Slitherine

Average drilled mercenary knights can know be take as undrilled superior (I assume, waiting for fixes before investing).

What about dismounts? In Storm of Arrows, the dismounts are specified as average drilled for at least three lists from a quick scan - later books do it better be specifying "as mounted type".

That's a crying shame. Why not just make all troop types superior? Half the fun of playing a "sub-optimal" army is dealing with its limitations. But I can't comment since I don't have the rules yet.
But my personal opinion is: If you pay for the knights as undrilled superior, the dismounts should be undrilled superior as well.

gozerius wrote:That's a crying shame. Why not just make all troop types superior? Half the fun of playing a "sub-optimal" army is dealing with its limitations. But I can't comment since I don't have the rules yet.
But my personal opinion is: If you pay for the knights as undrilled superior, the dismounts should be undrilled superior as well.

Yes, its an oversight. One for the errata.

gozerius wrote:That's a crying shame. Why not just make all troop types superior? Half the fun of playing a "sub-optimal" army is dealing with its limitations.

For knights, being average is not so much a case of being sub-optimal, more just don't work from a top-down view. If you were to classify knights relative to each other only, then the bulk would be "average", a few poor and a few superior.

But in relation to every other troop type in the game? First, knights were supposed to be the cream of the cream, so superior makes sense. Second, they work in the the game as being high-cost, small units (unless you really want to spend close on 20-25% of your troop AP on a single 6-base BG!) used for impact and melee combat. If they are superior, this works. If they are average, it doesn't, they're far to fragile for such a high-cost unit.

The main beneficiary will be Condotta, which goes from "oh god, why did I choose to use this, what was I thinking"(*) to finally turning, after years and years of being crapped on by various rulesets(**), into something approaching a decent medieval army. If everyone else's knights are superior, having to bring 10 average to the party is not a good start (see "oh god, why did I choose to use this, what was I thinking"). I don't think it makes the list a world beater, but I'd rather have one more viable army to look at instead of turning the page when I reach the list.

gozerius wrote:But my personal opinion is: If you pay for the knights as undrilled superior, the dismounts should be undrilled superior as well.

I would argue the same, but it should be made clear, if it hasn't been.


* Although civil wars can be fun.
** I believe the main argument for them being average is condotta captains were "conservative" with their troops. Well, being average has the opposite effect, they die even faster Plus under the current lists, the Battle of Arbedo doesn't work. This was the battle that convinced the Swiss to switch to using pike in greater numbers, but not if they used FoG-AM Instead you have superior Swiss HW against the dismounted average Italian HW... (although arguably they should be offensive spear).

Ah, Richard posted whilst I was writing. I assume you mean, yes, they dismount as mounted type.

peterrjohnston wrote:Ah, Richard posted whilst I was writing. I assume you mean, yes, they dismount as mounted type.

Yep.

rbodleyscott wrote:

gozerius wrote:That's a crying shame. Why not just make all troop types superior? Half the fun of playing a "sub-optimal" army is dealing with its limitations. But I can't comment since I don't have the rules yet.
But my personal opinion is: If you pay for the knights as undrilled superior, the dismounts should be undrilled superior as well.

Yes, its an oversight. One for the errata.

Bodley Scott announces that in FOG 2 all troops types will be superior!