Playing with Sultans, Caliphs and Kings

[jchaos79]

I am reading about trukish deployement and they way of thinking is similar to other armies I played like Almohraivds and early islamic armies. Also for persian. ( I had to say I love all of those armies).

They have a lot of low-cheap-subjugate-punks, usually with bows. Lots of light cavalry and some elite great units.

The deployment usually is the Sultan/Caliph/ King in the middle of his huge low cheap army. Around The Men, there are the great elite units. Then two huge wings of light cavarly and in front arches and vassals. Sometimes in the front a skirmisher screen.

Agree with me?




Then the books said and warefare experts said: The enemy army (usually small, beligerant, aggresive, expensive and elite troops, like european knights or greeks) attack with all its strengh. The idea is that the enemy has to fight line after line of east vassals, and each succesive line is stronger than before, so.... lets say, the hoplites/cavalry sweep the skirmishers, crush the bows, hurt the spears and when face the elite cavalry they are so tired/hurted that the elite enemy is defeat.

Also Sultan/Caliph/Persian Kings have a much longer battle line with fast horses than can flank smaller enemy forces. And, of course there is a constant rain of arrows, because every little punk in the east has a composite bow.

Damn, that sounds good, you can not lose ... or not?


The game I play is Warmaster, it has a breakpoint (that means when half of the units of the army are death, the army breaks and the game is lost, skirmishers do not count...but in main terms is that the game). What had happened to me is that I command my low little cheap punk as succesives screens, and as a good Caliph I do not blink when the chrisitian armies crush my lines. But when they are close to the elite troops, I am very close to the brekpoint. In some games I can only see how my best troops, those that are going to bring me the victory breaks because the carnage of the vassals.

Sooooo:
1- Am I taking too few vassals?
2- Should I evade with the vassals in order to not let all die?
3- Am I not a real eastern strap?
4- and at last and my main question is:

how do you play this armies in other rulesets? are they succesful armies?

share your experience and how it goes with other rulesets, please

[DanJ]

Are you using Warhammer or Warmaster as your ruleset?

You say Warmaster but the book shown is a Warhammer source.

The two are completely different.

[fred.]

It will be Warmaster

Could you play the army like Bretonians, so that only the elite count towards the break point?

[DanJ]

I'd hazard that you're using the wrong rule set and advise switching to Warmaster Ancients.

The two sets are very similar in terms of mechanics but there are a couple of inovations which make the ancients version much better.

Only two rounds of fighting in any combat, and a max of two combats for a unit in any single turn.  This prevents super units like knights chewing their way through loads of units one after another.

Proper use of skirmishers and light cavalry, these suddenly become very dangerous if used correctly.

My WMA books are all packed away at the moment due to decorating but I'm pretty sure there was an Ottoman Turk army in the medieval supliment.  I've certainly played the early arab conquest a lot and the main tactics should be similar, soak up the enemy's attacks with loads of cheap infantry, inflicting a few casualties to weaken units then counter attack from a position of strength.

[Zippee]

The game I play is Warmaster,

That's the problem identified then 

I'll admit that it's true that WM Ancients it's a better game than WM Fantasy but it's still a bit pants. 

The heart of your issue seems to be breakpoints and, to be honest, there are very few "ancients" rules out there that don't have some version of the breakpoint mechanic. It's how units are worn down to trigger the breakpoint that's crucial, along with the loss of better valued/more important (even if not mechanically better in the game) units hurting that breakpoint level more than the loss of peasant scum.

And you'll get as many recommendations for rules as there are spots on FKs new generalissimo pyjamas

My preference would be Impetus (and Basic Impetus 2 has just been released to tempt you). Now I know that's not everyone's cup of tea either, but it does play to the 'wear them down' approach you're looking for. You'll find that your elite guards can keep your army in the field whilst disposable allies and subjects can pull the teeth of scary western knights, wearing them down and leaving them at the mercy of your splendidly attired slave guard [or not if it all goes a bit pomegranate-shaped].

[Ithoriel]

For fantasy games I still recommend Warmaster.

I've yet to find a fantasy author who understands how skirmishers work, who realises that a four foot javelin and a 16 foot pike don't work the same just because they're both "pointy sticks," who doesn't think arrows are stopped dead by the flimsiest of armour (unless fired by the hero and his merry men) or who doesn't believe that noble knights on dashing steeds can automatically trample the grubby ground-pounders into the dirt.

Warmaster models these things wonderfully.

If you want skirmishers, pikemen, realistic missile fire and less effective cavalry play with historical armies not dragons or demons! :-)

[Zippee]

I still prefer to take a historical set as a base and add the fantastical on afterwards, as someone once said fantasy wargames are just anc-med games plus monsters, magic & flyers. Actually they're nearly always (late) medieval games plus MMF - there's precious few ancients versions. The recent Osprey one being notable for that reason, what's its name. . . Broken legions that's the one.

Part (only part, mind you) of WM's problem was that it did this the other way around and the historical game was burdened with a bunch of preconditions that didn't matter in the fantasy but did in the historical. 

Fantasy rules authors and fantasy literature authors aren't usually the same thing - which is probably a good thing for all the reasons you mention 

To be fair there's many a professional historian who struggles with those concepts too - though of historical epic authors I do find that Christian Cameron seems to have a decent grasp of what makes different pointy things different, nice to see an author differentiate between a longche and a doru! 

[DanJ]

I'd presumed we were discussing a requirement for a historical set of rules and the WMA set aren't bad.  The use of a fairly arbitry breakpoint works well enough from a design point of view as an army with lots of cheap units can afford to soak up casualties while small elite armies are far more brittle.

Using 10mm figures generally means you're interested in large scale battles so things like Warhammer Historical and its clones are probably not relevant, apart from WMA, Sword and Spear are pretty good, with an interesting activation sequence.

[toxicpixie]

Impetus works quite well for that - the hard core of high value units far out weigh the crud, so you can afford to get a bit over eager and try and grind down the enemy without worrying too much. Light troops are also pretty good at evading so if they get too bashed you can generally get them out the way behind something the enemy don't want to hit.

Of course a solid wall of Venetian hand gunners and condotteri screened by stradiots are enough to ruin anyone's day still, no matter

[FierceKitty]

Tailor the breakpoint calculations so that the loss of unimportant troops weighs less against morale.