Army balance in competitions

[nikgaukroger]

OK, lots of good discussion here over the last week or so. Can I suggest that it would be useful to now concentrate of Richard's suggestion here - viewtopic.php?f=70&t=46575 - as a concrete suggestion on how to move forward? Please comment on it if you feel this is an issue that matters.

[MatteoPasi]

When you say Cav Max armies can you give an example? I just ran the FOGR Tourney at Fall-In here in the states. We had a 700pt 15mm Open and a 700pt 25mm Trade and Treachery Theme. All the T&T armies were foot heavy. In the Open there were 6 players. 5 played 30 Years War armies which generally require three 6 man foot regiments at a minimum, and the winning player ran a 1505 Trastamara Spanish.

At 800AP you could end up with an army like this Later TYW German:

4 TC
4 BG of 4 Kurassiere, Horse, Heavily Armoured, Superior, -/Pi/Pi
1 BG of 4 Kurassiere, Horse, Armoured, Superior, -/Pi/Pi
2 BG of 4 Bandallier Reiter, Horse, Unarmoured, Average, Carbin/-/Pi
2 BG of 4 Dragoons, Dragoons, Unarmoured, Average, Musket/-/-
2 BG of 2 Artllery, Medium Artillery, Average, Medium Artillery/-/-
3 BG of 2 Commanded Shot, Medium Foot, Unarmoured, Average, Musket/-/-
2 BG of 6 Infantry: 4 Medium Foot, Unarmoured, Average, Musket/-/- ; 2 Heavy Foot, Armoured, Average, -/Pike/Pike

Nice list but what can they do if they havo to play vs tercios ? swiss ? swedish infantry ? HIMO these kind of armies will be good only as long as others players whant get the proper counter lists Here in Italy we play with lots of infantry and mounted have aften the problem that they have only S&P as taghet to charge

[gibby]

They can skirmish those armies out of the game and either pick on the weaker units or heavily weight one flank and nibble the corner hinge unit with artillery fire supported by dragoon fire , followed by horse charge.
Or slow the foot fight such that his mass mounted takes out your mounted and then moves onto your un supported foot.

Or if its against another top player they can disengage and shake hands on a 10/10 draw and move on to the next victim.

At warfare I had LIS with 6 Inf BG's/3HA Sup PP/1 A Ave PP/1HA which in my opinion is an ok balanced force.
I don't consider myself to be a slouch when it comes to playing but from the get go against a half decent player, I would say I'm playing not to lose against that type of army and at best chasing shadows. So that's fine in a 4 game weekend where there is only a couple of those types of army, however Warfare had about 6 of these types which for some players might mean more than 1 non game. Hence the its not fun, therefore why play?

I think the watch out here is do we need to act now because its becoming more prevalent or wait for the drip/drip as players start to vote with their feet. Its definately more noticable in Open/TYW/Late that the min/max armies of either extremes are making people sit up and notice.

We have not had too many issues in the tightly themed ones.
Lots of good ideas and comments abound.
One I wish I had when we were playtesting was to completely remove commanded shot that support horse from the game and subsume them into a token like regimental guns that horse buy and gives them a 1 dice shot capability with the protection poa's built in.
Roll on v2......

[nikgaukroger]

Nice list but what can they do if they havo to play vs tercios ? swiss ? swedish infantry ? HIMO these kind of armies will be good only as long as others players whant get the proper counter lists Here in Italy we play with lots of infantry and mounted have aften the problem that they have only S&P as taghet to charge

I think your last bit possibly explains your question. I think the phenomenon needs to be seen and experienced to be properly understood and if you are playing in an environment without it then it can be hard to see. It was just the same when the "swarm" appeared in FoG:AM - often the initial reaction to seeing the army on paper was to think how on earth is that a problem, then you played one and found out

[nikgaukroger]

One I wish I had when we were playtesting was to completely remove commanded shot that support horse from the game and subsume them into a token like regimental guns that horse buy and gives them a 1 dice shot capability with the protection poa's built in.

The idea was bandied about a couple of times as I recall, but I think we were never happy with the suggestions for whatever reason. No doubt we missed something that would work - maybe because the idea of commanded shot giving (and getting) protection was only adopted late in the day after, IIRC, Matteo suggested it at the Roll Call playtest. I suspect by then we were avoiding any significant new concepts if possible and if we'd had more time we may have gone down that route as more elegant. Ho hum.

Roll on v2......

Yeah, right ...

[urbanbunny1]

any chance v2 will be ready by xmas this year?

