Slitherine

Cerberias wrote:, its all good mate, in your defence i did word it quite badly the first time. All i'm saying here is that i'd much prefer sixes of armored compared to eights of protected. I may stretch to sixes of protected if i worked out a way to screen them from shooting and get an extra boost against pikes with the leftover points, but i doubt it.

It depends what you match up against. But in a straight up fight the armoured are going to win the shooting, forcing the 8 of protected to charge. Where the armoured are then going to get the extra back rank shooting dice. So the protected need to be three deep at impact in case they lose a base. The armoured BG are slghtly cheaper as well.

The answer is not to choose a straight up fight. And a lot of armies in EoD have BG of purely HW protected troops. Much more cost effective then.

Actually the protected should win the shooting battle since crossbow has the same - POA against armoured and protected foot. So the extra shooter gives the protected unit the edge. So overall it sounds like the protected BG should have the edge in a head to head magtchup. All in all the right choice depends on how you are going to use the troops and what you will be facing.

Chris

philqw78 wrote:

Cerberias wrote:, its all good mate, in your defence i did word it quite badly the first time. All i'm saying here is that i'd much prefer sixes of armored compared to eights of protected. I may stretch to sixes of protected if i worked out a way to screen them from shooting and get an extra boost against pikes with the leftover points, but i doubt it.

It depends what you match up against. But in a straight up fight the armoured are going to win the shooting, forcing the 8 of protected to charge. Where the armoured are then going to get the extra back rank shooting dice. So the protected need to be three deep at impact in case they lose a base. The armoured BG are slghtly cheaper as well.

The answer is not to choose a straight up fight. And a lot of armies in EoD have BG of purely HW protected troops. Much more cost effective then.

batesmotel wrote:Actually the protected should win the shooting battle since crossbow has the same - POA against armoured and protected foot. So the extra shooter gives the protected unit the edge. So overall it sounds like the protected BG should have the edge in a head to head magtchup. All in all the right choice depends on how you are going to use the troops and what you will be facing.

Chris

But my Koreans have bows and the were fighting Japanese last night. So I was thinking different odds. But three at 5's or 4 at 5's won't do a lot.

My foot got badly hurt last night so I decided best take them in 8 not 6 base BG. My lancers cut through him in a pre-emptive revenge for dastardly deeds a thousand years in the future though

Yeah, against protected HW groups you may be slightly behind in a frontal fight, but with the extra mobility from a unit of six, and the versatility to be able to fight different types of units more efficiently than protected (protected impact foot, pike, protected off sp/def sp etc..), i find them just better versatility wise, and its only like 12 points to upgrade a unit of six protected to six armoured... even if you have 5 units of six like i do in mine, you'll still only be getting sixty points, one unit of cav or two units of six LF crossbowmen, which wont help you against the pikes, but may ward the shooting decently.

I run my warring states as:
3x4 units of 4 armored drilled average swords/crossbow cav
3x4 units of 4 proteced undrilled average sword/bow cav (tribal)
5x6 units of armored medium foot heavy wep front/x-bow back, all drilled average
1x6 unit of armoured offensive spear
Inspired commander and two troop commanders.

So really, for me, if i changed the foot to protected i could only get two units of light foot really, which in this case wouldnt really do much to help the army as they're pretty warded against shooting as is, due to the inspired commander and the fact that i use the tribal cav as rear support for the medium foot until the impact phase is over, and things are going smoothly (or if people are getting around the flanks). It might bulk the army out and make the break point higher, but i'd prefer to have that extra edge in the main melee than lose slower if the main melee breaks through my ranks.

It all depends on the army, an army with huge amounts of protected heavy weapons could still do well, but in the warring states where you can only have 32 bases of non-poor medium foot, i'd much rather have them armored.

Its all about making the troops you have available work to the best combination. With 20+ bases of armoured lancers I'm happy with my protected HW. People may think about shooting them instead of the lancers.

It would be interesting to see what armies people would come up with if they had a free hand selecting whatever they wanted. And how well those armies would actually do matched up against a variety of armies built from the lists, warts and all.

Although personally I'm not sure I could select an army with no restrictions - too much choice, how would I ever make up my mind?

ShrubMiK wrote:It would be interesting to see what armies people would come up with if they had a free hand selecting whatever they wanted. And how well those armies would actually do matched up against a variety of armies built from the lists, warts and all.

Although personally I'm not sure I could select an army with no restrictions - too much choice, how would I ever make up my mind?

You could start practicing using the Later Seleucid list

Chris