Slitherine

I agree with Agesilaus comment 'then who do we make Elite and why'.

I would doub't that a full study of this has been done as from what I have read of ancient sources a lot of work would be required to make a comparison across any reasonable length of time.

miffedofreading wrote:Scott with the gauls in my carthaginian army being average, HF, protected Swordsmen, how do you fight late republican romans??? I can't see any way they stand a chance so have to use my african spear uprated or elephants. I have 24 bases of beautiful Gauls and they have never yet played a battle. I am very interested in hearing of a viable tactic for them

For a Gallic army, you should have at least 50 bases of warriors, plus as many cavalry and light foot as you can field. Use your substantial numerical advantage to isolate and outflank the legionary BGs, picking them off piecemeal. Boduognatus of the Nervii very nearly succeeded in doing precisely this at the Battle of the Sabis (Sambre) in 57 BC. With FoG it works pretty well on the tabletop, too.

Cheers,
Scott

Thanks Scott, will try.

Just played Alexandrian Macedonians friends carthaginians this evening. One you get to melee the pikes are on ++ over the gauls and scutarii who got cut to pieces.

Macedonians also had better cavalry.

Our general opinion was that the carthaginian needed lots of terrain, some sneaky ideas and a lot of luck.

The Macedonians needed..... well not much really

Andy
PS Funnily most of the damage in the game was done on the macedonian side by 1 8 base hoplit unit ave protected undrilled though it did have a TC general with it. Routed a unit of ligurians and a BG of elephants both at the same time

miffedofreading wrote:Scott with the gauls in my carthaginian army being average, HF, protected Swordsmen, how do you fight late republican romans??? I can't see any way they stand a chance so have to use my african spear uprated or elephants. I have 24 bases of beautiful Gauls and they have never yet played a battle. I am very interested in hearing of a viable tactic for them

miffedofreading wrote:Our general opinion was that the carthaginian needed lots of terrain, some sneaky ideas and a lot of luck.

You could take a sneaky idea out of Hannibal's book. He put the Gauls to fight the legionaries and get cut to pieces, meanwhile he won on the flanks. Use the maximum size BGs for the Gauls so you don't lose too many attrition points when they break.

Had my first minipractice of FOG today - bit supprised to find the Triarii to be elite spearmen.

Dford666 wrote:Had my first minipractice of FOG today - bit supprised to find the Triarii to be elite spearmen.

If you look only at the the Mid-Republican Roman "starter army," it can be a little misleading. If you check the main Mid-Republican Roman list, you will see that most triarii are actually rated as Superior. Only a maximum of four bases of triarii, in a veteran legion with Superior hastati/principes, may in fact be rated as Elite.

Cheers,
Scott

So why would these Triari be better than Spartans?

While Triarii may be better in an anachronistic game than Spartans they have not been graded as elite to make them better than Spartans, they have been graded as elite so that in historical games the Roman army works as it should.

Triarii are generally accepted as being the best troops in a Roman Legion. Roman legions had significantly different levels of experience and ability so as Triarii should be better than the Hastai and Principes of the legion they belong to and Roman legions need to be able to be fielded as good, bad or indifferent and there is only a 4 step grading system to use if the Roman legions are poor, average or superior then the Triarii to go with these legions need to be one step higher in categorisation.

Perhaps had the Romans fought the Spartans it would have been found that the Triarii were indeed equivalent to Spartans or better or worse. It didn't happen so there is no possible direct comparison.

Spartans are known to be significantly better than the run of the mill Greek hoplite, this can be acheived perfectly well by them being classed as superior. There is no need for them to be elite to achieve what they did historically. To be honest if Spartans were all classed as Elite in FoG the Spartan army would be so small nobody would field it. They are expensive enough at 13 points each for armoured, at 16 points you would hardly be able to field any.

I still agree that the Spartan knights (Hippeis only) should have been Elite if we are going to be consistent. The historical rational for Elite Triari could also apply to Spartans, as otherwise all the other Greek states bodyguard units are just as good, which was not historically the case except for the Theban Sacred Band (which should also be Elite IMO).

