IMHO one answer: The Pilum. The tossing of the pilum into the Pike or Spear block would disrupt the front ranks and further to the rear (its weight allowing it to penetrate through the defenders shield and either wounding or weighing down the shield so the soldier could not fight effectively). With...

I am just returning to Ancients and got a hard copy of the rules My question is, armies that have an elephant that has an elephant screen ability have to use it that way only ? Or do you have a choice not to use the battle card? All battle cards are optional. Both in general (you don't need to use ...

The trained Pike-men of Alexander where very good and had trained to defeat Hoplites otherwise why did Philip and Alexander win against the city-states forces. Alexander won most of his battles using his companions, not his pike, as the primary tool. And the record of his pike against Greek allies ...

Spear armed troops did not like going up against pike-men because of their extended contact range the pike-men had. You could say the same for sword-armed troops not liking going up against spear-armed troops. So why are Romans rated as Elite Foot? Performance in battles is what matters, not argume...

Am I correct in assuming that if I'm fielding Early Croatians I don't have to field a Bow Levy element? Yes. That's what "only Serbian" means -- it's in the "Restrictions" column. To give you another example (from an enemy of the Early Serbian/Croations), the Thematic Byzantine Kurdish Horsemen hav...

The most surprising change in 1.1 was distant combat. Maybe I need to play a pseudo-Plataea battle to really understand if/how they work differently from the legacy rules. having a separate combat factor for defense from archery (and a separate combat factor for shooting) was a big step forward. At...

Perhaps the appropriate question is this -- why do you think things are stuck?

I also don't see a problem -- it looks like there is enough space for a flank attack by the chariot in your image, but you don't need a flank attack anyway, as the Elite Foot has its recoil blocked. The math is the same with an overlap (and the chariot has the movement distance to overlap on either ...

Creasy's book was published in 1851. While it may still have relevant material in terms of the socio-economic impact of particular battles on the advance of civilization, even that has to be filtered through the lens of Victorian biases. I'm sure his work was pioneering -- like that of Charles Oman,...

For which army? There are lots, but it depends what you want them to look like.