Slitherine

Robert241167 wrote:From this:

viewtopic.php?f=43&t=42338

Page 129 of V2 says if they are used the army must have at least 4 base-widths of them.

Rob

Indeed it does. But you can still pay for less, you just can't use them.

Initial Reports are inbound that the top three were

1. Chris Johnston
2. Matt "The Queen" Iverson
3. Dan Hazelwood

Speaking as someone on the bottom of the pack: The tourney was a blast!

Since it's now after the fact, it would be interesting to know why the Warring states are better in V1 and the Koryo are improved in V2.

Chris

dave_r wrote:

hazelbark wrote:

batesmotel wrote: Maybe the Brits think superior cataphracts and cavalry lancers are better than HCh and average cavalry?

Nyah they didn't improve in V 2.

It's fairly difficult to respond without giving specific details of each list away.

batesmotel wrote:Since it's now after the fact, it would be interesting to know why the Warring states are better in V1 and the Koryo are improved in V2.

Chris

OK.

The Koreans can have massed crossbowmen and bowmen in the second rank - these have gained significantly in that they no longer get a minus when charged. They can get loads of these because they are cheap. The Crossbowmen now hit mounted armoured opponents on 3's (who aren't in a single rank). Significant bonus.

The Han are Armoured Drilled and were basically Romans in disguise, they dragged the terrain with them and could get away from anything really scary. Movement has been curtailed which takes away a lot of their bite.

I thought Marc made a mistake by going for Cavalry AND Foot - it fell in the middle, taking one or the other was necessary I think - in essence there was four BG's of Superior Lancers and then loads of MF who couldn't go in the open. The army fell between two camps.

Not seen any detailed results yet, so difficult to comment, but I suspect the Han got mainly small'ish winning draws with the occasional big win.

dave_r wrote: The Koreans can have massed crossbowmen and bowmen in the second rank - these have gained significantly in that they no longer get a minus when charged. They can get loads of these because they are cheap. The Crossbowmen now hit mounted armoured opponents on 3's (who aren't in a single rank). Significant bonus.

But so can the Warring States

The Han are Armoured Drilled and were basically Romans in disguise, they dragged the terrain with them and could get away from anything really scary. Movement has been curtailed which takes away a lot of their bite.

For the record Matt ran Zhonsan. To get the one BG of superior HW. Without which his hopes of defeating me when time ran out had little chance.

I thought Marc made a mistake by going for Cavalry AND Foot - it fell in the middle, taking one or the other was necessary I think - in essence there was four BG's of Superior Lancers and then loads of MF who couldn't go in the open. The army fell between two camps.

So the Koreans that don't have PO are better but can't go into the open. The Warring States that have them are some how worse?
Perhaps the accurate critique of too many other Korean toys where Warring States have few, but that is the opposite of your pre-event analysis.

Not seen any detailed results yet, so difficult to comment, but I suspect the Han got mainly small'ish winning draws with the occasional big win.

I think this is somewhat true. He had losing draws vs me and Chris J. [Would have been a bloody mess for him if his poor troops ever Lost a combat! ]
He did get some big wins versus mounted armies, which oddly enough his MF army is optimized to fight.

dave_r wrote:Initial Reports are inbound that the top three were

1. Chris Johnston
2. Matt "The Queen" Iverson
3. Dan Hazelwood

Good to see a successor army on top of the pile. Not sure that happened much in v1. Looking forward to the AARs when people have caught their breath.

Although we haven't seen any tournamant results of the actual match-ups

I would assume the main adavantage of the Koreans is numbers, especially in a straight up fight with Warring States (assuming both armies are primarily infantry).

The two big advantages of Warring States are:
1) because of their armor POA they can take on pikes
2) because of the portable defenses and rear rank crossbows thay have a big advantage vs horse

Hal

Congratulations to Chris - not being backed by Dave or Nik clearly didn't do you any harm.

I hope that you and some of the other guys in the States will be able to make it to Germany next year for the Worlds.

petedalby wrote:Congratulations to Chris - not being backed by Dave or Nik clearly didn't do you any harm.

I hope that you and some of the other guys in the States will be able to make it to Germany next year for the Worlds.

