Slitherine

Would it be worth considering bringing in elements of the FOGAM V2 set up procedure. I am thinking primarily of having won the initiative, surrendering it to deploy second and therefore move first. This would benefit those armies who need to trade space for time shooting like Ottomans. In FOGR the triple move by enemy mounted moving first really cuts down their space which seems odd as they supposedly won the initiative. But then again is this part of the FOGR philosophy of reducing the effectiveness of old fashioned weapons and tactics?

At the moment these armies may benefit from having lots of mounted giving them PBI modifiers they perversely don't want and avoid decent commanders for the same reason; they need to lose the PBI if they want to move first.

I've got two views on this:

Firstly - I would think that borrowing too much from FOG:AMv2/3/4/or whatever starts to become more like a FoG:Rv2 which I don't think we're really wanting to do; and,

Secondly - if an army has tonnes of mounted (>24, enough to get a +2 as per your concern that they get initiative, but can't move first) isn't the sheer number of mounted going to be something that limits the enemy (with presumably less mounted) diving head-long into the fray? I mean, if I lose initiative with 1 or 2 BG's of Determined Horse, I'm hardly going to delve into harms way for fear of losing the troops by being outnumbered. Maybe you've experienced different?

Vespasian28 wrote:Would it be worth considering bringing in elements of the FOGAM V2 set up procedure. I am thinking primarily of having won the initiative, surrendering it to deploy second and therefore move first.

IIRC this is being abandoned for FoG:AM v3 which suggests it may not be a good thing to copy. However, I'd mainly say no on the basis that it isn't needed.

Have to say I'm with Vespasian on this - never understood why "winning the initiative" gave you no choice.

RonanTheLibrarian wrote:Have to say I'm with Vespasian on this - never understood why "winning the initiative" gave you no choice.

You do have a choice. The choice of what terrain you're going to fight in.

My point is raising this is that some armies prefer to trade space for time to shoot. Getting choice of terrain doesn't give you that option. Also your opponent may have less mounted but I have seen small numbers of mounted decimate more numerous inferior types. In ancient, medieval and later warfare we have seen armies that use space to carry out attritional attacks which are very difficult to replicate on a 6 x 4 board and if your opponent moves his mounted first you've lost a big chunk of that space by the end of the first turn.

So, if not needed how do other people use Ottomans, Tartars et al without just praying to lose the initiative?