Slitherine

IanB3406 wrote:So what if you only have 20 stands of longbow......How would you configure this army? (how many superior heavy foot can you take?)

Ian

Buy four more stands of longbow men! Seriously I use both the Free Company and English HYW armies and I always max out the LB in the Free Company which is 24 bases this gives either 4x6LB or 3x8LB.

If you are going to use an English HYW army with only 20 bases of LB you are wasting your time. An English HYW army needs at a minimum 32 bases of LB to be successful. Move to a French HYW army with Scottish ally, French Ordnance or Free Company armies they give you a lot more useful options to spend your points if you have only 20LB. Check out Nik's website he has several Free Company list options on it.

Agreed on that point, HYW needs a lot of Longbow to be worth anything

The list I am currently running (to relately good results) is:

1xIC
2xTC
2x8 MF/Prot/Ave/Drilled/Lb/Sw + PD
4x6 MF/Prot/Ave/Drilled/Lb/Sw + PD
2x4 HF/H.Arm/Sup/Drilled/HW
1x4 HF/Arm/Sup/Drilled/HW
1x4 HF/Arm/Sup/Undrilled/HW
1x4 LF/Unprot./Ave/Undrlled/Jav/Light Spear.

If I drop the LF I can make the Armoured HF into Heavily Armoured. The Lb in 8 are on each flank

Figure wise I am going with Corvus Belli. They look very nice to me. Any other input?

Any other input?

Peter Pig are nice - plenty of variety and relatively easy to paint.

Khurasan Miniatures are about to release their HYW range so it might be worth holding off until it is released to see what they are like. I have some Donnington New Era HYW figures for my Brigands and camp figures they are very nice. Donnington have the advantage of selling figures separately so it is easier to mix up poses on bases. Once Khurasan have released their figures if they compare well to Donnington then I will mix together to expand my HYW army.

NOTE on the Corvus Belli, The longbow and MOA are great figures, however the MOA are noticeably smaler. Not sure why.

Polkovnik wrote:

BlackPrince wrote:I disagree about longbows in 6s I like 8s as it maximizes your shooting dice and this army is all about shooting.

Doesn't make any difference to shooting dice if they are lined up next to each other. A BL of 24 longbow will shoot with the same dice whether it is 4 BGs of 6 or 3 BGs of 8.

Is this true? I admit to a little confusion on the point. BG of of 8 shoot 6, while of 6 shoot only 4, dropping the fraction.
So wouldn't 3 groups of 8 shoot 18 dice, while 4 groups of 6 shoot 16?

Yes you are right assuming 24 Longbowmen BGs of 8 give you 12.5% more shooting dice than BGs of 6. The tricky part is working out if the army performs better in terms of AP break point staying power and flexibility if you have a smaller number of larger BGs. This is were the debate is.

DrQuahog wrote:

Polkovnik wrote:

BlackPrince wrote:I disagree about longbows in 6s I like 8s as it maximizes your shooting dice and this army is all about shooting.

Doesn't make any difference to shooting dice if they are lined up next to each other. A BL of 24 longbow will shoot with the same dice whether it is 4 BGs of 6 or 3 BGs of 8.

Is this true? I admit to a little confusion on the point. BG of of 8 shoot 6, while of 6 shoot only 4, dropping the fraction.
So wouldn't 3 groups of 8 shoot 18 dice, while 4 groups of 6 shoot 16?

As you work out shooting by the files shooting at a particular target, as opposed to by BG, this may not be true - if you could get all 3 8 base BGs shooting at the same target or all 4 6 base ones you in fact get the same shooting dice.

Is this true? I admit to a little confusion on the point. BG of of 8 shoot 6, while of 6 shoot only 4, dropping the fraction.
So wouldn't 3 groups of 8 shoot 18 dice, while 4 groups of 6 shoot 16?

You count the total amount of bases shooting, all up, not counting units. So two units of six would fire off nine shots. (6 backrank and 6 frontrank all up). So eights, if fighting with just a single unit, are better at shooting, but a six with two more bases gets the same amount of shooting as an eight, and are more manouverable.

Edit: Looks like we shotgunned that answer.

