on the situation in front of the fist. As expected, it never worked perfectly, but it worked well enough, even in spite of me making some really stupid mistakes in two or three battles.

The task of horse archers was to harass, annoy, weaken and disrupt enemy formation by dragging enemy units in pursuit of the cavalry and pulling them away from the main fight, which in turn could create opportunity for a flank or rear charges, or at least give me (even temporarily) numerical advantage on the wing I was planning to attack.

As the horse archers and foot archers were doing their job, the fist was slowly moving towards a perceived soft spot in enemy formation. My main concern was to deploy the fist exactly against a soft spot (like a cavalry division or where I had numerical advantage). My second concern was to screen my elephants from ranged attacks in order to pull them into fight completely unscathed (preferably against units already disrupted by my massed bowmen and horse archers). My third concern was to make sure my elephants won’t go into fight without infantry support.

As soon as the battle line has been drawn I could shift my attention and look for opportunities for my horse archers to charge on the flanks or from the rear. Or to keep harassing enemy units and prevent them from joining the fight.

This really is a great army list for a debutant in FOG2DL.