Slitherine

LAP, I should have said previous.

Arab Conquest might be quite an effective anti-LH army. Not a few superior bow and sling, plus 3 BGs of superior LH lancers.

Dang, and here I was getting together a shield wall army to push LH armies off the table. 8 BGs Undrilled protected defensive spear. With rear support and an IC in the neighborhood they can just about cover the table. The rear support comes from 4 BGs Lsp armed cav, just in case something finds a gap. Then there are the 4 BGs LF bow to cover the terrain on the flanks.

gozerius wrote:Dang, and here I was getting together a shield wall army to push LH armies off the table. 8 BGs Undrilled protected defensive spear. With rear support and an IC in the neighborhood they can just about cover the table. The rear support comes from 4 BGs Lsp armed cav, just in case something finds a gap. Then there are the 4 BGs LF bow to cover the terrain on the flanks.

Well, ok, if u keep on building up armies against LH armies, u'll surely find some good one out!
But are they so effective against non-LH/skirmisher armies? mmmm...

What if LH/LF bg would count as half bg for army size (though they still worth 2 points if broken)?

It's just an idea, dont shoot me for this

It seems to me players are beginning to work out that with a lot of armies there's no need to fight LH unless they can win. This should mean most LH armies end up below mid table and so start to disappear from comps. I bet next year we'll be wondering what happened to all the LH...

It is distinctly possible. As with any gaming system the first time somebody brings an army that is succesful and sweep all before them, then there are mutterings about how the army is too powerful and the rules need amending. For some reason* Light Horse appear to have borne the brunt of this rather than other troop types and armies which are also powerful.

In fact, if we look at the number of people complaining about Light Horse it is actually very low and the majority of people get on with it and deal with them.

If we think back to the "phases" we have been through there have been:

- Shooty Cavalry
- Light Horse
- Dominate Roman Swarm
- Longbow

Yet after each surprise there then gets to be a counter to the particular army that is used, Light Horse are no exception to this. Most people tend to return to an army they enjoy using.

* Mainly Tim Porter actually

Kemmler wrote:What if LH/LF bg would count as half bg for army size (though they still worth 2 points if broken)?

I am not sure this is a good idea. You could for example end up with an army with 8 BGs of heavy foot and 4 of skirmishers (say Swiss or Later Greek) that is only 2 AP from breaking when the skirmish BGs are broken. That really doesn't feel right.

dave_r wrote: In fact, if we look at the number of people complaining about Light Horse it is actually very low and the majority of people get on with it and deal with them.

Well, if you limit the sample population to yourself, yes, it's quite low

peterrjohnston wrote:

dave_r wrote: In fact, if we look at the number of people complaining about Light Horse it is actually very low and the majority of people get on with it and deal with them.

Well, if you limit the sample population to yourself, yes, it's quite low

This all reminds me of corner sitting vs table sitting in the good old DBM days. Light horse were not exactly easy to kill then either.

hammy wrote:

Kemmler wrote:What if LH/LF bg would count as half bg for army size (though they still worth 2 points if broken)?

I am not sure this is a good idea. You could for example end up with an army with 8 BGs of heavy foot and 4 of skirmishers (say Swiss or Later Greek) that is only 2 AP from breaking when the skirmish BGs are broken. That really doesn't feel right.

Well, ofc i didnt say i found the panacea universalis ..was just an idea.
U r right, given ur example an army would be close to break if it lose all the skirmishers. But actually losing the skirmishers is much harder than losing any other unit, generally speaking at least

hammy wrote: This all reminds me of corner sitting vs table sitting in the good old DBM days. Light horse were not exactly easy to kill then either.

Prize for most frustrating game at Gent, and possibly one of the most frustrating I ever played, was a table-sitting Patrician. He just did not want to engage in combat, to the extent of even pulling AxS back in front of Ps...

peterrjohnston wrote:

hammy wrote: This all reminds me of corner sitting vs table sitting in the good old DBM days. Light horse were not exactly easy to kill then either.

Prize for most frustrating game at Gent, and possibly one of the most frustrating I ever played, was a table-sitting Patrician. He just did not want to engage in combat, to the extent of even pulling AxS back in front of Ps...

I see you and raise you Massimiliano in the last game the first year I went to Ghent. He got three steep hills on his side of the board and wedged his pikes in the gaps, his knights faced the steep hills so that if I sent auxilia over them I would have to fight knights in the open and refused to come out. What made it worse was that a 1-1 result in our game meant neither team had much if any chance of placing

I hate DBM team comps. If the player who apparently has the best record ever at Ghent shuts up shop for a pointless draw it says a lot.

hammy wrote: I see you and raise you Massimiliano in the last game the first year I went to Ghent. He got three steep hills on his side of the board and wedged his pikes in the gaps, his knights faced the steep hills so that if I sent auxilia over them I would have to fight knights in the open and refused to come out. What made it worse was that a 1-1 result in our game meant neither team had much if any chance of placing

I hate DBM team comps. If the player who apparently has the best record ever at Ghent shuts up shop for a pointless draw it says a lot.