I think you'll find that chris was one of my "ones to watch"

hazelbark wrote:

dave_r wrote: The Koreans can have massed crossbowmen and bowmen in the second rank - these have gained significantly in that they no longer get a minus when charged. They can get loads of these because they are cheap. The Crossbowmen now hit mounted armoured opponents on 3's (who aren't in a single rank). Significant bonus.

But so can the Warring States

True, but the Koreans _should_ get lots more than the Warring states.

The Han are Armoured Drilled and were basically Romans in disguise, they dragged the terrain with them and could get away from anything really scary. Movement has been curtailed which takes away a lot of their bite.

For the record Matt ran Zhonsan. To get the one BG of superior HW. Without which his hopes of defeating me when time ran out had little chance.

I thought Marc made a mistake by going for Cavalry AND Foot - it fell in the middle, taking one or the other was necessary I think - in essence there was four BG's of Superior Lancers and then loads of MF who couldn't go in the open. The army fell between two camps.

So the Koreans that don't have PO are better but can't go into the open. The Warring States that have them are some how worse?
Perhaps the accurate critique of too many other Korean toys where Warring States have few, but that is the opposite of your pre-event analysis.

Marc's mistake was that his army can't take no terrain or lots of terrain - I think to get v2 Koreans to work you need to take as much foot as you can and as few mounted. That way you can cover the table with terrain - that was my point that the army is much better but Marc's list writing isn't The Han can't cover the table and are forced to concentrate whereas the Koreans can and aren't. A lot of the problem with the Han is getting the enemy to fight you.

Not seen any detailed results yet, so difficult to comment, but I suspect the Han got mainly small'ish winning draws with the occasional big win.

I think this is somewhat true. He had losing draws vs me and Chris J. [Would have been a bloody mess for him if his poor troops ever Lost a combat! ]
He did get some big wins versus mounted armies, which oddly enough his MF army is optimized to fight.

Yes - Han are much better against Mounted, but can come unstuck against foot. That said, I do think that Han is much better at 900 points than at 800 though. The natural predators of the Han are Superior Bow Sword Cavalry and Armoured Knights. Pikes and Romans scare them a bit as well. Although terrain can mitigate all of these.

dave_r wrote: ...
Yes - Han are much better against Mounted, but can come unstuck against foot. That said, I do think that Han is much better at 900 points than at 800 though. The natural predators of the Han are Superior Bow Sword Cavalry and Armoured Knights. Pikes and Romans scare them a bit as well. Although terrain can mitigate all of these.

I'm not clear why superior bow sword cavalry are the natural predators. With armoured Chinese and rear rank cross bows, I think the Chinese out shoot the cavalry whether the cav are in one or two ranks. And even without PD the Chinese should win impact especially if the cav charge in two ranks. If cav charge in one rank they're likely to lose to numbers in melee. Armoured knights seem scarier since they can charge in one rank and have a chance in melee. Matt's list seemed to have sufficient troops to basically go wall to wall although without much in the way reserves beyond that.

Chris

I took the Early Aechemenid Persians to the US Open in Santa Clara. It was a great event and if you didn't attend you missed out.

Why take the Persians? Actually it is very simple - Immortals. The 16 bases of Immortals are IMO some of the best troops in FoG now. In virtually every way they got better in 2.0.

The new rear support shooting makes them very dicey to engage in close combat, especially with their light spears. Nothing can double PoA them in impact and they get a full strength rear support die which makes them about even with anything hitting them in impact. Consider impact foot hitting them rolls two dice hitting on 4s, the hit back with 2 dice on 5s and support die on a 4 or a 5 (depending on impact foor armour).

Then there is the change to the armour PoAs which help them out. It used to be that being protected w/ Sword (ala Jannissaries) was probably a slightly better melee bet than being armoured. But now that is not the case. The Immortals are armoured which means it is not possible to get two levels of armour on them (from say heavily armoured knights) which means at worst you are down a PoA in melee. So in almost every circumstance they are now the equal of the protected/sw bow types, except that that they will hold even PoAs against some possibly nasty things like protected spearmen where the sw armed types would be down. Oh yeah, they harder to shoot at as well...

The average Sparabar types also get better for some of the same reasons, while being protected is much worse than armoured, they are still better off than before against anything but heavily armoured guys and still get the same rear support shooting benefits.

