Slitherine

Am curious, depending on army, what terrain do you choose at start and try to place?

For me:

Ancient Spanish w initiative: -hilly- large brush; 2 gentle hills w brush; 1 gentle hill w plantation, 1 uneven ground (broken) or maybe gully
............. wout initiative: any rough available!!

LR Romans w initiative: -agricultural- (since no rough compulsories)...normal uneven field; 2 open; coast or 1 gentle hill (open)
............ wout initiative: anything open if available!!!

Also...reasons for choosing a river over a coast???

Your thoughts/choices/desires/whims???

dan t.

Tough to say. would depend not only on your army, but also the enemy army. As a rule, armies that have lots of LF/MF should clutter the board with as much uneven/rough/difficult as possible. armies with cav, knights and heavy foot want to keep things open. Maybe try to restrict the flanks with river/coast. The key is to try to make the battlefield hospitible to the army you are running and less so for your opponent.

For now, we are playing the starter armies in Sword and Scimitars. For now it's the Later Crusades and the Sejluk Turks. The Turks have the Steppes as a 4th choice. We usually pick agricultural or developed sometimes hilly.

QWe did the steppes choice last night he picked Steppes. Brush, a couple of broken grounds, 3 open choices, a great hill and 1 more brush....I placed the 2nd brush on my side (a LUCKY roll). THEN he rolled a 6

In far too many games, the norm is half or more of my choices wind up in my opponent's half when they roll to move them.

I like brush....my opponent couldn't scream on through it. Since it was on my left flank, near the middle of the table, he tried sending his skimisher bows through it. They kept rolling and "evading" (looked like fleeing to me) when my cav charged them

I like being forced by dice rolls to "think about what to do in spite of the terrain and or it's placement". IMHO terrain usually did in at least a small way "favor" one of the fighting armies.

It's a game, it's fun, it makes us think

LR Romans w initiative: -agricultural- (since no rough compulsories)...normal uneven field; 2 open; coast or 1 gentle hill (open)
............ wout initiative: anything open if available!!!
=================================================================

It depends on the foe, as frankly the LR Romans don't do so bad in rough terrain. Against Seleucids more rough, against spanish less so....

IanB3406 wrote:LR Romans w initiative: -agricultural- (since no rough compulsories)...normal uneven field; 2 open; coast or 1 gentle hill (open)
............ wout initiative: anything open if available!!!
=================================================================

It depends on the foe, as frankly the LR Romans don't do so bad in rough terrain. Against Seleucids more rough, against spanish less so....

Agreed. LRR can do decently in disordering terrain.

With that in mind I had one battle running LR Romans against Indo-Greeks. I won initiative and decided for Hilly Terrain, figuring that the legionaries would do better in terrain then the pike. Wound up with a steep hill in front of my deployment area that the Indo-Greeks got to first with an MF bow/sword BG and a large gentle hill that ended up smack in their deployment area. I wound up avoiding the big hill while sending some Spanish MF to try and take the steep hill from the bowmen. They failed.

So much for using terrain to my advantage


Cheers,

Dale

So much for using terrain to my advantage

Been there Dale. Nothing bites like winning the initiative against the odds, picking the perfect terrain to fight your opponent and then have the placement die rolls go completely against you. Well as they say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy