Slitherine

I'm almost at the point of completing my 28mm Arabs (Conquest/Umayyad) and before I complete the basing, I was wondering how useful some of my troops are.

I have what might be described as a less than usual Arab Conquest selection as they were all bought, and the basing started, for a DBM army.

I am considering having a couple of 4-base BG's of Bedouin LH (Protected, Superior/Average, Lance & Sword), perhaps plus a BG based as cavalry (Protected, Superior, Lance & Sword) which could alternatively be used as part of the Jund cavalry or to support the armoured City Cavalry. Bearing in mind the relatively restricted space on a 6'x4' wargames table, how useful are Lance armed LH?

I have already based a BG of MF archers. I intended them to support the cavalry but would this make them an easy target for either enemy mounted or other fast moving close combat troops? Would I be better off rebasing as LF?

I've got camelry to spare. Apart from being relatively cheap, what use are camel archers? Unusually for the Arabs they have zero close combat ability so would effectively be skirmishing cavalry. Are they worth having?

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

I experienced LH lancers as very good LH and LF killers, but I don't know what gaming in 28mm on the same table size is like.

Don't forget MF and cavalry archers acumulate more dice for shooting. Even skirmishing camel archers could be useful, if they can hit one target. You could use MF archers to occupy terrain and shoot out of it. There enemy HF or mounted will think twice about attacking

Never used the camels myself, but in my armies it is an option just too cheap to spend the bucks on poor quality troops. however like elephants they do disorder cavalry so they would be useful to help drop dice on your enemy cav if you used them as an overlap with your foot. Light shooty troops can be an annoyance but best if you can get more than just one unit to fire at an enemy as if they are lights they only get 1/2 dice. I use my LH bows teaming up with LF bows to sometimes pound the enemy. I have in some cases even managed to frag and even break an enemy unit.
MF archers are good for shooting, especially if you can add extra dice from your camels on the target. In my army my MF archers are unprotected so I have to be careful what is opposite them but in most cases expect to be needing 5's to hit if they go to melee. Keep in mind they will get extra dice for rear shooters in impact so that is your one best chance to cause a cohesion loss on your enemy.
We play 25mm and when playing 600 points use a 4X6 table. In our last game my opponent had 14 BG's most of which were in 4's and we still had room to spare on the flanks. With larger BG's you might find your units will cover from one end to the other of the table. One thing we have found is that on the smaller table taking the max number of terrain pieces per player usually results in pieces left till the end of placement can't be put down since there is not 4 MU's left anywhere to place them. Can make a table full of terrain but then you don't have to take any terrain other than the mandatories.
Hope that helped a bit

Caliph wrote:I'm almost at the point of completing my 28mm Arabs (Conquest/Umayyad) and before I complete the basing, I was wondering how useful some of my troops are.

I have what might be described as a less than usual Arab Conquest selection as they were all bought, and the basing started, for a DBM army.

I am considering having a couple of 4-base BG's of Bedouin LH (Protected, Superior/Average, Lance & Sword), perhaps plus a BG based as cavalry (Protected, Superior, Lance & Sword) which could alternatively be used as part of the Jund cavalry or to support the armoured City Cavalry. Bearing in mind the relatively restricted space on a 6'x4' wargames table, how useful are Lance armed LH?

I have already based a BG of MF archers. I intended them to support the cavalry but would this make them an easy target for either enemy mounted or other fast moving close combat troops? Would I be better off rebasing as LF?

I've got camelry to spare. Apart from being relatively cheap, what use are camel archers? Unusually for the Arabs they have zero close combat ability so would effectively be skirmishing cavalry. Are they worth having?

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

LH Lancers have to be used correctly you only get the plus at impact and against Bow/Sword its evens after that. Mix them with Bow/Sword troops and force the enemy LH into a difficult position. Don't leave them open to being shot up by lots of enemy BGs. Carefuly handled and they can be a good troop type.

Hi guys

Am I getting confused or are there really any protected, lancer, sword light horse as described in the opening posters mail?

I feel there aren't otherwise they would be the only light horse I've heard of with the potential for a ++ in melee................i.e. against unprotected bow light horse.

Dave would just love them !!

Rob

Well, I play Macedonians (with their Prodromoi LH Lancers) and Later Crusaders (with Bedouin allies, so 4 groups of LH lancers). I rarely win, so I'm not the best person to give advice, but I will give what knowledge I have learned.

Light Horse almost always loose half their dice. Even though Lances are great on the charge and the Swordsmen are pretty good, that half dice really kills them! There is another caveat that may change my opinion of what you have. Prodromoi and Bedouin allies can only field LH that are unprotected. Let that sink in. It means that shooting will really hurt them. It also means that their swordsmen isn't much against anything except other LH and LF. Your protected LH may be just enough to make them work in a fight.

Also, I believe that LH cannot intercept; So they can threaten a flank really well, but even when they charge into said flank, they can frequently loose you that fight! Again, this applies to my unprotected LH.

I could see these things going really well if you wanted to chase off or fight anything that was Fragmented. I don't usually see this happen as my Crusaders and Macedonians are not known to do much with their shooting. Good luck and let us know if protected is just what is needed to make LH a great combat troop type.

Robert241167 wrote:Hi guys

Am I getting confused or are there really any protected, lancer, sword light horse as described in the opening posters mail?

I feel there aren't otherwise they would be the only light horse I've heard of with the potential for a ++ in melee................i.e. against unprotected bow light horse.

