Well, there will be pictures and a few comments about the battle, but really I want to muse on the subject of using the rules to create killer armies and whether this is a Good Thing or not.
The battle was between my Hyborian Barbarian horde and Nick's Orcs, augmented by some Meerkats who clearly didn't fancy a career in selling insurance products. Both sides were pretty equally matched in numerical terms.
I decided to put all my heavy foot units on my centre-left and place my cavalry out on my right.
Nick had a lot of medium foot, some heavy foot and a lot of shooty types, including Orc cannon.
Unhappily, his cannon were directly opposite my shieldwall of heavy foot, supported by longbows. My elite foot were soon getting shot at. The problem with Heavy Foot in S&SF is that they are slow moving and pretty much useless until they get into combat, assuming that they don't get killed off by ranged attacks.
I had skirmishers out on my left. I had no great expectations from them, they were just there to slow things down a bit.
My cavalry on the right were there with one aim, sweeping through all the defenders and then trying to roll up Nick's line. After all, they aren't much use for anything else.
My skirmishing bows were typically hopeless at turning Orcs into pin cushions. I sent a pack of wolves into combat and some light horse with javelins. Neither lasted very long.
My heavy foot plodded across the gap to try and assault the Orc cannon battery.
Elsewhere, I got my Giant and a Hero into action. The Giant huffed and puffed, and was then swiftly vanquished. The Hero held on for a bit longer, but soon joined the tribal ancestors, feasting with the Gods of Battle .
Progress was slow. My activation dice rolls weren't helping. Most of my barbarians are Discipline 4, so I have to consistently roll high numbers to do anything.
My cavalry had some success, seeing off some annoying bow-armed Orcs, but my line was disrupted by some stupid manoeuvres on my part.
The long, slow march of the Hyborian heavy foot was nearly over and they would soon be wielding their axes and war hammers against the Orcish artillery.
Because of my hopeless handling of my cavalry, I ended up with my right flank exposed to attack. I hastily reorganised things.
A unit of Trolls assaulted my heavy foot Luckily, I had been able to get them to face their attack and not get hit in the flank.
Finally, my heavy foot were fighting, and making short work of those guns. Hurrah, a success at last. My second shieldwall unit was ready to charge the archers. Surely, this would be a mere formality?
My lonely cavalry unit was unable to do anything, being marooned in a forest, which negated all their advantages.
The titanic struggle for the hill would decide the battle. Unfortunately, my barbarians were obviously a bit puffed out from all the walking they had had to do to get there and were making hard work of actually fighting.
Before long, the Trolls and Orc cavalry were around behind my shieldwall. Not a good thing.
My cave-dweller foot were fighting for their lives against the Meerkat cavalry. I have no idea what those longbowmen were going to do.
This was where we called time. I had lost a lot of troops and simply couldn't win.
So, this is where I start musing. Nick made the sensible observation that my army is too difficult to control, because the units have mostly poor discipline or are undrilled, so that their heavy-hitting impact abilities are wasted because they are tricky to get into combat positions where they have the advantage. I agree with this, but it seems to me that apart from the well-drilled Shieldwall veteran foot, barbarians should be hard to control. That is why they hang around in hordes, pillaging stuff and feasting to the sound of the lamentations of the women of their enemies, instead of building cities and holding symposiums on subjects like "Is pillaging a dying art and would reviving it be a backwards step?".
It seems to me that making more of the units Discipline 3 and removing the Undrilled attribute wherever possible is inherently antithetical to the whole Barbarian Horde way of doing things. I could try and create a killer army, smaller and more expensive, but with biddable units of well-drilled and obedient soldiers, but that would mean that they were no longer barbarians., so, on balance, I much prefer them to charge off impetuously and hope that the War Gods are with them rather than employing those sneaky civilised ideas of strategy, tactics and obeying orders. Yes, the worse the discipline, the harder it is to remove the effects of broken morale, but that is surely part and parcel of being a barbarian? Winning and smiting is great, but when the going gets tough, the horde melts away. That is, after all, why smart barbarian warlords fairly soon tend to look for alternate employment as generals and mercenary commanders in civilised armies (where, of course there is always the possibility of mounting a successful coup d'etat and replacing the incumbent ruler).
I do think, though, that my army needs more than three commanders, so next time, there will be an additional captain on the field of glory.
Yep, I know what you mean. I made my goblin army all Discipline 4 for the same reason. And despite a few successes, it is plainly difficult to handle and at a disadvantage. Of course the rules and point costs are expected to mitigate for this, but S&S has a problem in this regard because of the way the activation pools work. A mixed Discipline army will be able to accommodate high and low activation rolls, whereas a single Discipline army does not. Therefore a mixed Discipline army will always get more bang for their buck than a single one. And this applies to, say, an all-Discipline 3 army (like my elves, if I ever get round to painting them) as much as an all-Discipline 4 army.
ReplyDeleteOne solution, istm, is to simply re-define Discipline to mean more than just that. Make some units Disc 3, not because they are particularly Disciplined or non-hordey, but for some related narrative reason, like they are very experienced, very greedy, or well-informed (maybe they just captured a local).
Well, yes. My heavy foot are all discipline 3, (apart from the trolls, who are heavy foot discipline 4) as are my cavalry, and the heavy foot, because they have Shieldwall don't have Undrilled, although my cavalry are Undrilled. I am thinking about how to tweak the unit characteristics rather than just make them all more disciplined. I think that my heavy foot should have fast, to try and replicate how barbarians might charge into combat as quickly as possible.
DeleteIn my opinion an almost all discipline 4 army is extremely versatile, especially the Orc army I have played with. Of about 20 units they have one discipline 3 elite heavy foot unit and monster (dragon with a hero) and a Hero at 2 discipline. The rest are usually discipline 4 with a wide spread of different units. When you add in that you have four commanders as well you can easily use a more than 2/3 of the dice every turn. I often have about two or three dice thrown away in some turns unless I'm unlucky and get many ones, but that will effect any army equally anyway.
ReplyDeleteThis skill I have found is how you use the army and not the dice. Make sure you have a cohesive plan and move the troops accordingly and make use of group moves as much as you can. Be aggressive when it is the right time and don't get overly obsessive that you always need to put down a dice to oppose the enemy all the time or always use a "6" to get bonus dice, that will bit you in the ass... ;)