Slitherine

hi, can anyone please help me out here, 1st game of hyw fog, thinking of using heavy infantry in centre with long bowmen behind stakes on the flanks, Are the stakes worth the points. will be fighting hyw french. and
the player uses light infantry and cavalry to attack flanks etc.
any input would be good, michael

Hi Terry ,

I used them with BG of 6 Longbowmen with no success I'm afraid

Pete used them per 8 without stakes and seemed to be more successful ,

vegan ( no steaks ) seems to be the right way with the HYW English Army

hope you will enjoy your games with them , always interesting games even when losing it ;

Best Regards

thefrenchjester

The problem with stakes is that they make the Longbow too good against mounted, so the mounted avoid them like the plague. Longbowmen can actually deal with mounted but because they have stakes the mounted know they have no chance of winning (or really shouldn't win anyway) so you don't get to fight with them.

Since the majority of the army is Longbow then this can result in an annoying game for the longbow where the mounted either avoid them or sit just outside bow range waiting for the infantry to up stakes and then charge them.

I have gone back to using stakes with the longbow. They keep the knights away while the heavy foot deals with the opposition. Well, that's the theory. I haven't quite got it right yet.

If you take stakes then any sane HYW french will dismount.

That will make the French a very small force. The foot in two ranks effectively halve the frontage. It will have open flanks the longbow can then pick on. The bow are only one factor down against the dismounted knights and more numerous.

I have been playing a few games with Ordonnance French lately.
Without the stakes, the longbowmen are extremely vulnerable to knights which means that you have to keep your longbows in uneven or rough terrain, which can lead to defensive play.
With stakes, the longbowmen don't have to worry about knights and can happily come out into the open on the flanks (where HF are unlikely to be). This means that you can adopt a more agressive style of play.

azrael86 wrote:If you take stakes then any sane HYW french will dismount.

Is there such a thing as "a sane feudal noble"

spike wrote:

azrael86 wrote:If you take stakes then any sane HYW french will dismount.

Is there such a thing as "a sane feudal noble"

Yes. The ones who remembered how they inherited the title!

grahambriggs wrote:

spike wrote:

azrael86 wrote:If you take stakes then any sane HYW french will dismount.

Is there such a thing as "a sane feudal noble"

Yes. The ones who remembered how they inherited the title!

inheriting a title hardly counts as a sanity test, and only the younger sons learnt to read/write by being forced to become clergy.

My point being that if the fathers died at Agincourt bravely charging the stakes, the sons might charge the English at Patay before they can place their stakes or not at all!

Anybody have a good hint on how to make stakes bases? I have been trying for a while now, and each attempt ends in a mess.

And before anyone else says it, yes, I am a poor modeler/painter.



Marc

I used toothpicks, cut both ends off so that i was left with 40mm in the middle, split the 40mm middle part, down the middle and glued it flat edge down onto the base. Then i cut off some of the pointy side so that it could sit properly on the base resting on the 40mm part.. I used four stakes per base, glued the other part of the middle bit on top of the stakes at the back to hold them down, and then polyfilla'd them all when the pva was dry.

You can see some stakes in this picture:



I took the easy way out, I ordered strips (they are 40mm long) of lead stakes from (I believe) Irregular Miniatures. More expensive than toothpicks but....a whole lot faster.

QRF in their Feudal Castings range have lead stakes molded on a base. Job done in about half an hour of labour.

rogerg wrote:I have gone back to using stakes with the longbow. They keep the knights away while the heavy foot deals with the opposition. Well, that's the theory. I haven't quite got it right yet.

Must admit even I am considering whether it would be sensible to start using them again in my WotR - partly because more people are becoming more aware of how to deal with the army effectively and so it becomes harder for the longbowmen to "dodge" incoming nasties.

Peter Pig do some nice 15mm stakes too.

I've only used them once though - just too many points for HYW English. Might be worthwhile with lower numbers of LB?