Dave would just love them !!

Rob

I don't have the book for these 2 armies. In Swords and Scimitars, the Bedouin LH are only unprotected; they can gain protected if you field them as Cavalry.

Now that said, if you look in Storm of Arrows, you'll find a few times of when Jinetes are Protected or even Armoured Light Hourse! WOW! These are Light Horse with Javelins and Light Spear, so again, they are only + in melee, but all the same, they do exist.

eldiablito - from a shooting point of view protected and unprotected light horse are no different.

Rob

Robert241167 wrote:Am I getting confused or are there really any protected, lancer, sword light horse as described in the opening posters mail?

WOR English northern border staves.

Thanks for the replies.

I did make a mistake and get my Bedouin LH & Cav mixed up. The LH are unprotected, cavalry protected, both with the option to be superior. In fact, the Arab Conquest army potentially could all be superior.

From what you've written the LH look like being a bit vulnerable to missiles but useful for driving off skirmishers. I will probably not bother with more than a couple of BG's. The MF archers and the camelry, if I have enough points to spare, could be effective on a defensive flank or to delay cavalry. So I'll keep my MF archers and rebase a couple of my DBM LH(I) to make up the numbers for the camelry.

Thanks again.

Caliph

The shooting factors against LH do not take armour into consideration so unarmoured LH lancers have the same vulnerabiltiy to shooting as protected or armoured ones would. The better armour is only a factor in melee. I've used LH lancers with my Macedonians and they seem to work reaosnably well for beating LF or LH, especially if the latter doesn't have swords. And being skirmishers, they do have the option to evade unlike normal lance armed cavalry.

Chris

Caliph wrote:I'm almost at the point of completing my 28mm Arabs (Conquest/Umayyad) and before I complete the basing, I was wondering how useful some of my troops are.
...
I've got camelry to spare. Apart from being relatively cheap, what use are camel archers? Unusually for the Arabs they have zero close combat ability so would effectively be skirmishing cavalry. Are they worth having?

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

The Arab Conquest army can get Desert terrain, which means that you can get Soft Sand, and camelry luuurve Soft Sand. One BG might be worthwhile

Robert241167 wrote:eldiablito - from a shooting point of view protected and unprotected light horse are no different.

Rob

No but you wait till the weekend Rob and see my wonder LH Bow dice gueranteed to hit 4 all the time.

BTW no sure about Protected Lancers I know you can have Superior Arab type LH Lancers.

Dave

peteratjet wrote:

Caliph wrote:I'm almost at the point of completing my 28mm Arabs (Conquest/Umayyad) and before I complete the basing, I was wondering how useful some of my troops are.
...
I've got camelry to spare. Apart from being relatively cheap, what use are camel archers? Unusually for the Arabs they have zero close combat ability so would effectively be skirmishing cavalry. Are they worth having?

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

The Arab Conquest army can get Desert terrain, which means that you can get Soft Sand, and camelry luuurve Soft Sand. One BG might be worthwhile

I don't think the terrian matters except for the double bit you can have as your comp piece the best thing about camels is that they disorder Knights/Cavalry. If you can take them as Lancers thats a plus you'll mostly have more dice take superior and your grand.

Unfortunately no camel lancers, or javelins/spear, or a sword, just a bow.

Camels disorder other mounted if less than a base width from them so, if points allow, it might also be worth having the disguised camels for 24 points. Apart from size, smell & counting as another BG, they have nothing but the ability to disorder mounted. Might be handy directly behind even two ranks of the foot to discourage unfriendly mounted. In a single rank they could help two or even three infantry units/BG's.

The downside is of course that they will also disorder their own cavalry so effectively mixing the various types of mounted would be difficult.

Caliph wrote:Camels disorder other mounted if less than a base width from them

Hmm, I wonder if there is some sneakiness to be had from having camels not actually engagin the enemy just in the neighborhood. For instance, you could have a line of camels strung out single deep backing up a line of HI, which would distrupt any mounted that charged the line.

Have to think on this one some more and make sure it works like it seems. Also is this less than a width or less than or equal? It would matter quite a bit to MF...

This wouldn't work as only the front rank elements of the cavalry will be within a base width and therefore disordered. Cavalry BGs tend to be in 4s, so only 2 elements of each BG is disordered and since you only lose 1 dice per 3, it has no effect.
This is a problem I have found with my elephants.

I would have thought LH lancers would be useful support against shooty LH to protect your cavalry if it is of a close combat type.

ethan wrote:

Caliph wrote:Camels disorder other mounted if less than a base width from them

Hmm, I wonder if there is some sneakiness to be had from having camels not actually engagin the enemy just in the neighborhood. For instance, you could have a line of camels strung out single deep backing up a line of HI, which would distrupt any mounted that charged the line.

Have to think on this one some more and make sure it works like it seems. Also is this less than a width or less than or equal? It would matter quite a bit to MF...

It's less than Ethan. But it is in theory effective e.g. 2 ranks of HF Def Sp backed up by camels. Yes they only disorder the front rank so would be better against knights than those that fight in 2 ranks. could be a role for poor HF and poor camels - rear support and affects the fighting!

The difficuly is that it is hard to set up. The camels tend to be undrilled and don't move well with HI, so it's quite easy for the Kn to veer away. A general could be used to chug the camels up but he's more likely to want to be fighting with the spearmen I suspect.

G

And would affect cav in impact phase, of course.