The "ghilman" type cavalry got some boosts as well which is a plus.

So here is the list I took:

IC, 3xTC for generals.

1x4 LH Average Bw
1x4 LH Average Javelins/Lt Spear
1x6 LF Poor Javelins/Lt Spear
2x8 HF Undrilled Amoured Average Offensive Spear
2x4 Cv Undrilled Amoured Superior Bw/Sw
1x4 Cv Drilled Armoured Superior Bw/Sw
1x8 MF Undrilled Protected Average Lt Spear/Bw (Lt Spear front ranks only)
1x6 MF Undrilled Protected Average Lt Spear/Bw (Lt Spear front ranks only)
2x8 MF Drilled Amoured Superior Lt Spear/Bw

This is a largely irregular army and I need to be ready to try and survive impacts with a lot of troops so the IC seemed like a good bet. He did pretty well and I am glad I had him. I think you could make this army work without him (and I would go all the way down to 4xTC if I went that way) so as to get the last "Ghilman" type cavalry.

I debated the hoplites both in numbers and bring them at all a lot. This was what I spent most of my time considering. In the end I am glad I had them and think they are useful though you have to plan a lot of what you are doing with them. I think at 900 you have to take them at 800 there are more choices to be made.

I always felt I was light on skirmishers and that is both not a problem and a weakness. You don't really have issues with people "skirmishing" the center of this army - there is just too much firepower for that to be realistic. But you have trouble controlling the ends of the battle without committing the ghilman types to the skirmisher fight (and you generally need them elsewhere) and having some more flank shooting would be nice. That said there just aren't points available for this without taking from something IMO more important.

Game 1 vs. Classical Indian

This is a tough match-up for the Indians as neither the Indian Bow or the Indian cavalry likes fighting the Persian MF very much. My opponent took what I think is the best option available in this fight - mass up a bunch of elephants on one side to try and smash through and hope everything else hangs on. The Indians were 5 BGs of elephants, about 30 or stands of foot bows, a light chariot and a heavy chariot. Things went about as expected. The Immortals and some sparabara pushed on flank and shot the #@$% out of the Indian foot (my opponent should have seen what was coming and moved his foot more than 6 MU from the table edge, but that would only have delayed the inevitable) and in what would become a theme for the weekend, the hoplites got mangled fighting elephants. Still enough for a winning draw in the 23-11 range or so.

Game 2 vs. Late Republican Roman

This was not looking like fun. When I said the Imortals could take on most things, that didn't really include legionaries in this volume, espeically when some are elite. This turned into an interesting game with a largely open table except for a large hill in the center of the table. I decided I was going to make a stand on the hill and parked the Imortals up there, which was enough to deter the Romans from coming up (wait we get shot it on the way up, they get rear support shooting in impact with even PoAs! and then we are even in melee? that sucks). The hoplites deployed out next to the hill.

Then things got confusing. The Roman elite legions decide to circle the hill while 8 stand legions fight hoplites. The persian flanks of sparabar and cavarly go hunt light horse and elephants. Then at more of less the last minute the Immortals decide the hill is looking a bit dodgy and run for the rear. The Romans kill the hoplites (don't have to pay dead Greeks so that works out ok) and the Persians blow away elephants and some light horse, and send a cavalry flank charge into a legion fighting the hoplites breaking it. Then the last 8 stand legion is surrounded by ghilmanesque cavalry, immortals and sparabara and shot to death.

Ultimately a slightly winnign draw to the Romans (who lost 10 of 13 attrition points vs. the Persians 10 of 12) but a close run thing. A key takeaway - one of the uses of the hoplites is attracting a lot of attention. Feel free to leave them to die and move the battle beyond whatever nasty thing killed them and hunt elsewhere.

Game 3 vs. Free Company

Something of a combination of the Indian and Roman games actually. The Free companies line up 18 stands of longbows along on flank with Knights next to it then some billmen, some unpleasantly with heavy armor. I match the longbows with sparabar and immortals, with another immortal facing the knights and the hoplites facing the billmen. Oh and the Free Company has a couple more billmen and another longbow off on my other flank largely unopposed. I steam forward hoping to get a fight going before his wide flanking group can get involved.

