the resounding dullness of the 800 point game.

OldenTired · Post by **OldenTired** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:59 am

basically, never again.

the table is too big, the armies too full of cheesy LH crap.

either 650 starters on smaller tables, or maybe i'll just go play another ruleset.

dave_r · Post by **dave_r** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:39 am

Yet another, sensible, well thought out post designed to provoke, well, erm, nothing really...

mikekh · Post by **mikekh** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:40 am

OldenTired wrote:basically, never again.

the table is too big, the armies too full of cheesy LH crap.

either 650 starters on smaller tables, or maybe i'll just go play another ruleset.

You're just old and tired.

OldenTired · Post by **OldenTired** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:02 am

mikekh wrote:
OldenTired wrote:basically, never again.

the table is too big, the armies too full of cheesy LH crap.

either 650 starters on smaller tables, or maybe i'll just go play another ruleset.

You're just old and tired.

heh. pretty much.

the issue is the old chestnut of min/max, rules lawyers, just like it was under DBM, and just like 7th edition.

i play this game because i want to fight with "historical" armies. if i wanted a fantasy battle i'd play warhammer...

but no. people still field roman armies with virtually no romans, or lancer armies with max LH and almost no kn or cv.

and, no-one wants to address the problem of ongoing draws. lots of hot air, no resolution.

lawrenceg · Post by **lawrenceg** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:16 am

OldenTired wrote:
people still field roman armies with virtually no romans.

Nothing unhistorical about that.

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:32 am

OldenTired wrote: people still field roman armies with virtually no romans, or lancer armies with max LH and almost no kn or cv.

How do these people win games?

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:33 am

Looking at the armies used at the biggest tournament in the UK (Britcon) there are indeed some with lots of light horse but oddly these armies don;t seem to dominate the game.

Pete Dalby posted his winning Ottoman list from the later period and IIRC it had some LH but hardly hordes of them. Phil's Ostrogoths were not exactly light horse central either.

If you are finding that all your opponents use LH then take an army designed to smash them to a pulp. I can recommend Classical Indian or Christian Nubian, both have worked well against LH in my experience (and no, they don;t need any terrain to do it).

If anything the 650 point on 5 by 3 tournaments I have run seem to slightly favour light horse armies.

That said if you don't like 800 points on a 6 by 4 table you can always organise other point total and table size games. In the UK we have 900 point doubles (and that might creep back up to 1000) and also 650 point on 5 by 3 comps. There are only 2 650 point comps in the calendar at the moment but then I am the only person who organises them currently. The next one is at the Games Expo in Manchester in October.

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:45 am

hammy wrote:Pete Dalby posted his winning Ottoman list from the later period and IIRC it had some LH but hardly hordes of them. Phil's Ostrogoths were not exactly light horse central either.

I think we had 2 or three between us

lawrenceg · Post by **lawrenceg** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:58 am

OldenTired wrote:basically, never again.

the table is too big, the armies too full of cheesy LH crap.

either 650 starters on smaller tables, or maybe i'll just go play another ruleset.

If only there were a rule set with the same base sizes as FOG, tons of terrain, easy to catch LH, most comp games ending in an outright win....

OldenTired · Post by **OldenTired** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 9:29 am

hammy wrote: That said if you don't like 800 points on a 6 by 4 table you can always organise other point total and table size games. In the UK we have 900 point doubles (and that might creep back up to 1000) and also 650 point on 5 by 3 comps. There are only 2 650 point comps in the calendar at the moment but then I am the only person who organises them currently. The next one is at the Games Expo in Manchester in October.

i'm a fan of the 650 on a 5 by 3, over 2 hours.

am also advocating heavily for +10points to win in competitions, to incentivise wins over draws.

i like FOG, but i'd like to take part in competitions where cheese is penalised. and min/max is something that should get players losing points.

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 11:56 am

OldenTired wrote: i like FOG, but i'd like to take part in competitions where cheese is penalised. and min/max is something that should get players losing points.

Min/max would be rewarded more by +10pts. If I take just knights somed armies will thrash me, the rest I will thrash.

lawrenceg · Post by **lawrenceg** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 12:21 pm

OldenTired wrote:
am also advocating heavily for +10points to win in competitions, to incentivise wins over draws.

It may incentivise wins, but it also makes an opponent with a LH or swarm army that you can't quite catch even more annoying.

OldenTired · Post by **OldenTired** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:46 pm

lawrenceg wrote:
OldenTired wrote:
am also advocating heavily for +10points to win in competitions, to incentivise wins over draws.
It may incentivise wins, but it also makes an opponent with a LH or swarm army that you can't quite catch even more annoying.

if you're taking 10 points off a win from a player who has to engage, those LH armies taking draws will very rapidly fall behind in points over 6 or 8 games.

28point win or 12 point draw. you choose.

lawrenceg · Post by **lawrenceg** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:06 pm

OldenTired wrote:
lawrenceg wrote:
OldenTired wrote:
am also advocating heavily for +10points to win in competitions, to incentivise wins over draws.
It may incentivise wins, but it also makes an opponent with a LH or swarm army that you can't quite catch even more annoying.
if you're taking 10 points off a win from a player who has to engage, those LH armies taking draws will very rapidly fall behind in points over 6 or 8 games.

28point win or 12 point draw. you choose.