Is this true? I admit to a little confusion on the point. BG of of 8 shoot 6, while of 6 shoot only 4, dropping the fraction.
So wouldn't 3 groups of 8 shoot 18 dice, while 4 groups of 6 shoot 16?

Remember that you need to count shooting by target, so if all of an 8 base BG shoots at one target they get 6 dice, but if yuor opponent can split your fire yuo can be no better off. Similarly, if 2 6 base BGs shoot the same target, you get to combine the dice and would get 9.

On the subject of figures the new Donnington figures are very nice as well.

BlackPrince wrote:Yes you are right assuming 24 Longbowmen BGs of 8 give you 12.5% more shooting dice than BGs of 6. The tricky part is working out if the army performs better in terms of AP break point staying power and flexibility if you have a smaller number of larger BGs. This is were the debate is.

No, that is wrong. If there are 24 bases in a battle line they get the same number of shooting dice whether they are in BGs of 4, 6, 8, 12 or one big BG of 24 (hypothetically of course). Shooting dice are calculated by target BG, regardless of what BG the shooters come from.

nikgaukroger wrote:

DrQuahog wrote:

Polkovnik wrote: Doesn't make any difference to shooting dice if they are lined up next to each other. A BL of 24 longbow will shoot with the same dice whether it is 4 BGs of 6 or 3 BGs of 8.

Is this true? I admit to a little confusion on the point. BG of of 8 shoot 6, while of 6 shoot only 4, dropping the fraction.
So wouldn't 3 groups of 8 shoot 18 dice, while 4 groups of 6 shoot 16?

As you work out shooting by the files shooting at a particular target, as opposed to by BG, this may not be true - if you could get all 3 8 base BGs shooting at the same target or all 4 6 base ones you in fact get the same shooting dice.

It doesn't matter if they are all shooting at the same target or not. If they are in a battle line, 4 BGs of 6 and 3 BGs of 8 will always shoot with the same number of dice as each other.

Polkovnik wrote:It doesn't matter if they are all shooting at the same target or not. If they are in a battle line, 4 BGs of 6 and 3 BGs of 8 will always shoot with the same number of dice.

Yes it does matter. If 2 BG of 6 shoot it 2 different target thet get 4 dice against each. If 2 BG of 6 shoot at the same target they will get 9 dice. Target is how the dice are made up.

philqw78 wrote:

Polkovnik wrote:It doesn't matter if they are all shooting at the same target or not. If they are in a battle line, 4 BGs of 6 and 3 BGs of 8 will always shoot with the same number of dice.

Yes it does matter. If 2 BG of 6 shoot it 2 different target thet get 4 dice against each. If 2 BG of 6 shoot at the same target they will get 9 dice. Target is how the dice are made up.

Yes, I know that but that's irrelevant to the point here. We are comparing 4 BGs of 6 and 3 BGs of 8 in a battle line. What I am saying is that battle line of 24 bases will shoot with the same number of dice however it is made up. Yes, the actual number of dice will then depend on the target (s), but it will be the same whether or not it is made up of BGs of 8 or 6.

Note - I've edited my post above, adding "as each other" at the end. This makes it clearer and avoids the misunderstanding of my point that Phil made.

I'm a simple bloke, though most of my misunderstandings are pointed out by simple things. Women.

(hope Linda's not watching)

She's not but I might tell her
David

So, this is slightly off task, but it does relate to the discussion.

So, say that there is 2 BGs of Medium foot archers (6 each). These BGs are grouped up in 2 ranks of 3 stands each. The first BG has Long Bows (LB), the second, only Bows (B). Assuming that all 12 stands are in short range of the same target, then the LBs will get 4.5 dice and the Bs will get 4.5 dice as well.

Now, based on the above thread, it would seem that if the you would get 4 dice with LBs and 4 dice of Bows. Yet, what do you do with those last 2 half dice? Do they become 1 full die? If so, do they shoot as LB or as normal Bow? Perhaps those 2 half dice are simply wasted?

This is just a thought experiment, because my previous understanding would have been that you loose any and all half dice. In other words, the LBs get 4 dice and the Bows get only 4 dice as well. Even if they had the same type of weapon, they would still only get 4 dice each.