Slitherine

I lost a game to Dave Handley last night. This is nothing new, but it was our first FoG game. My Dailami were beaten by Dave's Huns. Dave is of course a higly ranked player. He is also very good at seeing which armies will work and organising them. His army consisted of one four of cavalry and nine fours of bow swordmen light horse. I began to wonder what could beat an army like this.

In our game the armoured Dailami infantry survived against the shooting. My only effective units to attack with were three fours' of bow armed cavalry. However, they are too slow to catch light horse when the opposing player positions his troops sensibly. Dave used the light horse groups in pairs, usually at an angle to each other, to maximise shooting on one target. I found my BGs were repeatedly outshot. Charging to relieve the pressure only exposed them to the returning light horse coming in from two directions to renew their shooting. The drops in morale level mounted up faster than I could get generals to bolster them and my army withered, unable to do much damage to the Huns.

This was a classic light horse shoot and run battle by a good player. However, it felt somewhat one sided. Is there anything other than another light horse army that has a hope against a light horse army?

It did occur to me that evaders rally very quickly. They come back shooting on the very next bound against the chargers. The latter are left exposed ahead of their lines at the end of their charge. In effect, charging to drive off the shooters leaves the attackers worse off. If mounted chargers break off from foot after an unsuccessful charge, it is reasonable to have mounted who fail to contact evaders rally back from their charge during the joint action phase. This puts some distance between the opposing forces, simulating both sides regrouping before returning to the fight.

I would like to try my Bosphorans against something like Huns. I think what you need to beat them are foot archers and some reasonable cavalry and light horse of your own. Armoured foot are OK but really can't beat the Huns.

On Monday I fought a Roman army with 3 BG's of 6 Huns and 1 of 6 light spear light horse plus loads of lancers. I didn't have much trouble in dealing with the Huns using my own horse archers supported by cavalry lancers.

On the other hand when I used Swiss against shooty cavalry I felt utterly powerless much like it seems you did.

Hammy

Perhaps you should look at combining your troops actions in such a way that you can force the enemy horse to prolonged melee.

If you charge enemy L/H with a combination of your own foot and L/H, your opponent will not want to fight both your units, but if he evades he may be caught by your light horse.

You can do the same against his cavalry with your own cavalry units.

In a unit sorry BG based system it is the mix of your force and how you combine thier actions that should bring you success.

This may prove to be the most difficult part of the rules to learn

Don

On Monday one trick that worked really well was to put a BG of horse archers right in the face of the Huns and a BG of lancers in close support to one side of the LH BG. If the Huns fail a CMT then they can either fall back facing away or stand. If they stand in my next turn I charge with both BG's. The Huns really have to evade as if they don't the lancers will massacre them but if the evade they could get caught by my light horse.

It is definitley combined threats that hurt light horse based armies and to be honest they are quite expensive so combined threats shouldn't be that hard to achieve.

A combined threat would be nice, but with only one LH BG of my own, rather limited. Nowhere else was there a possiblity of catching them. In any case, the other eight LH groups would have been very active. It is the number of LH that makes the issue so much more difficult.

No comments about the rallying back? In the combined threat scenarion you are suggesting, the BG of the combined threat that charged the furthest would immediately be exposed to mass shooting when the evaders turned in their next bound.

rogerg wrote:No comments about the rallying back? In the combined threat scenarion you are suggesting, the BG of the combined threat that charged the furthest would immediately be exposed to mass shooting when the evaders turned in their next bound.

We are trying to avoid interrupting the flow of the game by make chargers, evaders and pursuers rally. Not only that but we are trying to avoid having to remember actions taken in previous turns.

If chargers don't have to rally, why should evaders?

In our game the armoured Dailami infantry survived against the shooting. My only effective units to attack with were three fours' of bow armed cavalry.

Use you cavalry in single rank against Light horse armies!

You cover more frontage.
Your shooting is as good.
You'll be better in combat (if you ever contact)
You can often charge 2 BG's at the same time.
The light horse will have to evade on each of your moves - halving the number of shots, and giving you time to rally any disorders.

Two replies

Richard:
I accept all your points about rallying and the game mechanics. Usually I do not advocate adding more rules, particularly when it means remembering something that happened in an earlier phase. I was looking for a mechanism that made it worthwhile to chase off shooters. It seems reasonable that there should be some sort of lull in the fighting while the evaders reorganise after running and the chargers recover their formation. My main issue is that the evading light horse immediately turn and deliver concentrated shooting on the chargers who are now a charge move ahead of their line. Rallying back puts some distance between the combatants and is not a great deal more difficult to remember than break offs.
It could possibly be done after the unsuccessful charge. If the rally was the lesser of a normal move and the charge distance, it could be combined with the charge move. On average dice you would not even have to move the troops if they were clearly not going to make contact.

