Slitherine

Having used Sassanids in my first two games I have been looking at how a skirmishing cavalry army works within the rules and would make the following observations.

Against heavy foot it is very difficult to get enough shooting casualties on a unit to cause the loss of a base. With bow armed skirmishing light horse in two ranks you only get one dice per element frontage. So against a unit of 8 pikemen in 4 ranks you need to hit with both dice to cause a cohesion test, but no chance of a death roll. You need to overlap the pikemen by at least one element to have a chance at causing a death roll.

The situation with cavalry is not much better. In order to maintain the ability to skirmish you have to be in one rank and this also gives you one shooting dice per element frontage.

I cannot rely on shooting to disrupt the heavy foot, so perhaps I can goal them into charging and jump on them while they are disordered.

The rules make a big thing about shock troops taking a CMT test not to charge. But from what I can see there is no disadvantage in not charging skirmishers. Even if the unit throws a 6 for it??™s VMR and moves further that it??™s normal move, its formation is not effected in anyway and if it??™s charge ends within charge range, it can charge again in its next move. While all this is happening the evaders can only shoot in their own move.

I not suggesting that you up the effect of shooting, but I do think there should be some negative effect on a units formation for being goaled in to charging skirmishers they have no hope of contacting.

Sorry but my very first army was Sassanids (blame Pete Gilder) and they hold a special place in this old mans memory.

Don M

Your concerns are noted, Don, but I will make the following observations:

1) The aim of shooting in AoW is not to cause lost bases but to cause cohesion tests. Base loss is only intended to cause minor (chancy) attrition when under prolonged heavy missile fire. Where possible, the aim (of the missile based army) is to bring enough shooters to bear to force the enemy BG to test every bound, thus causing progressive deterioration of cohesion. The enemy general cannot rally them in the interbound after they dropped a level.

2) If an enemy unit is caused to FRAGMENT, then it can be charged even by light horse with a fair chance of success. It must take a test not to break immedately it is charged, and if it stands the light horse fight at full dice vs FRAGMENTED enemy. Even better to charge a FRAGMENTED (or even DISRUPTED) BG with heavy cavalry.

3) Shooting at enemy with equal numbers of missile men can cause a lucky cohesion drop, but will be generally ineffective. We do not want horse archer armies to completely dominate the game - they are more than effective enough in our opinion after numerous play-test games.

4) Taking on the enemy heavy foot head on is not the best way to win with a horse archer army. They cannot damage you if you are in 1-rank deep "skirmish" formation, but nor are you likely to damage them much. This is intentional, is in our opinion realistic and makes for game balance.

5) Sassanids are a particularly effective army under the rules, and extremely hard to beat with Romans, as several play-test games have demonstrated.

6) We made a design decision not to delay the game for "rallying back", rallying after evades, rallying after charges, rallying after pursuits etc.

Under old style rules both the chargers and the evaders would have to rally, and in an alternate move system this simply causes too much delay, for no real benefit.

7) The disadvantage of being forced to charge is that the heavy troops can be pulled out of line - since even if all the BGs in a line charge, they won't all charge the same distance. Light horse can then easily wheel to concentrate fire on the leading BG. Thus, although there is no disordering effect on the individual BGs, there is a major disordering effect on the Battle Line.

I could go on.....

Richard,

Thank you for your reply.

I hope you understand that I am only trying to get to grips with the rules and the way they work. I am also work on the theory that others may be thinking the same as me.

Thanks again.

Don M

For sure...keep it all coming Don.

Si