The Persian archers pretty much shoot up the longbows as expected, I have generally bigger units, some of which are superior and the IC to help me through rough patches. The knights aren't able to get much traction spending a fair amount of time disrupted or fragged (and charging Immortals disrupted seems a bad idea...) and are eventually surrounded and blown away (at one throwing something like 10 superior dice at it).

The hoplites get mangled...again. Then we both look up and the battle is now strange. A lot has died on all sides, but the Companies only have HF left and they are basically 9-12 MUs from any enemy. The Persians have a last longbow group (that rallied on the table edge) trapped by 30 stands of Persian MF and the Companies LF is being chased down by the Persian LF and LH. Again the Hoplites sacraficed themselves adn pulled 16-20 stands of billmen out of position in their death and the battle just moved away from the Free Companies remaining battle troops. Once again though the lesson of "don't try and outshoot the Immortals backed up by an IC" happens...

Game 4 vs. Early Successors (Makedon)

Up against the eventual winner. I lost the initiative roll here which I think was one of the main factors in the loss on reflection. The terrain saw a large uneven bit in the center of the table with a smaller piece to the left side of it, no other terrain was very consequential. Losing the initiative forced me into a more neutral deployment than I preferred - especially against the Macedonians where their heavy infantry forced me to be wary in the open. I knew my opponent would likely be able to respond with his last army quarter and counter me effectively. So I went with a slightly too conservative deployment IMO. The hoplites to the right of the uneven with the 8 pack of sparabara next to go into the uneven with the immortals next to them. Cavalry and skirmishers off on the wings. I should have put the immortals hard into the center to try and win there. Things started off ok, but then a lot of things went wrong with my dice and right with the Makedonian dice. Both hoplites did what was needed in impact and held, but then both went down in subsequent melees to double drops. As Chris mentioned he caught a ghilman cavalry and the 6 pack of immortals with a "6" pursuit die which effectively wrecked my left flank (which had been lining up to cause him some trouble with the sparabar attacking an elephant and the cavalry into his LH). Then his Thracians held out in the center against my average sparabar despite losing numerous melees and heavy casaulties.

I didn't push hard enough until late with the Immortals but when I finally did it was interesting as they wrecked his 12 strong superior pikemen that charged them. Shooting, impact support shooting an numbers of superior troops are hard to resist...But in the end a big win to the Makedon.

Game 5 vs. L Hungarian

A strange game against a somewhat oddly composed Hungarian. I had some warning on the composition but didn't realize the magnitude of what was there. The Hungarians had only three LH, three heavily amoured knights, and 24! stands of armorued defensive spear. The Hungarians deployed in the corner of the table in about a 1.5 foot wide gap between the table edge and a largeish piece of impassable terrain. I considered flank marching when the Hungarian baggage went there, but decided against as I assumed the Hugarians were flank marching themselves, why else deploy like that? Nope. The Hungarians deployed with knights alternativing with 3 deep defensive spear fronted by a huge collected of LF. I hemmed the Hungarians in but didn't want to get near that morass as it was obvious the Hungarians had no attacking intentions at all.

So...it was the last game, we were both basically out of contention. I could see avenues to attack the Hungarians - basically the Immortals come to the very edge of long range on the LF and force them back, then advance and shoot whatever is in range while the hoplites lurk 6 MU or so farther back ready to come support and my LH makes charges at the LF to chase them away and try and temp the knights forward. But I was pretty tired at this point, my experience with this sort of thing is that they degenerate into often unpleasant games, so I offered the Hungarians a draw. The Hungarians considered this for a while and decided they would come out and fight. The dice gods did not look kindly on the earlier effort at bunkering...Pretty much everything that could do wrong for the Hungarians did. The battle started well for them as a 2 wide knight ran over a ghilman type cavalry, but then it got lost in the backfield chasing a LH and would eventually be destroyed by an accumulation of javelin fire from the LH and my LF. A second knight slammed into a block of hoplites and lost impact, then lost melee and a general. A second Hungarian general decided to go help out and was promptly killed in the next melee leading the knights to route away and through some Hungarian spearmen. The hoplites merrily trotted along and killed those spearmen and proceeded to go through the entire Hungarian center. Another spear was isolated in front of Immortals and cavalry and shot apart. The last hungarian knight chased after some Persian cavalry and out of the battle as well. A resounding win for the Persians, but credit to the Hungarians for coming out and fighting a battle that at least had some chances of being interesting instead of either taking a draw or forcing them game into a ticky-tacky and probably unpleasant skirmish fest. That said, a few less defensive spear and some more cavalry and LH for a flank march might have made for an interesting option for the Hungarians...

