Slitherine

The following point is being given a topic of its own as the other points in the original post are to be implemented.

For every base of Medium/Heavy Artillery in an army 6 bases of foot Battle Troops must be taken.

As there has been feedback as to how this would affect eastern armies - which I think really means Ottomans and Mughals - we are looking at an alternative and will post shortly.

As I have said before, I don't like this restriction.
It has never really been a problem in competitions over here, although we play far fewer games among a much smaller pool of players.

I would vote against it, however, if something is needed, how about:
For every base of Medium/Heavy Artillery in an army greater than the minimum, 6 bases of foot Battle Troops must be taken.

This reduces the number of foot needed to field a large battery which should hopefully help Ottomans and Mughals who do this to allow for a greater number of cavalry, but also means that European armies which want to field a lot of artillery still has to take a reasonable number of foot (4 BGs of 6 foot for 3BGs of 2 artillery if, like most European armies, they have 2 compulsory artillery).

nikgaukroger wrote:The following point is being given a topic of its own as the other points in the original post are to be implemented.

For every base of Medium/Heavy Artillery in an army 6 bases of foot Battle Troops must be taken.

As there has been feedback as to how this would affect eastern armies - which I think really means Ottomans and Mughals - we are looking at an alternative and will post shortly.

You know what, you've done the deed with the Duty and Glory changing DH minimums, you could always say:

For every base of Medium/Heavy Artillery in an army 6 bases of foot Battle Troops must be taken, except in blah blah and blah armies.

Nik, rather than 'For every base of Medium/Heavy Artillery in an army 6 bases of foot Battle Troops must be taken' if you want to set a minimum I believe it should be 'For every base of Medium/Heavy Artillery in an army, 4 bases of foot Battle Troops must be taken'.

I like DavidT's suggestion, if you want to go beyond the minimum you have to have extra foot.

Whilst we are not convinced that the original suggestion is wrong, an alternative one we would consider is 12 bases for 2 or 3 base (med/hvy) artillery BGs and 18 for 4 base ones (otherwise I think 4 base artillery BGs are getting too much of a "discount").

nikgaukroger wrote:Whilst we are not convinced that the original suggestion is wrong, an alternative one we would consider is 12 bases for 2 or 3 base (med/hvy) artillery BGs and 18 for 4 base ones (otherwise I think 4 base artillery BGs are getting too much of a "discount").

Make it 10 bases and we're talking....

Mr Mad's suggestion works for me.

nikgaukroger wrote:Whilst we are not convinced that the original suggestion is wrong, an alternative one we would consider is 12 bases for 2 or 3 base (med/hvy) artillery BGs and 18 for 4 base ones (otherwise I think 4 base artillery BGs are getting too much of a "discount").

We're going with this one.

nikgaukroger wrote:

nikgaukroger wrote:Whilst we are not convinced that the original suggestion is wrong, an alternative one we would consider is 12 bases for 2 or 3 base (med/hvy) artillery BGs and 18 for 4 base ones (otherwise I think 4 base artillery BGs are getting too much of a "discount").

We're going with this one.

OK, and how is that one going to be worded to handle multiple artilery units?

"For each Battle Group of Medium or Heavy Artillery, and army must contain:

- 12 stands of infantry, if the artillery BG is 2-3 stands
- 18 stands of infantry, if the artillery BG is 4 stands

Example:

An army that wishes to take 2 BGs of 3 Medium artillery must have 24 stands of infantry (12 + 12).
An army that wishes to take 2 BGs of 2 Medium artillery plus 1 BG of 2 Heavy artillery must have 36 stands of infantry (12 + 12 + 12).
An army that wishes to take 1 BG of 4 Medium artillery plus 1 BG of 2 Heavy artillery must have 30 stands of infantry (18 + 12)."

nikgaukroger wrote:

nikgaukroger wrote:Whilst we are not convinced that the original suggestion is wrong, an alternative one we would consider is 12 bases for 2 or 3 base (med/hvy) artillery BGs and 18 for 4 base ones (otherwise I think 4 base artillery BGs are getting too much of a "discount").

We're going with this one.

Jhykronos wrote:

nikgaukroger wrote:

nikgaukroger wrote:Whilst we are not convinced that the original suggestion is wrong, an alternative one we would consider is 12 bases for 2 or 3 base (med/hvy) artillery BGs and 18 for 4 base ones (otherwise I think 4 base artillery BGs are getting too much of a "discount").

We're going with this one.

OK, and how is that one going to be worded to handle multiple artilery units?