Terry:
Single line is a thought. However, at the end of the charge, the single line is going to be a move ahead of its supports and will immediately get swamped by light horse shooters.

I am looking forward to seeing how this all plays out at Britcon in terms of army choice.

Terry:
Single line is a thought. However, at the end of the charge, the single line is going to be a move ahead of its supports and will immediately get swamped by light horse shooters.

If you push forwards with your larger units and charge with smaller units from further back, you should not get too dis-jointed.

Bare in mind that if you keep charging

1. The L/H can only shoot every other move.
2. If you are Disrupted, there is nothing to stop you trying to recover in the move you charged.
3. They will run out of table.

From the replies you have had to your posting, it would appear that most poeple who have played more games have come up with a tactic to deal with this problem. So perhaps the answer is practice, however after your first experience I can understand your reluctance to repeat the match up.

Good Luck

Don

Some good suggestions from Terry, Hammy and Don on how to counter this threat but it should set some alarm bells ringing.

Combine this post with Laurence's experience against Tartars and the success of the Tartars at Roll Call. Yes LH will always be difficult to pin down but should their shooting be so potentially devastaing against formed troops?

I know I'm in danger of sounding like a stuck record but I'd still like to see all LF & LH shooting reduced to 1 base in 3.

Pete

petedalby wrote:Combine this post with Laurence's experience against Tartars and the success of the Tartars at Roll Call....it should set some alarm bells ringing.

I have to say that I find this a tad ironic. We have a set of rules that allow historically successful armies to be successful (1st place Mongols, 2nd place Caesarian Romans, 3rd place Alexandrian Macedonians) and the victory in a tournament of perhaps the most militarily successful of all armies in the entire history of the world is supposed to ring alarm bells!

There were two Mongol armies at Roll Call, the other did not do nearly so well.

Even Andy's army (that won the comp) was marginally defeated in two of its four games.

In my game against them (in which Andy stated at the start that he was playing for a draw), if I had started my sweep a little earlier I would have driven them off the table (or forced them to fight) within the time limit despite using a narrow army (French Ordonnance). The Mongol shooting was dazzlingly ineffectual even though I was using protected foot 1 rank deep over much of my frontage. The total effect of the Mongol shooting was to kill 2 bases of my pikemen. All disruption was temporary and easily rectified. The Mongols themselves also lost 2 bases from my shooting, and had one of their cavalry units routed by combined longbow and handgun shooting. My army had no LH and no cavalry.

At Leeds my Ilkhanid Mongol army was swept off the battlefield by Terry's Assyrians - with such despatch that I conceded rather than suffer the ignominy of having my whole army evade off the table.

It is certainly frustrating to fight a mainly LH army, but this does not mean they are over-powerful. It is also entirely historically realistic.

rogerg wrote:Two replies

Richard:
I accept all your points about rallying and the game mechanics. Usually I do not advocate adding more rules, particularly when it means remembering something that happened in an earlier phase. I was looking for a mechanism that made it worthwhile to chase off shooters. It seems reasonable that there should be some sort of lull in the fighting while the evaders reorganise after running and the chargers recover their formation. My main issue is that the evading light horse immediately turn and deliver concentrated shooting on the chargers who are now a charge move ahead of their line. Rallying back puts some distance between the combatants and is not a great deal more difficult to remember than break offs.
It could possibly be done after the unsuccessful charge. If the rally was the lesser of a normal move and the charge distance, it could be combined with the charge move. On average dice you would not even have to move the troops if they were clearly not going to make contact.

Terry:
Single line is a thought. However, at the end of the charge, the single line is going to be a move ahead of its supports and will immediately get swamped by light horse shooters.

I am looking forward to seeing how this all plays out at Britcon in terms of army choice.

After your charge you will get a movement phase to push supporting troops forward back into line. In some cases if the LH have run away far enough and you have generals in the right place you'll be able to double move foot troops. This is a good way to continue pressure on the LH and get them backed against the table edge with no where to run. Solid lines and not getting pulled apart into little groups is the key to winning this fight without a signficant mounted contigent of you're own. Plus having superior armoured troops backed up by an IC.

petedalby wrote:Some good suggestions from Terry, Hammy and Don on how to counter this threat but it should set some alarm bells ringing.

Combine this post with Laurence's experience against Tartars and the success of the Tartars at Roll Call. Yes LH will always be difficult to pin down but should their shooting be so potentially devastaing against formed troops?

I know I'm in danger of sounding like a stuck record but I'd still like to see all LF & LH shooting reduced to 1 base in 3.

Pete

In my limited experience, skirmisher shooting is not very effective against armoured foot, but is very effective against protected foot (or anything that it shoots with zero POA) (two to three times the chance of causing a cohesion test according to a couple of quick calculations) . However, it may be the authors intention that foot with no armour, just a big shield, should get shot to bits by skirmishers. Also if I played the game again, I think I could take some measures to reduce my vulnerability to some extent, but I don't know if it would make any practical difference.

In general I feel that there is a fundamental problem in shooting balance in that the steps in effectiveness are too great. Therfore if hard targets are balanced then soft targets are too vulnerable, or if soft targets are balanced then hard targets are too invulnerable.

I wonder if giving everyone a +1 on Cohesion tests versus shooting would give better balance. It wouldn't affect armoured foot as they rarely have to test anyway. But it would reduce the vulnerability of those who are (allegedly) too vulnerable.

lawrenceg wrote:I wonder if giving everyone a +1 on Cohesion tests versus shooting would give better balance. It wouldn't affect armoured foot as they rarely have to test anyway. But it would reduce the vulnerability of those who are (allegedly) too vulnerable.

This is similar to a suggestion the authors previously considered (+1 on cohesion test if shot at only by skirmishers). However, we did not implement it because we came to the conclusion that shooting (including by skirmishers) is currently correctly balanced.

Perhaps further play testing and tournament results will convince us otherwise, but we have played an awful lot of games without any discrepancy so far becoming apparent to us. (And I, for one, rarely use an IC).

We have a set of rules that allow historically successful armies to be successful (1st place Mongols, 2nd place Caesarian Romans, 3rd place Alexandrian Macedonians) and the victory in a tournament of perhaps the most militarily successful of all armies in the entire history of the world is supposed to ring alarm bells!

There were two Mongol armies at Roll Call, the other did not do nearly so well.

Even Andy's army (that won the comp) was marginally defeated in two of its four games.

I never got to play either of the cavalry armies at Roll Call, I spent the weekend dealing with impact foot. Steve however did play the Tartar with his Greeks and he got a marginal win as well.

The L/F and L/H I played had great trouble against my heavy infantry and in particular my BG of 12 elements of average pikemen.


So it would appear that experienced players do no see all cavalry armies as a problem

Don

Cavalry armies are not a big problem. Andy's Tatars at Roll Coll had several cavalry BG's. There were a couple of moments in my loss to Andy when a different dice roll might have changed the outcome considerably. There were sufficient numbers of Tatar cavalry to make it a game decided by melee and not shooting.

The army that I think is challenging, is one with 9 of 10 BGs of superior LH. This is intended to win just by shooting. Its opponents that cannot shoot are obliged to charge to relieve the shooting pressure for a bound. This drags them more out of position and vulnerable to even more shooting. The number of LH BG's is significant. They need to cause cohesion step losses faster than opposing generals can remedy the problem.

The Hun in question had three TC's to keep the initiative roll down to +2 and it took the first move. In the game there was little significant terrain. Nine BGs of LH in 3 battle lines, starting at 15 MU in, took double moves right across to my half of the table. This was a well designed and well executed strategy.

I learned some things during the game and have picked up a few ideas from these discussions. It will be interesting to play something similar again.

The game balance issue is about how easy it is to win with this shoot and run tactic. If, after three and a half hours play, the dropping and bolstering of morale ends up with a couple of the shooters opponents fragmented, then there is not a problem. No-one is going to win a competition like this. Ideally I would suggest that with average luck, an army should have to actually close and fight to get that decisive win.

I would consider what armies did historically well against horse nomads, see if that is true in FoG, and then consider how can it be included in a competition army. The two main tactics were either tons of projectiles (such as the few succesful Romans against the Parthians, Achaemenid Persians or various Chinese armies) or plentiful melee-projectile cavalry (Byzantines, "civilized" nomads). If your army lacks those troop types, you are bound to have troubles. If you have a few, how you use them (and make sure they stay in fighting condition, supported by the rest of the army) will indicate how you do in battle. If you have many, you will have an edge in battle.

If you want to push them out of the table, an advance with heavy infantry in echelon, so that they alternate charging/being shot at and rallying may work. In that case, and that is an off the board skill, making bounds as fast as possible is a must, to get to the other edge within the time limit. With a general and rear support, most CTs will be at +1 and most rallies at 0.