Congratulations to Chris for the well deserved win. The one little worry I have coming out of this is that rear support shooting might be just a tad too good now. Archers needed some help, but this might be too much...

nikgaukroger wrote:OK folk here it is, another instalment of the Ruddock & Gaukroger shoot their mouths off show. Hopefully we've got everyone's names right this time :/
Well, are we to get a bunch of lists that are tailored for v2.0 or are these the same tired old v1 lists that have been meddled with? Well let's find out shall we

John Baumann Classical Indian, 175BC

[DR] I don't like this version of the list. I think it is moving away from the strong points of the Indian army. That said, I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying there are large, smelly grey things involved and they can be brilliant and rubbish in the same game...

[NG] I concur with Ruddock on this, the army has drifted from where it should be focused – not vastly but probably enough to weaken it. I also have a distinct feeling that this army doesn’t get better as the AP values go up and 900 may just be stretching it a bit. Time will tell.

I am interested in your views of a better version of this List. John had max Chariots and all but 2 Elephants + the Ally to give 4 Generals.
I would have the max Elephants myself.
Thanks
Brian

Warlord wrote:

nikgaukroger wrote:OK folk here it is, another instalment of the Ruddock & Gaukroger shoot their mouths off show. Hopefully we've got everyone's names right this time :/
Well, are we to get a bunch of lists that are tailored for v2.0 or are these the same tired old v1 lists that have been meddled with? Well let's find out shall we

John Baumann Classical Indian, 175BC

[DR] I don't like this version of the list. I think it is moving away from the strong points of the Indian army. That said, I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying there are large, smelly grey things involved and they can be brilliant and rubbish in the same game...

[NG] I concur with Ruddock on this, the army has drifted from where it should be focused – not vastly but probably enough to weaken it. I also have a distinct feeling that this army doesn’t get better as the AP values go up and 900 may just be stretching it a bit. Time will tell.

I am interested in your views of a better version of this List. John had max Chariots and all but 2 Elephants + the Ally to give 4 Generals.
I would have the max Elephants myself.
Thanks
Brian

The army (in my personal opinion) didn't have enough bowmen - I would take no Chariots and the minimum mounted and simply go for 12 elephants and loads of Bowmen. Unprotected Swordsmen.

Thanks for the reply. Will give it a try although I doubt that I have enough Bowmen.
Brian

ethan wrote:I took the Early Aechemenid Persians to the US Open in Santa Clara. It was a great event and if you didn't attend you missed out.

Why take the Persians? Actually it is very simple - Immortals. The 16 bases of Immortals are IMO some of the best troops in FoG now. In virtually every way they got better in 2.0.

The new rear support shooting makes them very dicey to engage in close combat, especially with their light spears. Nothing can double PoA them in impact and they get a full strength rear support die which makes them about even with anything hitting them in impact. .

I notice that the Bow /( free ) Light Spear combo is becoming very popular now with Persians, Medes, Japs etc in fact anything that can get the free Light Spear with Bow.

The poor Mounted Light Spear has to pay a point for a useless piece of kit whereas the Foot Boys are rocking with their freebie Impact Weapon.

Question to the Forum, should the Foot Light Spear now be costed and the Mounted Light Spear be no cost ?

Foot archers with LS in the front rank are definitely a very strong option at the moment and could perhaps be worth another point a base.

The problem with this (apart from the fact there seems to be no intention to change any points values at the moment) is that it would also make LS foot without missile weapons more expensive ie making the already bad even worse.

If they were going to change points I would suggest it is the costing of quality that is still clearly not quite right. Once they decided not to implement any of the significant changes that may have had a bearing on this from the beta and then decided not to change points at all we are left with superiors as an "auto-select" and poor troops as an "avoid at all costs". The only real exception been skirmishers.

Having said that it is no worse than it was in V1 and the areas that did improve in V2 are significant.

Martin