Slitherine

4 match reports now posted on Madaxeman.com to show how our Arab Swarm army fared at 900 ap.

I've also set up a new feature, "add your own comments on our performance" - so you can have a go at adding to the pearls of wisdom of regular expert analyst Hannibal as well...

..if you dare ..

Tim

madaxeman wrote:4 match reports now posted on Madaxeman.com to show how our Arab Swarm army fared at 900 ap.

I've also set up a new feature, "add your own comments on our performance" - so you can have a go at adding to the pearls of wisdom of regular expert analyst Hannibal as well...

..if you dare ..

Tim

Another entertaining set of AARPs. Thanks! I appreciated your comments on the cav heavy nature of the Byzantium and Islam theme--definitely gets me jazzed to do more cavalry on cavalry action in FoG.

Dale

This report makes me wonder how the early Byzantines would have done here. A little disappointed to see no one opted for them.

I think in an open competition the Early Byzantines are better than in a comp of lists designed to fight them.

Nice report Tim. I see your reports are now sponsored too

I'm planning to take the camera to Plymout for a report but your prose is hard to live up to!!

Steve P

philqw78 wrote:I think in an open competition the Early Byzantines are better than in a comp of lists designed to fight them.

Could be. The Early Byzantines can have decent numbers of lance armed cav between the Bucellari and Vandal Justiani etc. Infantry not so good, which seems historical, alas

I noticed no one fielded Thematic either.

Dale

daleivan wrote:I noticed no one fielded Thematic either.

Phil picked or list and looking at it after the event I don't think there is much I would change.

I might be tempted to drop a BG of armoured lancers to protected and possibly upgrade one of the average BGs to superior but other than that I liked the list (even though it was illegal ). As entered we had 3 BGs of 8 light foot bow and while BGs of 8 light foot bow are allowed you can only have 12 bow and 12 javelin. After a chat with Richard we changed one BG of LF bow to Javelin as that didn't change our number of BGs and we only noticed the issue after deployment in our second game.

I would go with (all average):
2 * 6 LF bow
2 * 6 LF javelin
1 * 6 LF sling
3 * 4 LH bow, sword
2 * 4 HF Dspear + 4 MF bow
2 * 4 Cv armoured lance, sword
1 * 4 Cv protected lance, sword
1 * 4 Cv armoured bow*, lance, sword (superior)
1 * 4 Kn armoured lance, sword (superior)
1 * 6 HF heavily armoured Ospear

That works out at 900 on the nail

I had a look at the other Byzantine lists and honestly couldn't find one I liked more than Nikes. I wouldn't mind the option fo downgrade some of the lancers to poor as they would do much the same job but the lists with poor lancers miss other key components like the Ospear Varangians.

Wot, no commanders

I'd be interested to see how it played without the Bow* chaps but with 2 BGs of Flankers instead - you'd need to lose 20 poinst somewhere though.

madaxeman wrote:
I've also set up a new feature, "add your own comments on our performance" - so you can have a go at adding to the pearls of wisdom of regular expert analyst Hannibal as well...

..if you dare ..

I dared

nikgaukroger wrote:Wot, no commanders

I'd be interested to see how it played without the Bow* chaps but with 2 BGs of Flankers instead - you'd need to lose 20 poinst somewhere though.

Good point, 4 TCs

I am not sure that the flankers would have helped that much but perhaps one of them would have been good. The trouble is where to find the points. The advantage of the bow* cavalry is that they are still lancers and are also superior.

nikgaukroger wrote:

madaxeman wrote:
I've also set up a new feature, "add your own comments on our performance" - so you can have a go at adding to the pearls of wisdom of regular expert analyst Hannibal as well...
..if you dare ..

I dared

Hannibalesque indeed!! I'll have to animate our 28mm Arab Leader's eyes as well for next time I think !!

If anyone who was at Usk fancies adding in their army list to the relevant page of the Wiki I've set up separate pages for every army in D&F that was fielded last weekend, and its quite easy to cut and paste them straight in from any Excel-type FoG spreadsheet, ideally with a bit of Hammy-type comment as above to help other people use the army

Otherwise if you are a bit slack, feel free to email them to me and I'll do it myself

cheers
tim

Tim,

I was considering one of your points in your post-game analysis. I was curious as to why you consider FOG to be more luck based than DBM (assuming I read yor point right)? I'm under the opposite view; I feel more dice evens out the extreme '6' vs '1' roll that in my games made a critical difference. The increased dice numbers was one of the reasons I was veering towards Warmaster Ancients before FOG came along. I wonder if there is a more scientific reason? As a mediocre DBM player at best, extreme dice always seemed to kill me off, and so I would feel most aggrieved and hard done by. But with FOG I find extreme dice less of an issue. They still happen, just that for some reason the effect is less traumatic.

Steve P

stenic wrote:Tim,

I was considering one of your points in your post-game analysis. I was curious as to why you consider FOG to be more luck based than DBM (assuming I read yor point right)? I'm under the opposite view; I feel more dice evens out the extreme '6' vs '1' roll that in my games made a critical difference. The increased dice numbers was one of the reasons I was veering towards Warmaster Ancients before FOG came along. I wonder if there is a more scientific reason? As a mediocre DBM player at best, extreme dice always seemed to kill me off, and so I would feel most aggrieved and hard done by. But with FOG I find extreme dice less of an issue. They still happen, just that for some reason the effect is less traumatic.
Steve P

Well, its more that you can get results which are "against the odds" fairly easily in FoG - a +1 POA is pretty much all you can achieve in normal circumstances, and as some maths expert will probably tell us, the chances of losing even from a +1 POA are (for me) fairly material (1 in 4 maybe?). This is a deliberate design principle of the rules by the authors, so its not just me making this stuff up!

I also think its now not as traumatic - once you realise it is going to happen, you just live with it - but it has been frustrating until I started to get a handle on the whole thing.

In DBM you could often engineer matchups where you had literally no chance of being killed, or - more usually - where you needed a 6:1 or 5:1/6:2 type result to lose - so you were looking at maneuvering to create situations where you'd always - or win 11 times out of 12, or 5 times out of 6.

In FoG there are literally no situations where you are guaranteed a win, and its almost impossible to engineer any sort of situation or matchup where your advantage in combat is better than a measly +1 POA, so the chances of a "lucky" result for your opponent is always fairly significant.

I suspect this is why some of the swarm armies are popular - a flank attack is the best chance you have of stacking the odds in yoru favour, and these armies are designed to create as many such attacks as possible, with the most units built from the most cost effective troops for the job.

Not sure, for combats that might be somewhat true although even if you end up a very clear 2nd winner in close combat a good cohesion and death roll can often salvage the situation, so you tend to get second chances, not so in DBM. Anyway I always considered the PIP rolls as the worst luck element in DBM. Not very many of them and one or two bad rolls (especially if coupled with a good roll by your opponent) and things could go pear shaped pretty quickly, especially with irregular armies. That problem has pretty much disappeared with FoG.

madaxeman wrote:
In FoG there are literally no situations where you are guaranteed a win, and its almost impossible to engineer any sort of situation or matchup where your advantage in combat is better than a measly +1 POA, so the chances of a "lucky" result for your opponent is always fairly significant.

I suspect this is why some of the swarm armies are popular - a flank attack is the best chance you have of stacking the odds in yoru favour, and these armies are designed to create as many such attacks as possible, with the most units built from the most cost effective troops for the job.

This has been my experience as well--luck is definitely a factor in FoG, I have witnessed some amazing results thanks to luck, both good and bad. And frankly, that's just what I want--a certain degree of luck.

Dale

Ghaznavid wrote:Not sure, for combats that might be somewhat true although even if you end up a very clear 2nd winner in close combat a good cohesion and death roll can often salvage the situation, so you tend to get second chances, not so in DBM.

Or a second chance for the dice to doof it all up even further !!

Ghaznavid wrote: Anyway I always considered the PIP rolls as the worst luck element in DBM. Not very many of them and one or two bad rolls (especially if coupled with a good roll by your opponent) and things could go pear shaped pretty quickly, especially with irregular armies. That problem has pretty much disappeared with FoG.

One of the hardest skills to master in DBM was setting up your army to be able to cope with a few rounds of bad pips - but luck was pretty big there too! Thats why my later DBM reports all included the Hammy-tastic pip dice graphs. However I always was able to rationalize the semi-random movement distances of DBM as a necessary part of a complete simulation of period warfare, so in a way I was sad to see it go.

tim

I think PIPs are the biggest thing I miss from DBM as well - real skill in managing them IMO, which started with your army design and went from there

I can't believe I'm saying this but.........

One of the interesting things about FOG is that in Undrilled and drilled armies all BG's move all the time.
As a fan of the undrilled types I'm not sure that the dissadvantages of undrilled troops are enough
to make up for this. I am aware of the subtleties (even if I can't spell it) of drilled troops movement,
especially near enemy. I am also aware that drilled can often have a larger number of smaller battle
groups however this can be a double edged sword.

All in all, the buttock clenching moment of the PIP role was one of the better things in DBM.


Double Drop Dailami Duggins

"Bring out the Gimp"

As a fan of the undrilled types I'm not sure that the dissadvantages of undrilled troops are enough

The Gimp - I understand what you are saying, but in my view this is the single biggest difference between, erm, a previous set of rules and FoG.

When I was playing, said, previous set of rules I would always look for undrilled troops as I thought they were points effective. Playing FoG if you give me Cav, Sup, Und, Lt Spr, Swd (17) or Cav, Sup, Dr, Lt Spr, Swd (18 ) then I am under no illusion as to which is best. The ability to move and expand is enormous. Those of us who have failed a CMT to expand from two ranks when enemy is within charge range might also note...

The big thing between undrilled and drilled is the need to pass a CMT to not charge there is a massive difference between needing a 7 and needing an 8....

In my view, luck is as much a part of FoG as it was, erm, in a previous set of rules...

A good point, well made, Pretty Boy (that must be ironic).


So "buttock clenching" tests not to charge. As long as there is some buttock clenching
in the rules I'm happy.

Gimp Meister