Slitherine

babyshark wrote:My concern with themed events, especially with tight themes, is that not everyone has an army for each theme. I certainly don't. Plus, if one keeps the themes ordinary enough in order to make sure that the widest group of players has an army to bring one ends up missing out on a lot of the fun outlier armies that add spice to the tournaments. I enjoy the Rapa Nui, snowball-wielding Early Northern Barbarians, et cetera, that people tend to bring to open events.

Marc

Agreed........I think 'theming' will occur once a synergy for the rules is established, and you have an ample number of pariticipants in each theme......The Armati tourneys were always themed at the Eastern Cons. However, I've always enjoyed the open format, at the DBM events I've entered (Saba vs. Ottoman Turk).

Dave

I don't think it's impossible to play in a Knight environment with a pre-Kn army. It just invalidates a lot of armies and forces players to choose some bizarre compositions to face knights. Surely, playing in theme is preferrable to that?

carlos wrote:I don't think it's impossible to play in a Knight environment with a pre-Kn army. It just invalidates a lot of armies and forces players to choose some bizarre compositions to face knights. Surely, playing in theme is preferrable to that?

I admit that I really enjoy that aspect of open tournaments. If--hypothetically--Kn armies are popular, how do I design my army, and design my tactics on the tabletop, to deal with Kn armies. Once players start sorting that out the next wave of army design theorists will rise up, and a new set of tactics will need to be explored. If the events are all themed we will get less of that cycle. Fewer armies, in the long run, will become viable.

Plus, I am not at all convinced that Kn are killer troops. They are very powerful, to be sure, but expensive as well. They maneuver like a cow if undrilled (and are even more expensive if drilled). And the four base BGs are potentially quite brittle.

Marc

if there are lots of kn armies - lots of people will take 'anti knight armies' - Hussites, Swiss, HYW English. These are likely to be toast up against Romans or some such, which get wrecked by shooty cav armies, which get riden over by knights. and so on.

its the circle of life (or possibly death)

paulcummins wrote:if there are lots of kn armies - lots of people will take 'anti knight armies' - Hussites, Swiss, HYW English. These are likely to be toast up against Romans or some such, which get wrecked by shooty cav armies, which get riden over by knights. and so on.

its the circle of life (or possibly death)

Exactly.

Marc

The problem is if Knights are scissors to many different papers and there's only one rock in the game...

Seems to me that armies without an obvious counter to knights have to learn to win where the knights aren't - and be prepared to sacrifice a couple of units to the knights to take them out of the game. I know of one game at Warfare where somebody did this (not against knights but against troops against which he had no direct counter) and it is essentially what Aurelian ended up doing in his second battle against the Palmyrans.

pike, big blocks of spear, longbows, lots of lh - all rocks to the knights scissors.

Big Kn battlegroups manouver like a big wodge of blokes in heavy armour on fat horses. small battlegroups are seriously vunerable to harrassment.

look at the points - how many LH with bow do you get for your 6 strong group of superior, heavily armoured knights with a general. How big is the rest of the army now?
BG of 4 - 6 rounds of 3 or more hits and thats a bg of 3 with -1 on all ct tests, and likely to be seriously outnumbered once they do get in.
Ive rode over piles of spearmen at warfare, but in most cases I had overlaps in my favour. Overlaped kn can drown due to the shear number of hits and death tests.

Im hoping for lots of knights at the next comp so my longbows can do lots of damage

After rereading some test army list, I wonder if the question of KN vs CV orother equilibrium is not "obosolete" or wrongly discussed ( sorry english is not my mother language).

Ottomans without KN have to face some Serbian armies, same Byzantrines have to face some crusaders KN and so on ...

So the problem might be do the rules permitt such confrontations , is there space enough for some armies to face their opponents or possible opponents !
space to move and manoeuver that's the right question

I have lost with knights against bow armed cavalry.

I have also beaten superior drilled knights with well placed infantry.

I have not managed to lose with knights to lancer cavalry although I have broken a BG of enemy knights with a well timed cavalry lancer charge in the flank.

Most people use undrilled knights and they can be very difficult to extract from a bad possition.

