Slitherine

I am putting together an Arab army and it seems all the armies from the Crusader period are stuck with having to include a 3rd rank of LF archers with their HF. These seem to be the worst pts value in the game if my understanding of them is correct, namely:

• Only shoot at impact phase against mounted.
• Get one dice per base, but this drops to one dice per 2 bases against anything but Lt horse.
• Against heavy armoured knights they get a –POA plus a second –POA for shooting in combat, i.e. need a 6 to hit, assuming they are average quality. If poor quality they would need to roll a 6 then roll a second 6, i.e. 1/36 chance to hit.

Is anything above incorrect?

They are pretty useless for fighting but do enlarge the BG:s size which is good for morale.

Personally I think their role could have been reflected by a + POA at impact (only if charged and except vs heavy armoured troops) instead of shooting. But then im just a novice at making rules

Note they generally lose 1 per 2 in melee, but this means if one base is lost and a single LF steps forward to the second rank it fights with a full die and at the front-rank POA.

Bigger size cheaply is useful.

LF support shooters are one dice per two bases even against LH.
Although their shooting against armoured targets is not great, any extra dice is not to be sniffed at. Perhaps more importantly, the LF add extra bases to a BG, usually for a points cost less than that of the front ranks. Getting a cheap third rank is not being 'stuck with them' it is a big bonus.

• Get one dice per base, but this drops to one dice per 2 bases against anything but Lt horse.

A common misunderstanding of the losing dice rules due to the (reasonable) assumption that "LH vs LF" means "any fight between LH and LF". They should be interpreted as:

Light foot don't lose dice if the dice are to hit LF;
LH don't lose dice if the dice are to hit LH or LF;
LF and LH don't lose dice if the dice are to hit any FRAGMENTED enemy.

LF support shooters are one dice per two bases even against LH.

Technically,for support shooting in impact they get one dice per base, then lose one dice per 2 (so effectively you round up the odd base).
This is not the same as shooting in the shooting phase, which is 1 dice per 2 bases (rounding down).

A + POA would be much to large an effect in the rules.

4 wide the LF give you 2 extra dice at impact and this is quite significant in raising your odds - but not as muc as a + - form gut feel more like 1/3rd of a +. But then in boost your size so you suffer less CT effect when you lose.

The combination makes for a decent improvement in a spear block IMO.

Si

shall wrote:A + POA would be much to large an effect in the rules.

4 wide the LF give you 2 extra dice at impact and this is quite significant in raising your odds - but not as muc as a + - form gut feel more like 1/3rd of a +. But then in boost your size so you suffer less CT effect when you lose.

The combination makes for a decent improvement in a spear block IMO.

Si

Si, no offense intended, none at all, honest.

But that is so garbled it's almost impossible to make heads or tails of it.

"But then in boost your size so you suffer less CT effect when you lose." Say what???

You've used dashes in place of commas, and wound up with one next to a plus sign so it looks like you are saying "plus or minus".

And overall the post is just clear as mud.

** Translation **

4 wide the LF give you 2 extra dice at impact and this is quite significant in raising your odds. This is not as significant as a + PoA though. From gut feel it's more like 1/3rd of a PoA. But then the boost in size means you suffer less in the CT when you lose.

shall wrote:A + POA would be much to large an effect in the rules.

4 wide the LF give you 2 extra dice at impact and this is quite significant in raising your odds - but not as muc as a + - form gut feel more like 1/3rd of a +. But then in boost your size so you suffer less CT effect when you lose.

The combination makes for a decent improvement in a spear block IMO.

Si

You are probably right.

But at the same time the LF supporting archers as they are only works to beef up moral basically which feels rather strange considering for example the Principate romans - i do not belive that some auxilla archers spread out thin behind the lines of the legionaries boosted their morale by much. But then again nobody probably knows anything about that and the boost in moral may be translated in a greater resilience of the BG due to the effect of the archers on the foe.

Back to topic: LF supporting archers can be a significant boost to morale (less risk to get negative modifiers due to "hits per x bases") at a low cost in points. I belive that to be most important in 4 unit BG "uppgraded" to 6 unit BG by adding supporting archers. At the same time the do still cost and one must be mindful of that and the optimal use of points in the army as a whole.

Attempt at mud clearing .... I did that one rushing out to a meeting ...woops!! ............