Lets say in the first round you have the bad luck to play against a LH army.
The LH army shoots and scoots its way to a draw. That means you got a draw too.
Second round you play someone else who got a draw. Most likely another LH drawmeister.
Your second round opponent shoots and scoots his way to a draw. That means you got a draw too.
Now you are 20 points behind your pals that got more "get stuck in" opponents.
But you are happy because the LH players are as far behind as you are and you are having fun and exciting games.

I think competitions would be a lot more fun if we were all as chilled out as you are.

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:58 pm

If light horse are a draw army then why would anyone who wanted to win take them?

Yes light horse are hard to pin down, that is because historically they were hard to pin down. Go and ask the Romans, the Crusaders and most of the countries of Eastern Europe in the middle ages how easy it was to pin down and kill light horse.

There are ways to beat light horse, one is to use foot bowmen. Oddly foot bowmen were a historical counter to light horse.

Yes fighting a light horse army with a small heavy foot army can be dull but in any game there will be dull matchups. I can remember a game of DBM where my Swiss faced a Petchneg army. Unfortunately for the Petchneg the battlefield was an open plain and they decided not to send a flank march. 44 elements of Pk(S) one rank deep later and the result was 10-0 to the Swiss.

In FoG you can do something similar. Armoured foot can afford to deploy wide against light horse. Cavalry in one rank are really scary for them. What you need to to is deny them space.

madaxeman · Post by **madaxeman** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 9:26 pm

hammy wrote:Looking at the armies used at the biggest tournament in the UK (Britcon) there are indeed some with lots of light horse but oddly these armies don;t seem to dominate the game.

They may bore opponents to death though as they dont get decisive results and are hard to beat unless you pick an army specifically geared up to do so . Anyway, that's a theory - does it stack up ?

In Britcon Early there were 7 (potential) LH armies.
Parthian (6th) - 2 outright wins (Alex Mac*, Palmyran), no defeats
Palmyran (7th) - 1 win (Palmyran), 1 defeat (vs all cav and auxilia 17 unit Foederate Roman)
Skythian (9th), - 1 win (Sassanid), no defeats
Parthian (18th=), - 1 win (Classic Greek*), 1 defeat (vs Bosporans)
Palmyran (20th), - 1 win (Christian Nubian), no defeats
Skythian (24th), - 1 win (Classic Greek*), 1 defeat (vs Dom Roms)
Palmyran (31st). 2 wins (Sassanid, EAP) , 3 defeats (vs Sassanid, Parthian, Palmyran)

Given on average around 38% of games at Britcon in this period finished with a decisive result, and assuming this lot played each other a few times these armies seem to have had 13 decisive games out of around 40 games, a marginally lower proportion than the average for the whole field - although as 5/7 placed in the top half you'd expect that anyway. So perhaps they don't get less decisive results than other armies (Unless Chris Agers Palmyrans were a wall of cataphracts and no LH of course!). Maybe the interesting take-away then is that the defeats either were against other LH armies, or mostly against armies that could be considered as at least partly optimized to take a LH army down - so comp behaviour and army choice is evolving ?

(* = game vs a Junior player. FWTIW.)

OldenTired · Post by **OldenTired** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 10:19 pm

hammy wrote:Yes fighting a light horse army with a small heavy foot army can be dull but in any game there will be dull matchups. I can remember a game of DBM where my Swiss faced a Petchneg army. Unfortunately for the Petchneg the battlefield was an open plain and they decided not to send a flank march. 44 elements of Pk(S) one rank deep later and the result was 10-0 to the Swiss.

In FoG you can do something similar. Armoured foot can afford to deploy wide against light horse. Cavalry in one rank are really scary for them. What you need to to is deny them space.

with all due respect hammy, this line of discussion tends to go round, and round, and round.

i'm not interested in fielding an army i have no desire to spend 100 hours painting, just so i can field a "competitive army" versus LH.

so, as i say, i'll just play 650 point games (and avoid all 800point comps). seems like a reasonable way for me to play with armies i like, and still enjoy this ruleset.

OldenTired · Post by **OldenTired** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 10:24 pm

madaxeman wrote:
hammy wrote: Maybe the interesting take-away then is that the defeats either were against other LH armies, or mostly against armies that could be considered as at least partly optimized to take a LH army down - so comp behaviour and army choice is evolving ?

have seen a domrom tactic where, when faced with an army of armoured foot, the LH comes to the fore to play silly buggers. the MF turns by BG, then marches to the rear of the board in the next movement phase.

it takes the full 3 1/2 hours to reach them.

gozerius · Post by **gozerius** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 10:50 pm

Does he then announce: "Well, do you want to play this out, or do we just take the 10 points and get on with the drinking?" ?

BillMc · Post by **BillMc** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 10:51 pm

This is of course is an age old argument/debate and you can pick your side.
"LH type armies are cheesy because they wont stand and fight"
"MF type armies are cheesy because they wont come out in the open and fight"
or
"HF type armies are cheesy because they are too strong straight up"
"HF type armies are cheesy because they won't come into terrain to fight"

etc, etc, etc

As many have said before. it is a matter of how well you general your army. Surprise, this was a typical Historical dilemma as well.

And it does finally come down to what you enjoy doing and why you are playing. If you don't want to fight an 800 point open terrain battle against an LH army, then don't. But, please, don't blame the LH army players for wanting to play the kind of wargame tactics that suit there army.

Bill

the resounding dullness of the 800 point game.

the resounding dullness of the 800 point game.

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