I think you mean Paolo. But IIRC as my game was against a GB player the year before, perhaps there was a certain poetic justice

peterrjohnston wrote:

hammy wrote: I see you and raise you Massimiliano in the last game the first year I went to Ghent. He got three steep hills on his side of the board and wedged his pikes in the gaps, his knights faced the steep hills so that if I sent auxilia over them I would have to fight knights in the open and refused to come out. What made it worse was that a 1-1 result in our game meant neither team had much if any chance of placing

I hate DBM team comps. If the player who apparently has the best record ever at Ghent shuts up shop for a pointless draw it says a lot.

I think you mean Paolo. But IIRC as my game was against a GB player the year before, perhaps there was a certain poetic justice

Actually you are I think right it was Paulo.

Of 8 games I played at Gent perhaps 2 were what I would call open games. Of the other 6 none were going to have a result unless one player took an insane risk and got away with it.

So far in FoG team tournaments all the games I have played have seemed fair and reasonable. In normal comps while I have had some draws I honestly think that all have been played with the right spirit.

i am starting to think i will never get a placing at a tourney as i will play for a win whatever since i would rather have some good games in exchange for the costs of comp travel and accomodation.

still at least i'll hit the bottom tables sooner and maybe get some points by attacking (feels like real points when you actually do damage to an opponent )

ben

peterrjohnston wrote:

hammy wrote: This all reminds me of corner sitting vs table sitting in the good old DBM days. Light horse were not exactly easy to kill then either.

Prize for most frustrating game at Gent, and possibly one of the most frustrating I ever played, was a table-sitting Patrician. He just did not want to engage in combat, to the extent of even pulling AxS back in front of Ps...

I take it you could'nt force shock infantry to test not to charge then not having played DBM

david53 wrote: I take it you could'nt force shock infantry to test not to charge then not having played DBM

Impetuous troops were the DBM equivalent of shock troops, of which Patrician usually had none. The problem was then - it changed slightly later - that 1 element (base) of LH could delay a large frontage of other troops for a lot if not most of the game. And as DBM had single element movement, one small gap between the lines could very easily be exploited to move through to the rear or hit the flank. Achieving flank attacks and/or getting round the back to prevent recoils was the quickest way to win in DBM; thus one would spend a lot of time thinking about the future implications of element placement to either do this or prevent it in the game. And one element onto the baggage was usually a game winner. FoG is a lot less gamey from this aspect, and less tiring mentally as a consequence!

My memory may be playing tricks, especially since the Patrician list has changed significantly for DBMM...but wasn't there a minimum requirement of 12 elements made up of some combination of warband/irregular knights(F)?

ShrubMiK wrote:My memory may be playing tricks, especially since the Patrician list has changed significantly for DBMM...but wasn't there a minimum requirement of 12 elements made up of some combination of warband/irregular knights(F)?

Coud be replaced by Ax(S) and Reg Kn(F) if you picked the right date.

peterrjohnston wrote:So another tournament, two wins, but another two draws herding cats, sorry, light horse.

You know, it's nice skirmishing armies work, but it's really getting very very tedious you can't beat them. Any suggestions before I give up and join the dark side of using massed light horse?

No insults intended, but having reviewed the results from Modena (I assume that is the tournament you are referring to?) I admit I'm a bit unsure what LH army shadows you herded though.
1st game vs Later Hungarian you lost 5.2:14.8, granted no army rout but purely from the result it does not look like you were the one doing the herding. Next 2 games where vs. a Later Sicilian and a later Ottoman both of whom you trashed and the final game was vs. a Dominate Roman ending 10:10. Now that does not tell us how bloody or bloodless the last draw was, but Dominates can be a swarm, but the LH isn't usually seen as the main problem with them.

The Later Hungarian was 4 knights and 7 LH. My opponent had the LH running up and then falling behind the Kn. I got a losing draw because I tried to win attacking the Kn flanks, never easy, whilst simultaneously trying to herd un-catchable LH. I could have just refused to attack and skirmish/move away myself, but it's not really my style of play. But even if I beat all the Kn, there's no chance to win. (Perhaps it didn't help that the list of armies said Dominates for my opponent, and I didn't find out it was Hungarians until deployment, after I'd gone for an open terrain table... ho hum). It was also my first game using the lancer Abbasid, so my own incompetence probably didn't help either.

The other was Dominates with 7BG of LH out of 19 BG. The infantry stayed in terrain, I chased the LH into empty space. So a draw.

Once you get above 5/6 BGs of LH, you're in LH skirmisher territory in my view. And essentially both armies were unbreakable, the latter a perfect example of swarming and skirmishing taken to extreme.

And they are just two examples of games. Most players and games are with, how to say, normal armies, as indeed the Ottoman and Sicilian were. But I do think it's just all too easy to take, in a competition timeframe, both unbreakable and uncatchable skirmisher armies in FoG.

peterrjohnston wrote:

hammy wrote: This all reminds me of corner sitting vs table sitting in the good old DBM days. Light horse were not exactly easy to kill then either.

Prize for most frustrating game at Gent, and possibly one of the most frustrating I ever played, was a table-sitting Patrician. He just did not want to engage in combat, to the extent of even pulling AxS back in front of Ps...

Crikey, you've had an easy time of it. Mine was against French Ordonnance dug in behind fortifications! Italian team orders perhaps