However game wise, I agree it doesn't matter much. The Spartans are a good army. Just go for the post 460 option and get good numbers of hoplites (I am using 6 units of six bases in 650 points), all the cavalry, and some MF. I have now run the Spartans in two games so far and have found them very competitive (2 wins!). The Superior Hoplites are not world beaters, but are very cost effective. It is a tough maneuverable army that should outnumber most infantry opponents. I have found a simple line of hoplites advancing in echelon, Superiors in front, very tough to beat.

I played my first 2 full games of FOG last night Spartan v's Ilkhanid. Used 8 x 6 at 800 pts. We got to the point in the first game that the Ilkhan's looked like they would suffer a big loss so stopped and the second they danced around the tablle doing little and we stopped the game after we ran out of time.

Personnaly didn't particularly find the games that interesting or fun, but will continue and formulate an opinion after say 10 or so games. Think that it should be quite easy to get draws and hard to win big.

Spartan v's Ilkhanid are not armies that would easily come to blows. The Ilkhanids would be stupid if they did. Not surprising there was no result. Try fighting another foot army with your spartans, or a shock mounted army. Or a mounted army with your Ilkhanids.

If you are playing 25mm on an 8 by 6 with 1" MUs with those armies you are IMO very likley to get draws. Compare it to a DBM game on a similar sized table with those armies. There is no way in DBM that Spartans can kill cavalry unless th cavalry want to.

If you want to play on an 8 by 6 I would use 40mm MUs but the armies you have picked are not IMO going to make a particualry interesting matchup whatever ruleset you play.

In 15mm doubles with 900 or 1000 point armies on 6 by 4 I am still holding steady at 50% completed games.

We played on 6 x 4 with 15mm figures.

I think we only played 2 hrs in the second game and if we played for 3 I think the Ilkhan's would be pushed off the table (DBM speak). My initial practice was with Spartans v's Romans again abit boring as a game, go forward and roll dice. If you get lucky your opponent has a problem.

I can see that there is depth but to be honest I feel that this is derived from competative use of the rule mechanic's rather than the game itself. So in some ways this element which I will expect to dominate comp's will in some ways make it seem like DBM in time.

That said, I need to learn more and see how things develope.

Forgot to mension, by 50% completed do you mean that you have broken the opponents army. Is it easy to achieve the equivalent of a DBM 32-0?

The Spartan Army I fielded broke on 14 points (Forget what this is called), I couldn't see my opponent getting any where near this. Infact I only lost 1 element in both games and have 1 disruption marker. There again it could be the armies we are using?

14 BGs of Spartans? blinking flip - how many points were you using?
for the record I have getting on for 90% completion in singles games, and about 50% in doubles (competition games that is). The incomplete game have tended to be pretty much over, just waiting for the fat lady to sing (or the camp to be sacked), when time is called.

Not sure, however, I've used a Khurasanian to beat a Spartan army in about 2.5 hours only losing 2 BGs myself.

One thing I have found is that shooty mounted armies are actually quite tricky to play, more so that is apparant when you start and tough foot armies like Spartans are always going to amongst the hardest for them to beat.

As for getting the equivalent of a 32-0 I think that is very very hard in FoG (although Hammy did it to me at Burton), however, the equivalent of a 27-5 is pretty achievable. IMO this is quite a good thing as it means that you almost always get something out of the game and lessens the chance of somebody being out of sight in the last round of a competition.

Is it easy to achieve the equivalent of a DBM 32-0?

IMHO it is easier to finish a game in FoG and both sides will get some points, even if players and armies are badly matched. I have had more games finish in FoG than DBM at competition, and many more at the club.
Perhaps its my cautious play

Planning to watch a game on Tuesday, I gather the opponents will be using some more combined arms type armies (Medieval anyhow). Sounds like combined arms to my Spartans!

Another point, can I have different grades of troops in a battle group. I.e Superior/Average or Armoured/Protected? (This is historical)

No mixed quality but you can mix armour in some cases, but in most the protection is averaged out over the BG as this usually gets the correct effect.