Slitherine

Hello all,

Recently, a club in my town has started a campaign set in the year 1431. I am the French. At the moment, I have been invaded by the english, Germans, and the free company.

I have been fighting many battles, and in order to reduce the one-dimensionality, of my army, I have been experimenting with things like dismounted knights and artillery. As a result, my battle plan seems to be disjointed, and I don't get my troops where I want them. Does anyone have an any advice on what to do? I am especially having trouble with the longbow types.

Vercingetorix,

I play French, although I'm no expert. I play mostly against HYW English and German.

Longbows... gah, yeah. No matter what, they suck to go against. Typically my opponents max out the # of longbows or close to it. Lots of hits, causing disrupted/fragmented/etc etc.. problems along those lines and/or losing a base, sometimes even before the knights (the heavy hitters of the French) make impact.

What to do? Avoid the longbows when possible. If not, gang up on them. Use the other options in your army to help the knights. Personally, I find the crossbows to be adequate at best vs these armies, so I go for the minimum BG of them. I run 3 BG of 4 knights AND one BG of 6 knights. I also usually take another BG of 4 knights and dismount them and form a battle line with voulgiers. You've got to have peasants or something similar, have them as a blocking force. Even as poor, it'll take your opponent time to get through them.

Lastly, I've recently added a BG of valet de guerre (advice from these boards, actually). Another BG of lancers is nothing for any opponent to laugh at. Aside from that, I think there's something to be said for just playing boldly. Otherwise, you're just going to dismount all of your knights and support them with crossbows, and in my opinion, that's a somewhat boring and English way to play.

Good luck, I've won some and lost some with this advice. Oh and make sure you take the right dice. Maybe superstitious, maybe not, but I was playing a few games with dice I use for another game... it didn't go well!

thanks for the advice. Since I posted this, I have beaten both a free company army and a HYW english in the campaign. I have to face the germans again tomorrow.

I have been taking a lot of dismounted knights versus these longbow armies and it seems to be working -- won't really help me vs germans though.

Congrats on the wins. Damn, I wish my club ran a campaign of some sort too