"For each Battle Group of Medium or Heavy Artillery, and army must contain:

- 12 stands of infantry, if the artillery BG is 2-3 stands
- 18 stands of infantry, if the artillery BG is 4 stands

Example:

An army that wishes to take 2 BGs of 3 Medium artillery must have 24 stands of infantry (12 + 12).
An army that wishes to take 2 BGs of 2 Medium artillery plus 1 BG of 2 Heavy artillery must have 36 stands of infantry (12 + 12 + 12).
An army that wishes to take 1 BG of 4 Medium artillery plus 1 BG of 2 Heavy artillery must have 30 stands of infantry (18 + 12)."

We may just steal that wording

nikgaukroger wrote:

Jhykronos wrote:OK, and how is that one going to be worded to handle multiple artilery units?

"For each Battle Group of Medium or Heavy Artillery, and army must contain:

- 12 stands of infantry, if the artillery BG is 2-3 stands
- 18 stands of infantry, if the artillery BG is 4 stands

Example:

An army that wishes to take 2 BGs of 3 Medium artillery must have 24 stands of infantry (12 + 12).
An army that wishes to take 2 BGs of 2 Medium artillery plus 1 BG of 2 Heavy artillery must have 36 stands of infantry (12 + 12 + 12).
An army that wishes to take 1 BG of 4 Medium artillery plus 1 BG of 2 Heavy artillery must have 30 stands of infantry (18 + 12)."

We may just steal that wording

Just to clarify, is it the intent that anything on foot count? Could I have 4 stands of artillery and 18 stands of LI/Dragoons?

I don't know why you'd want to, but do we want to make it battle troops, or any infantry will do?

ravenflight wrote:Just to clarify, is it the intent that anything on foot count? Could I have 4 stands of artillery and 18 stands of LI/Dragoons?

I don't know why you'd want to, but do we want to make it battle troops, or any infantry will do?

Thus far, tournaments using this rule have always specified battle troops (which I believe includes mob), and excluded light foot/dragoons from the calculation. There was a suggestion that this was originally an underhand means of restricting one (very successful) tournament player who was fielding an overwhelmingly cavalry/dragoon force with heavy guns and minimal foot. I don't know how true that is, but from an historical viewpoint, it does seem odd to have heavy (or even medium) guns operating as part of a force with few or no full-fat infantry in this era. I think the proposal is good.

ravenflight wrote:I don't know why you'd want to, but do we want to make it battle troops, or any infantry will do?

My understanding is the intention is battle troops, so replace all references to infantry with "foot battle troops".

RonanTheLibrarian wrote: There was a suggestion that this was originally an underhand means of restricting one (very successful) tournament player who was fielding an overwhelmingly cavalry/dragoon force with heavy guns and minimal foot.

Actually, the way I understood it, it wasn't the "one successful player" that was the problem, it was all the (generally less skilled) imitators making it so half or more of the armies you'd face in a given competition had the same abnormal troop selection. Not a healthy circumstance for gaming in general, and especially for supposedly "historical" gaming.

RonanTheLibrarian wrote:

ravenflight wrote:Just to clarify, is it the intent that anything on foot count? Could I have 4 stands of artillery and 18 stands of LI/Dragoons?

I don't know why you'd want to, but do we want to make it battle troops, or any infantry will do?

Thus far, tournaments using this rule have always specified battle troops (which I believe includes mob), and excluded light foot/dragoons...

Jhykronos wrote:

ravenflight wrote:I don't know why you'd want to, but do we want to make it battle troops, or any infantry will do?

My understanding is the intention is battle troops, so replace all references to infantry with "foot battle troops".

Good, then I'm glad I bought it up.

Thus this would be:

Jhykronos wrote:
OK, and how is that one going to be worded to handle multiple artilery units?

"For each Battle Group of Medium or Heavy Artillery, and army must contain:

- 12 stands of battle infantry, if the artillery BG is 2-3 stands
- 18 stands of battle infantry, if the artillery BG is 4 stands

Example:

An army that wishes to take 2 BGs of 3 Medium artillery must have 24 stands of battle infantry (12 + 12).
An army that wishes to take 2 BGs of 2 Medium artillery plus 1 BG of 2 Heavy artillery must have 36 stands of battle infantry (12 + 12 + 12).
An army that wishes to take 1 BG of 4 Medium artillery plus 1 BG of 2 Heavy artillery must have 30 stands of battle infantry (18 + 12)."

Emphasis mine.

It is indeed Foot Battle Troops.