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Yesterday we had 2 games late medieval and our afterthought was that the player with the tactical disadvantage was in real the advantage player because he can place the second part of his army at last. That was always the moment the hvy knights came into place ready to smash the flank of the opponent or countering the opponents flank with knights/cataphracts with more hvy knights.

I hope I made clear what my problem here is.

That led us to the idea to arrange the army as the player with the tactical advantage the following way: Bring up the foot in the middle with the knights in a second line behind. Watch where the opponent place his powertroops and then decide which way to go.Left flank or right flank. Use the first rounds with secondary moves to rearrange the own knights appropriate.

Anyone tried this with success?

I've done it. Having a reserve that is fast enough to get to a threatened flank is really an important technique.

There are other answers, though.

• You can sometimes force your opponent to deploy in a certain way, by your own deployment.
• One flank often has more terrain, and therefore is unlikely to be the path of an enemy Knight charge -- you can use that to predict where the enemy last-placed forces are going to go.
• Some forces are unpleasant to Knights. Warwagon are obvious, but Bow Levy are good there as well, and Archers, and Pavises. Bow levy with one stand of mounted crossbowmen (Bad Horse) as a reserve (can move through the open-order bow levy) to hit Knights in the flank can stand against most Knight charges. If you have Stradioti or some other Javelin Cavalry, or one Horsebow, even better.

Deployment is a complex problem. I've seen lots of players lose the game in the deployment -- as many on the advantaged side as on the disadvantaged. Even more so in Grand Triumph, where the movement distances are smaller relative to the size of the battlefield, so it is harder to fix a deployment problem.

Thanks for the ideas!

Never thought of open order horse in 2cnd line that can advance through open order infantry and hit enemy in the side because of enough movement....very nasty idea!

In first game I "defended" one flank with a canon behind a pl.field, this worked well (Learned from the artillery thread). But I made the mistake with placing my knights in the middle of my line. They killed some oppenents out his middle put then got hit in the side by the left over of the rest of his line. Still working and thinking of the fundamentals....but having fun!

The issue with a break through in the center of the enemy line is that it can leave the breaking through troops in trouble if they do not have support to cover their flanks with ZOC projection.

Remember a unit within a base width of the knights flanks would stop enemy from turning on the flank.

I made this mistake yesterday in our Trojan war battle, I sent two Battle Taxis in thinking they would loose (bounce and evade) breaking up the enemy formation, instead they won by doubling and charged forward. Great! but, I did not have the rest of the line close enough to cover the flank of Hector and the enemy turned on the now exposed flank and force a fallback result with no place to go. Hector died valiantly, so we kept true to the Illiad.

Well Rod, the same happened to my Charles the Bold. He did break through slautering the german heavy foot, just to die to some crossbows hitting his flank after the breakthrough.

And actually I did trie the same as you did with the battletaxis with my spanish skirmishers against a marian roman opponent. Guess what? Those skirmishers went the tough way and only fall back instead of evading. They were on 0 the romans on 5!!!

I already learnt the hard way that sometimes it is really good to roll a 1. If you roll a 1 on the pips you do not have a good chance to make a big mistake with the movement.

Thanks for this discussion.

I would like to see more ‘chalk’ talk like this (with annotated pictures). There are plenty of things in the game to make everything dependent on your die rolls, but I’m sure there are certain approaches and formations that work better than others.

My current open tactical questions involve move sequence for successful flanking, elephant use and pike armies. And I’m always thinking in deployment about a single stand reserve.

I started with Knight armies and really enjoy those games. Rod’s advice on knights, have other units like Jav cav on their flanks, Has been passed on to other new players.

DK, your comments on movement distances for grand triumph also apply to new players in the regular game. Stranded flanking forces, even fast ones, stuck on the other side of terrain seems a common new player mistake.

Bill

Bill Hupp wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 21, 2020 1:48 pm

DK, your comments on movement distances for grand triumph also apply to new players in the regular game. Stranded flanking forces, even fast ones, stuck on the other side of terrain seems a common new player mistake.

Certainly, although I would say it differently. Understanding timing across multiple turns is one of the dividers of skill at every level. New players make the mistake in a more obvious way, but even moderately experienced players can and do mis-estimate how long it will take for troops to make a loop around a terrain piece and often leave them stranded. And good players can slow down an enemy onboard flanking group by causing pip demands on the other flank. Many battles boil down to a race -- can my left flank break him before he breaks me on the other side -- which is a very historical dilemma (it happens all the time in battles in history).

The big issue in the game is how many turns will it take, and how many command points will it take. And when your enemy is doing a run around terrain, you can make the terrain wider with the ZOC of terrain-loving troops (light foot, skirmishers) to force the enemy to go farther (more turns, more command points), or you can slow him down by forcing him to spend command points elsewhere in the battle, or to move his commander to answer a threat on the other flank and put the hooking troops out of command control.