Slitherine

After following madaxemans reports, playing in club leagues and taking part in several competitions, I now have to ask if the rules are too generous to light horse/cavalry armies.
Having seen Alistair's dominance of the standings, at our club we have seen more and more players going to light horse armed with bow and cavalry with bow/sword. I don't mind this too much as a lot of them are coming to me for a painting service!
However, I can't believe that it is right that the rules are reversing the role of technology, and instead of getting troops with guns, people are abandoning this and loading up with bows.
The crux of the matter is that armies with light horse and cavalry can move fast enough to concentrate where they Want to fight. Because they can all evade, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to catch and force them to fight. Their mobility means they can concentrate on one unit, and pelt it with arrows. Although this is less likely to cause casualties, it will cause cohesion tests, normally with the minus for number of hits. .,then it's rinse and repeat until it falls down the cohesion ladder and routs. While this is going on, the rest of your army is being blocked and screened off by more light horse.
Coupled with this, due to the number of horses they have, they are normally getting the plus on initiative at the start of the game. So if they win the dice roll, they normally choose Steppe terrain, which means there isn't going to be anything to secure your flanks on.
Obviously, this is more an issue of open competitions or leagues, but there aren't enough of us with enough armies to sustain specific books/ periods. Although,given the speed that people are accumulating Ottoman, Crimean Tartar and Chinese armies, this may not be the case for long.
I don't have an extensive enough historical knowledge, but I believed that as gunpowder weapons became available, they were adopted as quickly as possible ( probably because they were easier to train people on than bows) and light horse became more and more marginalised and weren't really able to stand in the line on the battlefield. With open competitions, the opposite seems to be occurring. Maybe the light horse are too resistant to firepower, and should not get the minus when being shot at with firearms.
Please don't think I am just whining as a sore loser. I have really enjoyed fog r and am just getting a bit depressed that the light horse and cavalry armies are being seen as the optimal "winning" choice and all the variety is being drained out of playing it.

really? MY LH/Cav armies get shot to pieces by firearms & cannon then ridden down by pistol armed cuirassiers. I think you are just dealing with a few very good players choosing those type of armies.

Yes in our little group bow armed cav has had a pretty mixed time.

Bow armed foot on the other hand....

Martin

Try 900 points
Actually an aggressive use of terrain has a significant impact on these armies.

Alasdir also use cuirassier among others which is probably more accurately considered by europeans as the pinnacle of technology.

My attempts at using the Ottomans ended up as the worst result in any comp I played in, ever... And I can look back on my losses vs Bw/Sw Cv armies and put most of them down to poor coordination between my foot and mounted, lack of imagination in deployment and being over aggressive with my foot.

Also, Alasdair did not do so well at Britcon this year, as other people have also started to learn these lessons.

Finally, if Bw/Sw Cv armies get very popular it might mean my Poles get an outing or two. What's not to like!

Yes, these things tend to go in cycles. When the rules first came out the 30 YW Germans seemed dominant, then it looked like Cuirassiers were the way to go. People seem to have found ways to counter that as the top 5 at Britcon were all using mostly foot armies. Bw/Sw cavalry armies have had their successes too, principally in early themed tournaments. Now people are concerned that bows are too powerful, which might lead to a rise in armoured foot to counter it.

Also, it's probably sensible not to extrapolate too much from the successes of a single dominant player. When Graham Evans introduced the swarming Romans in Fog AM there was a lot of concern that the game was broken. Then a lot of the imitators realised that the army alone was not a recipe for success and only a few very good players could actually get it to work.

kevinj wrote:When Graham Evans introduced the swarming Romans in Fog AM there was a lot of concern that the game was broken. Then a lot of the imitators realised that the army alone was not a recipe for success and only a few very good players could actually get it to work.

That one may well be down to the army - on the basis that I won one competition and placed in another using it