A + POA would be much too large an effect in the rules. That would be roughly equal to a superior upgrade re-roll in its effect.

With a 4 wide spear group (so 8 bases in 2 ranks), the 4 LF behind give you 2 extra dice at impact and this is quite significant in raising your odds of holding a charge at impact - but not as much as a +. My gut feel is that it feels more more like 1/3rd of a + POA. But then in boosting your size of BG cheaply you suffer less CT effect when you lose (because getting 1 hit per 3 bases is harder to achieve with 12 bases on the 4 base fighting frontage).

The combination makes for a decent improvement in a spear block IMO. However with these you are spending points on "back up" troops rather than frontline punch. So overall it increases your resilience, but reduces your offensive power. Personally I go for Romans with no supporting Ps and just have more legionaries. In my experience you can never have too many...

Si

4 LT archers costing 20pts is a very expensive way to get a single 2/6 chance of scoring a single hit during the impact phase (only against mounted). I think that the rules should have given a discount for LT used as a 3rd rank. It’s a shame that the rules have chosen to over price this type of troop as a player would be nuts to ever field 3rd rank LT archers.

Mike, what about the fact that the BG is larger? 8 bases without the LF archers. 12 bases with it. For Ave troops this helps the Auto break but more importantly it raises the number of hits that have to be taken before triggering the 1 HP2B / 1 HP3B and 25% loss -1s on the CT. If the LF are backing Spearsmen, not being disorganised by the initial impact is vital to survival, as swordsmen don't get the plus vs STEADY spearmen. It gets worse if after the melee the mounted are still there because the Spearsmen are fragmented.

I would say give it a try both ways - 20 points for saving a Spearmen BG seems cheap to me.

4 LT archers costing 20pts is a very expensive way to get a single 2/6 chance of scoring a single hit during the impact phase (only against mounted). I think that the rules should have given a discount for LT used as a 3rd rank. It’s a shame that the rules have chosen to over price this type of troop as a player would be nuts to ever field 3rd rank LT archers.

Games so far would suggets the points price is about right. They boost the BG size significantly. In addition once you lose a few legionaries 2 LF give 1 dice in melee at the factors of the legionaries. This pretty good valueat 10pts for an otherwise 14 pt legionary dice. If you haven't tried it much try 4 or 5 games with the LF and I imagine you will find them pretty good value.

Its just my personal philosophy is to design armies to win big as much as possible and accept the risks that go with doing that.

Si

If we have opinions in favour of both sides then one can conclude that the points cost must be about right.

Related question...

Can you deploy the BG with 1 rank of non-archer foot, 1 rank of archer foot, and 1 rank of non-archer foot (basically, squeeze the archers into the 2nd rank). Would this allow the archers to shoot in the shooting phase (which might improve their utility somewhat)?

Jason_Langlois wrote:Related question...

Can you deploy the BG with 1 rank of non-archer foot, 1 rank of archer foot, and 1 rank of non-archer foot (basically, squeeze the archers into the 2nd rank). Would this allow the archers to shoot in the shooting phase (which might improve their utility somewhat)?

Yes you can, but . . . .

Marc

but what ?
why not put them in the front rank and reform when moving?
are there any rules on the structure of mixed BGs?

The problem is, you can't 'reform' that easily. There is no way to exchange ranks, so the only way to get the LF from the 1st or 2nd to the 3rd rank is by expanding and contracting. Certainly possible but it seems unlikely to me that you will have that much time if you are already in shooting range.

Not much point trying to get the LF archers into a front rank as they only get 2 dice with shooting. The downside is that the other 2 ranks of HF are treated like LF if anyone attacks them. No way does having a couple of shooting dice compensate for the risk of the BG getting into combat with a front rank of LF.

The point of 2 LF in the second rank and more HF in the back rank would be to throw a shooting die in Impact against mounted, but reduce Melee dice by 1 because they lose 1 per 2 dice in Melee.

If a front rank base is lost, then one of the HF in the back can fill in to the front rank, but the LF are still down a die.

I probably shouldn't say this without checking all the applicable rules, but what if 1 LF is in the second rank in one file and one LF is in the third rank in the other file? Both shoot in Impact, no dice are lost in Melee, and the third rank can feed into melee as an overlap in melee if eligible, giving a total of 5 dice in melee with HF factors. Is this too Byzantine to be allowed?