When I reread myself : two conclusions : never type to quickly when tired and never drink too much wine before typing

bahdahbum wrote:So the problem might be do the rules permitt such confrontations , is there space enough for some armies to face their opponents or possible opponents !
space to move and manoeuver that's the right question

I used a Russian Cv army at Warfare (see my report on this site) and fought 4 Knight armies with Cv. My view is there is enough space to manoeuver & skirmish. It's always a difficult compromise between allowing enough space to skirmish but getting the game to a conclusion in 3-4 hrs. Unlike DBM, its generally difficult in FOG for most armies to string themselves across the table and "walk" a Cv army off the table. Therefore there are open flanks to go for.

A foot army can choose to swing the game around 90 degrees and operate with the long base edges protecting his flank, but in that circumstance there isn't generally enough time to do this and walk the opponent off the table - so you get a draw. And an infantry army choosing to do this is vulnerable to a flank march.

What's the link to the "warfare" site ?

bahdahbum wrote:What's the link to the "warfare" site ?

It's on this site.

Neil did four reports, one for each game at Warfare. They are a couple of screens down the list in this forum.

viewtopic.php?t=4569 is a direct link to the first one.

sorry,

Ok it is on this site, but I do not have that much time to search, so sometimes I ask it goes quicker

Unfortunatly I do not have internet at work, so after somehours of work, at home I do not have that much time as I have so many thinks to do ( and find time to paint armies )

I played an out of period game last night, Late Medieval German v Alexander Macedonian, in part to decide whether Kn are too effective against lancer cavalry. In essence, to determine whether themed events are necessary in FoG. My preliminary conclusion is that the Kn are just about right.

The Companions (Cv, superior, drilled, armored, lancer, swordsmen) routed a BG of Kn (superior, undrilled, h. armored, lancer, swordsmen) and were in turn broken by another BG of Kn. The difference was that in the first instance the Cv managed to out maneuver the Kn and hit the Kn in flank. In the second case the Cv were forced to fight the Kn straight up, and paid dearly for their mistake. Those outcomes were not a surprise to anyone, of course. But they do serve to underline the fact that Kn are not super troops.

In short, I think that the evidence is that strictly themed events are not made necessary by the power of Kn. Bring on the Open tournaments!

Marc

babyshark wrote:
In short, I think that the evidence is that strictly themed events are not made necessary by the power of Kn. Bring on the Open tournaments!

I think a trend back toward themes is a good one that should not be opposed.

As far azs I can see there is great merit in both themed tourneys and open ones .... variety spice and all that.

Si

Having knights in my one of my armies it to me appears they are just about right. I acknowledge that I have only fought three battles with this army. However, in all of my battles my opponents recognised the threat posed by knights and effectively countered it, in the first battle by using light horse, in the second battle by using long bow, and in the third by using dismounted knights and other knights. As a result it has come down my average pikes and lanced armed cavalry to do the main offensive work. If any of you are rugby fans, a good analogy is Jona Lomu when he was in the all blacks. The first couple of seasons nobody knew how to handle he combination of strength and speed and literal ran over some players when they attempted to tackle him. Then teams learnt how to deal with him. The result was all blacks had to use Jona to attract three or four opposing players and thereby getting gaps in their opposing side defence allowing them to score using another player on the other side of the field.

Anyway I am having another battle today against Egyptians. I will write a battle report and take some photos.

Personally I dislike themed tournaments. It is not possible anyway in NZ, with a smaller number of players. However, so far I am not concerned because the points for different troop types seem reasonably balanced to me. The test for me is does a troop type give army an overwhelming advantage against another army. By overwhelming advantage I mean an advantage the that opposing armies find it nearly possible to counter with tactics. So far I found no troop type that fulfills that test. However, if anyone has specific examples I appreciate to hear about.

To me it appears that that some troop types may give certain armies a marginal advantage against other armies i.e my knights vs Republican Romans. However, in non themed conventions this will advantage will be leveled out by the wide variety of armies they will face, which mean they are likely to face armies with troops types that have a marginal advantage over their army.