Bill Hupp wrote:
By a square base I presume you mean a 40mm x 40mm base?
If your bases are 40mm wide, yes. 60mm x 60mm or 80mm x 80mm if you use those scales.
Bill Hupp wrote:So a 40mm x 40mm basing of mounted infantry, to be replaced by the archer/longbowmen stand along the front edge? Would you use 4 mounted figures or 3? (4 is probably cooler.)
That's an artistic decision. 3 is going to be the most clear, though -- won't get confused with Cataphracts, and won't be crowded. Personally, I might use a mix of 2 mounted and 2 foot archers. But it depends upon figure availability.
Bill Hupp wrote:
1/2 stand = 1 stand makes sense, but can you give a round up example?
1/2 point, not 1/2 stand.
7 stands of Mobile Infantry that are archers would be 28 points for the Archers and 3.5 pts for the Battle Card Mobile Infantry on those Archers for a total of 31.5 pts. You can't round down (forget) that 0.5 -- you can't use 17 pts of other stuff.
Bill Hupp wrote: That is, if I have 2 archer stands I presume it is 1 point, but if I have 1 stand it is 1 point too. Does that imply you could not use 1/2 point for mounted archers and 1/2 point for dismounting knights?
What you're asking is whether we would force rounding before adding or adding before rounding. That's a little fussy, Bill. If you have 3.5 pts spent on one thing, and 2.5 pts spent on another, that adds to 6, not 7.
Bill Hupp wrote:
Also, these are Battleline troops per Meshwesh?
They are what they are -- some Mobile Infantry might be Battleline, and some might not. Whatever Meshwesh says.
Bill Hupp wrote:
Never having used mounted archers before, is it worth it? What can they do besides grab terrain or go after a camp? (Tony, since you indicated a liking of Free Companies have you used them before or in any legacy system?) Are they good on a flank attack?
Their strategy is only limited by your creativity.
I would say "it depends". It depends upon lots of stuff. I can see Elamite Kallapani being very useful in historical matchups because Bow Levy are useful troops but are so stinking slow. Send out four Kallapani (Bow Levy with Mobile Infantry battle card) and you could zoom them to a useful blocking position and really mess up the enemy Chariots. Chariots really don't like Bow Levy. And if you are Elamites, you have a LOT of Bow Levy.
Assyrian Kallapani (Light Foot or Raiders with Mobile Infantry battle card) might be less useful, because Light Foot (in particular) are already pretty damn fast.
Kyrenean Greek Heavy Foot/Mobile Infantry on carts might be pretty useful -- double the speed, and Heavy Foot are fairly effective except for their speed.
HYW English or Free Company Archer/Mobile Inf are probably really good -- missile fire is a very powerful thing, and getting a couple of stands of Archers to somewhere critical in time could be a dominant move.
But back to the short answer -- it depends. Do you play battles of maneuver? They might do well for you, then. Do you play frontal slogs? Then they'll be wasted points.
Bill Hupp wrote:
I may not be able to avoid taking these for the cool factor.
There's that, too. I've got me some Elamite and Assyrian Kallapani both in the painting queue for that reason alone.