New Game and some artillery questions

[jre]

After a short gaming break we managed to fit a game on Sunday morning, though it has taken me some time to recover enough to post.

Nikephorian Byzantine vs 100 year war English. Francisco wants to fine tune his Nikephorian Byzantine, and I still want to get a feeling for the late medieval armies. Including buying both light and heavy artillery, as they are quite cheap filler units.

The heavy artillery was set up far forward, in a field behind a hedge, in ambush, supported by a longbowmen BG that was intended as a sort of ???in-board??? flank march. The light artillery was on the far right side of the main battle line (2 longbow BGs and 2 men-at-arms BGs), intended to help unnerve the Byzantine skutatoi. The slow advance of the Byzantine foot (not sure of their chances in the melee, even bolstered by the Varangian guard) made them switch instead to menace the flank of the mercenary knights the Byzantines had hired, who advanced boldly against the English own Gascon knights.

The heavy artillery was a bit of a surprise weapon, being instrumental in breaking a LF BG (the one that came to check the ambush markers in that field) and then just cheering their own archers as they chased a light horse BG out of the field (the LH passed all the cohesion tests but was auto-broken for losing two bases). The light horse had advanced excessively to avoid that same artillery. On the other side a combined attack by Irish horse and Irish kern broke the other Byzantine light horse before their own light foot arrived in support.

The light artillery did little but tie up some knights for three bounds (while they were engaged also with the Gascon knights) because I forgot that if they move they cannot shoot. With an IC with the guns, they are quite manoeuvrable, and did help in unnerving my opponent into a premature charge.

Before the main armies engaged the Byzantines were already six points down, so they had to take risks. The combined armoured knights and cavalry lancers could not prevail against the heavier Gascons, although the Normans doggedly kept fighting till they reached their autobreak limit.

The only English loss was the light artillery. Aggressive bows are a curse to all unsupported skirmishers, and a few that are supported from a bit too far.

Some details concerning Artillery.

Is Artillery foot, for the compulsory break off of mounted? It was not significant as the artillery was disrupted, but it could have been.

Heavy artillery is totally static we assumed, so no turns nor changes of firing arc. With the rule change that limits their fire arc to one base (rather than the two bases they had earlier beyond effective range) I feel light artillery should be more expensive than heavy, despite the big range difference. At 30 points I am bound to use a lot of light guns in the next games to support bows. That -1 cohesion is a killer.

Is heavy artillery disordered in any terrain? If it does, does it have the same behaviour as light artillery? Can it deploy in difficult terrain (such as a village)?

It did not feel right as well to see artillery almost obliterate a light foot BG (who were supposed to be the less vulnerable troop type to them). A small BG will have to roll CT almost always, with a -2 (then a -3 when disrupted, etc.)

Jos?©