José

A cool stream..........

First I have just read Attilla the hun on holiday and my first reaction is well done Dave for using huns as huns should be used..and well done FOG for having mechanism that make it possible.

When I read about the battles and their hosre and bow skills what they did is split into small batchs and concentrate trapîd fire onto a small part of a frontline to break it. The hungarian who has perfected hun bowfire can release 3 arrow in about 10 seconds in battle conditions - one forwards one side ways and one backwards. So the potential to damage an army this way was very real and is well refelcted in the rules. It was the pre firearm equikvaltn of a gattling gun with riders as the rotating barrels.

But huns are very vulnerable in FOG and ended up so at Chalons in real life too. How so:

Good foot troops moving at 3MU can drive them back into their camp if deployed 3 deep to cut down the risks for CTs.

Mass bowmen cause them massive problems.

Bow armed armoured cav in single rank make a mess for them as Terry suggests

Combine these wity some arab LH lancers and see how much fun it is for the huns to try get away from thel when you charge the LH and advance the bow armed cav to shoot them in the rear!

And the army is expensive fro each BG so a bit brittle - if it stqrst to crumble all hell breqks loose.

Chalons is a battle I am thinking of putting on at Britcon in fact and playign while umpiring. Here the solid Roman center withstood the hun fire and pushed them back into their camp. In FOG you can do this by putting foot troopps 3 deep with generals and rear support. Hun bowfire will do some damage of course but superior armoured foot troops wirth such +s will then walk through the fire and push them off table unless the huns are used with great skill

So let us first congratulate Dave on being a good Attila but not believe that huns or Mongols are invincible. In every set of rules I have seen such theories abound bt over time the coutner measures arrive.

If you want to prove that to yourself try HYW Enlish against Huns and see how the Huns do then!! My novice soon wiped my Mongols out with it and yes I was trying pretty hard. Harm foot almost invulnerable to normal bowfire. Mass longbowmen even without stakes make life very difficult for the LH. It as pretty ugly as th Mongol HC had to carry the day and the billmen/bowmen mix sorted them out.

As Qui Gon Yin says in the Phantom Menace "There is always a bigger fish!!

Si

shall wrote:Bow armed armoured cav in single rank make a mess for them as Terry suggests

I have been thinking about this a little, and I am not sure that it holds true. If you assume a 4 base BG of Superior Cavalry versus 2x4 bases BG of Superior Light Horse then the shooting is the same but the Cavalry have to split their fire between the two Lh BGs. For the cavalry 2 out of 2 hits are needed to force a CT on an individual Lh BG, whereas the Lh need to do 2 out of 4 hits to force a CT on the Cavalry. The Cavalry are going to on average take about twice as many CTs as the Lh (not quite but for the purposes of this discussion accurate enough). Also the Lh are never going to acculate more than 2 hits so will never have to take a death roll whereas the Cavalry can accumulate upto 4 hits. Eventually the Cavalry are going to lose a base.

Given all this I would not rely on Cavalry surviving long enough to shove Lh off the table before they sucumb to the better shooting of the Lh. Of course the Lh are a little more expensive than the cavalry so hopefully there is something to support the cavalry and even up the fight.

This was the case in my last game at Leeds, when I played Ottomans against Skythians. Isolated uints of Cavalry got swamped even by average Lh. I had to use my Poor Light Foot to drive off the Lh (once they had finished shooting a BG of Superior Armoured Cavalry down to Broken).

If you assume a 4 base BG of Superior Cavalry versus 2x4 bases BG of Superior Light Horse

We have soon discovered that four bases of Cavalry are something of a liability when they are isolated against shooting. If you are going to use Cavalry to hunt down light horse then they need to be in sixes.

If we assume the cav are armoured then they cost 18 points to the LH 10 (if they are not swordsmen), therefore I would expect 8 LH to duff up 4 Cav.

Those people who use "shooty Cav" armies had best not come across my jocks - I have swept across the table (well at 3 inches a go ambled) with seven BG's of ten Ave Prot Off Sp, with an IC and support then I am on a +3 on the CT and my opponent has to cause four hits before I even take a test and five hits to get a -1!

This was the case in my last game at Leeds, when I played Ottomans against Skythians. Isolated uints of Cavalry got swamped even by average Lh. I had to use my Poor Light Foot to drive off the Lh (once they had finished shooting a BG of Superior Armoured Cavalry down to Broken)

Guilty, when all else fails, you can always rely on good dice