Slitherine

Date: 7th & 8th February 2009

Venue: Burton upon Trent Town Hall

Fields Of Glory Doubles, Runners and Riders

900 points Classical period 500BC-500AD. £20.00 per team
Any list from Immortal Fire, Rise of Rome or Legions Triumphant within specificied time frame.

Just a quick question, what time is the kick off?

9am... first game starts 9.30am

Just about to leave,just packing the spade,its a bit white here in Oxford
David

Burton is pretty clear (the roads were pretty clear last night)

Down south (Birmingham and surrounds) is still snowy tho'

good luck!

Simon - thanks to you, Simon, Dene and all the guys for a great weekend.

Yup, even with the snow and a couple of teams that had to pull out there were I think 46 FoG teams and 12 DBM so the hall was pretty full.

I had another set of four interesting and enjoyable games. Justin my partner for the weekend seemed to enjoy himself as well.

I think the top 5 places were (I think):

1st - James Hamilton & Justin Keely - Dominate Roman - 73 points
2nd - Dino Monticioli & parnr - Hunnic - 65 points
3rd - Phil Powell & Tony Robbinson - Early Sarmatian - 63 points
4th= Lynda Fairhurst & Bob Medcraft - Later Seleucid - 60 points
4th= Dave Handley & Jon Thatcher - Dominate Roman - 60 points

Many thanks to BADw for organising another excellent event in wonderfull Burton upon Trent, and congratulations to the winners.

Gordon and I had four fun games against opponents who took our laughter at their pathetic dice with good grace . We finished far enough down the table to be able to make an early getaway which was also lucky because by the time we got to the Watford Gap the snow was beginning to settle on the M1.

By the way, what flavour of Sarmatian were Phil and Tony using? I've looked at the list and just can't see how you'd make a decent army from it, let alone one capable of getting a place.

Dave Allen

daveallen wrote:Many thanks to BADw for organising another excellent event in wonderfull Burton upon Trent, and congratulations to the winners.

Gordon and I had four fun games against opponents who took our laughter at their pathetic dice with good grace . We finished far enough down the table to be able to make an early getaway which was also lucky because by the time we got to the Watford Gap the snow was beginning to settle on the M1.

By the way, what flavour of Sarmatian were Phil and Tony using? I've looked at the list and just can't see how you'd make a decent army from it, let alone one capable of getting a place.

Dave Allen

Phil and Tony used:

4 * 6 LF javelin
3 * 8 LF bow
2 * 4 LH bow, sword
2 * 4 Cavalry superior protected lancer swordsman
5 * 4 Cavalry superior armoured lancer swordsman

Use the LF to screen the lancers and get the lancers into something squishy.

If the enemy hide in terrain shoot them with your 56 bases of missile armed light troops.

Volunteers to start the Dom-Rom analysis ?

After much thought on the Dominate Roman armies used at BadCon here is my in depth analysis.


Good Players

nikgaukroger wrote:Volunteers to start the Dom-Rom analysis ?

Well Justin and I had 19 BGs and Dave Handley had 20.

That said both Dave and I have won the odd FoG tournament or three between us in the past

FWIW the armoured medium foot can be quite brittle if you hit them with something hard. We lost 4 AP in each of our games, most of the time it was MF that went.

Hammy said

shoot them with your 56 bases of missile armed light troops.

And he may be a good player but he can't add up. 48 bases of LF, 24 Bow, 24 JLS

philqw78 wrote:

Hammy said

shoot them with your 56 bases of missile armed light troops.

And he may be a good player but he can't add up. 48 bases of LF, 24 Bow, 24 JLS

And 8 bases of light horse.......

But I can't read.

hammy wrote:

nikgaukroger wrote:Volunteers to start the Dom-Rom analysis ?

Well Justin and I had 19 BGs and Dave Handley had 20.

That said both Dave and I have won the odd FoG tournament or three between us in the past

Clearly the (swarm) Dom Roms are among the top tournament armies when used by excellent players.

However, The fact the Dom Roms only managed 1st and joint 4th place (both by champion players) while several other Dom Roms did not do nearly so well and the other 3 armies in the placings are competely different in character, suggests to me that Dom Roms are not overpowered. (Although the other Dom Roms may not have been configured similarly).

If the Dom Roms had made 1st and 2nd place there would be cause for concern.

----------------

If someone really wants to do an analysis, they should (reverse) weight the performance of the Dom Roms and other armies according to each pair's higher ranking player's previous ranking. That might be enlightening.

It would be interesting to see this done for the full set of results.

However, if it was done for the top 5 positions, it would almost certainly rate the Hunnic army as the top ("overpowered") army, with Later Seleucids in 2nd place.

Having never used the Dominates in a tournament before or really studied Graham's style of play I was impressed by the general effectiveness of the army. It is however very much a glass hammer, you have to be very carefull about where you fight and what you choose to run away from.

I will see about doing a text report on both Usk and Burton before I forget too much about what happened.

They may be a glass hammer, but they are very hard to play against and actually beat (by breaking the army) - when used in swarm mode.

You have the ability to choose when and where you hit things with a large number of glass hammers, and even if a few shatter in the process you have so many more still to use that its not that problematic, especially when allied to the tourney scoring system. And they are the best troops possible in woods.

Likewise, LH fleeing off table in droves seems to be a very cute tactic in tandem with the scoring system.

madaxeman wrote:They may be a glass hammer, but they are very hard to play against and actually beat (by breaking the army) - when used in swarm mode.

I have managed to lose with them in a club game against Phil Powell's Picts but I do take your point that they aren't that easy to actually beat.

You have the ability to choose when and where you hit things with a large number of glass hammers, and even if a few shatter in the process you have so many more still to use that its not that problematic, especially when allied to the tourney scoring system.

True, we had more than enough BGs of medium foot to be able to not use 1/3 to 1/2 of them in most of our games.

And they are the best troops possible in woods.

Not quite, Dailami are better (Impact foot) as are Roman Legionarii Lanciarii (skilled swordsmen) both are or can be superior as well.

Likewise, LH fleeing off table in droves seems to be a very cute tactic in tandem with the scoring system.

I agree, it does seem to take more effort than it is worth to force LH off the table and normally when you do so the troops you used to do it are just as out of the game as the ones you have forced off table. They are a bit too slippy although in our last game we did get one BG and were about to get a second and a BG of LF as Robbo was clinging on to the baseline.

rbodleyscott wrote:
Clearly the (swarm) Dom Roms are among the top tournament armies when used by excellent players. However, The fact the Dom Roms only managed 1st and joint 4th place (both by champion players) while several other Dom Roms did not do nearly so well and the other 3 armies in the placings are competely different in character, suggests to me that Dom Roms are not overpowered. (Although the other Dom Roms may not have been configured similarly). If the Dom Roms had made 1st and 2nd place there would be cause for concern.

Since Britcon last year an "excellent player" using this army in the swarm format has won almost every UK competition where it's been eligible to be used. The only time the swarm hasn't placed was at Roll Call where Graham instead won an Immortal Fire theme using Thracians... which I'm guessing was the romanized version with lots of BG's of 4 regular MF.

Having spoken both to Graham and Dave H, both think the army is overpowered and would be better balanced if the MF were restricted to being used in 6's. I believe Bruce also agrees.

Burton also has a huge field of entrants, and always sees an esoteric mix of armies appearing. Having 2 out of the top 4 at Burton is more significant than having 2 out of the top 4 at say Warfare or Roll Call.

I also struggle to see how the army list should be allowing a Roman army to turn up with all its bowmen, LF and light horse as superior, and all its auxiliaries and legionaries as average quality.