Slitherine

Well, didn't the Swiss swich to pikes because their halbards were less effective against knights in the open? It seems to me that the early Swiss victories had as much to do with the terrain that the Swiss chose to fight in as how they were armed.

Strategos69 wrote: I haven't played many games, just a few to try the rules, but it seems that, except for the numbers, there is not much disadvantage for heavily armoured mounted charging foot. In an article I read recently it was said that a frontal charge from the cavalry into any infantry formation was condemned to failure unless they started running before receiving the charge. I guess that this kind of things have to be sacrified in order to enhace the game play.

It depends on the infantry formation. I play with heavy knight armies a lot and avoid any HF defensive spear adn pike where at all possible. If they are poor I might have a crack but thats about it.

Strategos69 wrote: I haven't played many games, just a few to try the rules, but it seems that, except for the numbers, there is not much disadvantage for heavily armoured mounted charging foot. In an article I read recently it was said that a frontal charge from the cavalry into any infantry formation was condemned to failure unless they started running before receiving the charge. I guess that this kind of things have to be sacrified in order to enhace the game play.

In my 6 games at Britcon my Cav lancers only fought foot to any degree in three games. The first time against Nubian bow. MF, unprotected with no melee POA. Twice against Romans. I could go frontally against the auxilia but preferably on the flanks, and the 2 BG of lancers I lost were due to hitting legions frontally.

Now now Ghaznavid, we're not at home to Mr. and Mrs. Rude you know

Funny you don't seem to be getting my point either. And okay you didn't mention them in the same breath, I was exaggerating. Adjacent sentences, so probably it was two breaths.

Drawing conclusions about medieval interactions from Sarmatians vs. Romans is always going to be chancy. I think most people would assume the medieval knights were more effective than earlier shock cavalry, and that medieval infantry were mostly poorer "quality" (by which I mean morale and training) than legionaries. But OTOH infantry equipment had changed a lot too - with more concern being given to the need to resist shock cavalry. So if you want to discuss the medieval interaction, best do it with medieval examples. Or alternatively, medieval examples are not very helpful in isolation for considering whether chock mounted should be better against HF in general.

I personally think the lancer vs. solid foot interaction is about right...although the limitations of number of troop classifications and large periods of time to cover means that it's going to be more or less accurate in different periods. I've had legionaries (with the benefit of overlaps) bounce cataphracts multiple times, then go down when the overlaps had to be committed elsewhere. I've had cataphracts defeat pikes, even against overlaps on both sides (pikes and cataphracts routing simultaneously was quite amusing). And I've had legionaries bounce cats, disrupt them, kill a base, and then fall apart rapidly when the cats tried again. So it can go either way. Which does not seem unreasonable.

Aside: I do think that non-lancer cavalry do better against HF than I would expect though.

ShrubMiK wrote:
Aside: I do think that non-lancer cavalry do better against HF than I would expect though.

I agree with that too.

And maybe the whole point is about how you classify troops in the companion lists. The only thing I wanted to point out is that lately I have been persuaded by the articles I have mentioned that the power of cavalry charges (in general) has been overrated many times, more because of the romantic idea of glorious cavalry charges that the fact of those having actually taken place against a prepared and steady enemy infantry.

That's very true, and one advantage of the classification system used in FoG compared to the other ruleset I play is that there are more variables to tweak so more chance of representing different troops in different yet realistic* ways.

* Of course, it doesn't stop people then arguing that the classifications in a particular list are wrong