[MatteoPasi]

It was just the same when the "swarm" appeared in FoG:AM - often the initial reaction to seeing the army on paper was to think how on earth is that a problem, then you played one and found out

Wait: I havn't said that on paper this list isn't good (it is), I like the list that I believe its a strong one but not unbeatable.
If I can remember correctly in Britcon 2014 2 Japan list did very well and in 2013 Nigel won with West Sudanese (second Richard with Anglo-Dutch). I was in 2 competiton in Uk and both of them was quite good result even if I used a ECW Royalist with majority of infantry (and I'm only a second rank player).
What I want to say is that in FOGR there are plenty af potentialy winning lists (lots more than FOGAM or DBR or Warhammer) and the card/scissor/rock factor can made competiton very interesting, just whait and let the "invisible hand" to do her jobs
Matteo (a Liberal player)

[gibby]

Whether its beatable or not is not the whole issue over here in the UK.

It's more a worry of a race to the bottom to use very un historical armies.

And I guess our debate is about closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but before we lose any more horses.

See you in Germany next year.

cheers
Jim

[hazelbark]

Whether its beatable or not is not the whole issue over here in the UK.

It's more a worry of a race to the bottom to use very un historical armies.

What about just putting in a theme that forces the mainstream ECW TYW choices. Possibly selected Italian wars.

Deny people the ability to have the bizarro army.

[nikgaukroger]

Whether its beatable or not is not the whole issue over here in the UK.

It's more a worry of a race to the bottom to use very un historical armies.

What about just putting in a theme that forces the mainstream ECW TYW choices. Possibly selected Italian wars.

Deny people the ability to have the bizarro army.

The classic example of the army style is a mainstream TYW army

[martinvantol]

Hi hazelbark,
Just seen this post and your post on the "how to beat max mounted" thread ...
Like Nik says, some of the problem unhistorical armies have been precisely the TYW and ECW armies.

Not sure whether you've followed all of the related threads on this issue, but I think there was a fair amount of consensus that the lists currently allow players too much leeway. Lists were written to allow people to bring army configurations that occasionally occurred, rather than compelling them to bring army configurations that are more typical. So even a TYW army at 800 points could turn up with 6-7 mounted units, a couple of units of dragoons, 4 heavy artillery (... oh, and two compulsory foot units that sit at the back and stay out of it!). The effect is a bit like Mongols with artillery, rather than a genuine pike and shot army.

There's another thread on army restrictions where quite a lot of people agreed on a restriction of having to bring 3 battle foot BGs for every 2 artillery bases (I think). But there is also the issue that some armies don't bring enough horse (especially the armies from the late 17th century). I think the short-term solution will be ad-hoc restrictions for individual games or competitions. For casual games I'd suggest you agree with your opponent some additional restrictions, like minimum/maximum horse BGs.

All the best
Martin

[nikgaukroger]

There's another thread on army restrictions where quite a lot of people agreed on a restriction of having to bring 3 battle foot BGs for every 2 artillery bases (I think).

Shome mishtake - 6 bases of foot battle troops per medium/heavy artillery base shurely?

[martinvantol]

There's another thread on army restrictions where quite a lot of people agreed on a restriction of having to bring 3 battle foot BGs for every 2 artillery bases (I think).

Shome mishtake - 6 bases of foot battle troops per medium/heavy artillery base shurely?

Poshibly ... I didn't look up the exact recommendation (sorry). The exact number wasn't essential to the point I was making.

[hazelbark]

Hi hazelbark,
Just seen this post and your post on the "how to beat max mounted" thread ...
Like Nik says, some of the problem unhistorical armies have been precisely the TYW and ECW armies.

Not sure whether you've followed all of the related threads on this issue, but I think there was a fair amount of consensus that the lists currently allow players too much leeway. Lists were written to allow people to bring army configurations that occasionally occurred, rather than compelling them to bring army configurations that are more typical. So even a TYW army at 800 points could turn up with 6-7 mounted units, a couple of units of dragoons, 4 heavy artillery (... oh, and two compulsory foot units that sit at the back and stay out of it!). The effect is a bit like Mongols with artillery, rather than a genuine pike and shot army.

You are correct that I have scanned not studied the debate. I think one flaw goes to your point of leeway. Allowing a list that "occasionally occurred" is exactly the problem across too many rules. We then get much more designer armies with whatever game trick is working interacting with point levels. I am no less guilty than the rest on the designed armies. And it is fun, but I have swung back to preferring history in the last few years. I do favor drawing in the leeway and forcing more history. The "game" strategy tournament win has it place but I feel its run out a bit far. I would add the fixes that need consideration include table size and definition of victory or Army break.