Min/Max idea

[calmacil]

I've only got a few games under my belt, but something i've noticed is a trend to take minimal infantry and max out on cavalry.

One of my friends has a 5k high elf army, but has never played warmaster. He's a clever general with warhammer, so i'm predicting he'll take min spearmen and archers and max out on silverhelms.

Is this a common occurrence in warmaster?


Two of my other friends already prefer this system to it's 28mm cousin, and there is talk of a campaign. Something i was thinking of doing if we ever start this campaign is introduce the rule that every army has it's minimum numbers increased by one.
I've got the warmaster ancients book, and they have much higher minimum slots. (britons have min of 8 warriors per 1,000 points, minimum of 4 roman legions)

What do you think? good or bad idea?

[Lex]

min/max may seem like the easy way out, but in general after becomming more experienced people will opt for more balanced armycomposition (unless they are powergamers that prefer winning over playing      )

There are several considerations to make, eg.
when you max on your hard hitters(read expensive troops) you will lower your breakpoint
your army composition will be VERY much a problem when a lot of fighting is done in build-up areas
etc

In a campaign setting you could easily "steer"  this by setting restrictions on trooptypes related to "areas controled" or "resources available". And a LOT could be done by making sure your tables for the 1st round(s) dont favour cavalry armies

[The Dog]

Hi
Yes it is a common occurence.

you have a few of options.
- Make sure you have 25%+ of your table covered with terrain, reduces the power of cavalry & chariots
- have an objective based game, so only infantry can take and hold objectives.
- Knights & chariots combined cannot have more than 3/1000

The last one does affect a High Elf army the most, but your friend will have a better game as he will have to work a little harder for his victory.  I would use the last one in your campaign as it does not impact on many armies.  Suggest to your friend that you are planning this and maybe he should get used to it, or something similar.
.

[pw]

Thinking about the way terrain interacts with the different troop types pretty much solves this as an issue (or it did for me). Once there are enough woods, villages etc then infantry get a huge boost over cavalry and chariots (who tend to dislike being charged) in particular. Playing against a non-cav army like dwarfs makes this all very clear where the high command makes it entirely possible for infantry to ambush cavalry from what seems like miles away.

The other key is, I think, deciding to play in a certain style. I know if I play my regular opponent that he's aiming to have an enjoyable and tactical battle and that he's unlikely to try to pull anything too cheesey on me. In return I also try to bring a competitive but balanced force. If one of us tends to lose we end up discussing how to improve their army to balance player skill and army lists (i.e. if I'm rubbish at a game I'll bring a harder list or he'll take a weaker list to help make the game even and entertaining and vice versa). It's taken me about 25 years of gaming to realise that crushing your opponent like a bug isn't the only way to have fun (though sometimes that is very entertaining, and I always play to win and hope my opponent is doing likewise).  For us now it's important to get a good balance of gaming plus the cups of tea, the biscuits, the comfy chairs, the music, the chat, and the toys/scenery.

[calmacil]

Some good points everyone, thanks for the replies.  

You're right about the low break point with cavalry heavy armies. The exception is my friends bretonnian army, taking as much cavalry as he can won't lower his break point.


I think you're right about the terrain. Woods will favour the infantry much more, we did use quite a bit in our last game. I am now tempted to make a terrain generating chart. I'm also painting up four more N-gauge scale houses, so we'll have a few more towns as well.


Here's the terrain we had for our last game. It's a game my opponent won, and he used 15 units of cavalry. It's hard to say if that was the deciding factor though, because his rolling was amazing. It made both of us laugh, he kept apologizing. Out of 12 attacks, he was rolling 11 hits.  
I was Orcs, i deployed at the bottom end of the picture. In this game i held both woods on the left



Is this about the normal amount for terrain? the gaps and size of woods are roughly correct for scale
I'll have to do a battle report when we're more comfortable with the rules, so you can see more clearly.

@pw.... yeah the balance between tea, biscuits and music is the same with our games  

[Lex]

Hard to say from a drawing, but I would probably pitch in a bit more. The MAIN thing to think about when fighting in a rural area (and lets be honest, you are either fighting there OR somehwere off in the wilderness..... is to make sure there is plenty of lineair obstacles.

And when you are playing in a setting that is less populated, there is still all sorts of terrain to use to break up large open spaces !!  small streams (--> lineair obstacles), but also low hills/ridges in the land, areas of dense undergrowth (think a moor or a heath, where there would be no LOS penalties, but you would definilty have trouble moving fast, and like allowing cavalry in crop°fields, you could apply the rule that in that kind of terrain they CAN be pursued by infantry !

[Guthwine]

I certainly like the idea of increasing the minimum of basic spearmen infantry by 1 (for HE it could be +1 Archer instead of spearmen) for armies that have no max. on cavalry units.

[azrael71]

I concur that normally lots of terrain takes some of the punch out of cavalry and chariots
That said we play more fluff based forces with a view to enjoyable games.
We do sometimes play against some very cheesy players though who abuse what is supposed to be a balanced army list.

[Carrington]

Hard to say from a drawing, but I would probably pitch in a bit more. The MAIN thing to think about when fighting in a rural area (and lets be honest, you are either fighting there OR somehwere off in the wilderness..... is to make sure there is plenty of lineair obstacles.

And when you are playing in a setting that is less populated, there is still all sorts of terrain to use to break up large open spaces !!  small streams (--> lineair obstacles), but also low hills/ridges in the land, areas of dense undergrowth (think a moor or a heath, where there would be no LOS penalties, but you would definilty have trouble moving fast, and like allowing cavalry in crop°fields, you could apply the rule that in that kind of terrain they CAN be pursued by infantry !

Are you thinking of Courtrai (1302) as a good example?

[Lex]

Kortrijk ? aka de Gulden Sporen slag ?

where the French knights botched their charges in the muddy/marshy bounds of a smallish stream ?

Yeah, that would be a prime example. I am also thinking I read about a battle in the Scotisch Moors somewhere where knights had much dificulty reforming on acount of the shrubbery, and ended up being taken down one-by-one (and ransomed afterwards), but I cant find a direct reference

[calmacil]

Well, i've built two marshes and another woodland area today. So i've got plenty of wilderness, just need more ruins or buildings

[jchaos79]

Kortrijk ? aka de Gulden Sporen slag ?

where the French knights botched their charges in the muddy/marshy bounds of a smallish stream ?

Yeah, that would be a prime example. I am also thinking I read about a battle in the Scotisch Moors somewhere where knights had much dificulty reforming on acount of the shrubbery, and ended up being taken down one-by-one (and ransomed afterwards), but I cant find a direct reference

Another example is the battle of Stirling Bridge, where the cavalry of the england king get stuck in the mudd and the river ... is not exactly the eager idea of sharped rods of woods that the film Braveheart show us ... because in the Stirling Bridge battle... ahem ahem *Mel Gibson* ahem... there were a Bridge!!