RustyNumber wrote:

What did The 9th Age (1.1) do with them to make them more interesting\viable? Or WAP for that matter?

 Orlanth wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
I'm waaaaayyyyyy late to the discussion here, I know, but somehow I managed to miss this entire forum for years...

Bretonnia needs solid melee infantry. Full stop. Be it more expensive WS4 foot knights or cheap WS3 polearm Men-At-Arms probably doesn't matter all that much... although having both gives variety and flexibility. In the age of steadfast and 'step up', an all-cavalry army is not going to cut it unless you make even basic Bret cavalry so good they're unbalanced.

Foot knights solve a lot of problems, but only so long as you are not dogmatically tied to the idea that every knight has a personal fief, which makes no sense as if a knight has more than one surviving son they will have to create new villages and castles for them.. Foot knights are very likely to be landless knights.

(Although I do think Grail Knights and Grail Vow characters need a hefty buff. They're supposed to be the BEST knights in the Old World. They should be able to take on any other knight in the game on at least even terms, even Chaos Knights.)

I mostly agree, but Chaos Knights are also divinely blessed.

 Orlanth wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

I mostly agree, but Chaos Knights are also divinely blessed.

And Grail Knights are not?

I used the word 'also', not 'instead'.

mithril2098 wrote:
i'm not in a position to discuss rules.. which to be honest, until we know what the revised old world's rules are, we won;t know what is or isn't needed anyway.

i'd say that one of the biggest failings of the faction in the old WFB was how two dimensional it came across as, both in play and in lore. peasants, lots of knights, bowmen, and a bit of grail magic. not really a lot of variety. the various types of knights were largely similar, the differences were lore stuff that rarely impacted the armies proper (or even really required much in the way of special models). and while the lore had lots of stuff about nobles and feudalism and such, it never really impacted the armies being built beyond being a choice for colors.

so to me,there are two main things that the faction needs for a proper update.
first, lean into the feudalism aspect. your army is the household of a landed noble. it is a "retinue of retinues".. your commander is a lesser noble, who is beholding to higher nobles. probably a Baron or maybe slightly higher, a Count, who in turn is the vassal of a dukedom within the kingdom. though personally i'd tweak the lore and instead of going with a simple king, i'd go with a "high king", to add an extra layer of nobles in there, with regional kings controlling groups of dukedoms. this makes it even more arthurian, as well as opens up some extra options for breetonian on breetonian conflict and political infighting.
your army's units are said noble's personal vassals. his knights are the leaders of the main blocks of cavalry and semi-professional, with the men in those units being his personal retinue, his sergeants, armsmen, and mercenary retainers. and the peasant units are the people of the villages those knights oversee.

(some historical context for this structure, from the A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry blog.

Spoiler:

(this is from an article critiquing the historicity of how Game of Thrones depicts warfare, but it is an excellent breakdown of how feudal armies were structured and formed.)
Army Building for Dummies
The phrase I drill into my student’s heads about the structure of medieval armies is that they are a retinue of retinues. What I mean by this is that the way a medieval king raises his armies is that he has a bunch of military aristocrats (read: nobles) who owe him military service (they are his ‘vassals’) – his retinue. When he goes to war, the king calls on all of his vassals to show up. But each of those vassals also have their own bunch of military aristocrats who are their vassals – their retinue. And this repeats down the line, even down to an individual knight, who likely has a handful of non-nobles as his retinue (perhaps a few of his peasants, or maybe he’s hired a mercenary or two on retainer).

If you want to read a really detailed (and rather dry) look at how this functioned, take a look at David Simpkin’s The English Aristocracy at War (2008); he combed surviving English records from c. 1272 to 1314 and he analyses (among other things) average retinue size. The average retinue found was five men although significant lords (like earls) might have hundreds of men in their retinues (which were in turn comprised of the retinues of their own retainers). So the noble’s retinue is the combined retinues of all of his retainers, and the king’s army is the combined total of everyone’s retainer’s retainers, if that make sense. Thus: a retinue of retinues.

This is exactly the system that Game of Thrones claims its armies work on. The high lords – folks like Tywin Lannister – ‘call their banners’ and their bannermen – the Westerosi term for vassals (and presumably a direct take on what was called a ‘knight banneret’ historically – the lowest form of aristocrat who would have his own banner and thus his own military unit) show up with their own retinues, exactly as above. And, at first blush, this seems quite medieval – this is how medieval armies in the High and Late Middle Ages were formed (mostly). The problem is that armies in Westeros never seem to function within the constraints of this system.

First, the obvious: this system, where armies are assembled based on personal relationships and where the smallest units are often very small simply does not have the capacity to scale up forever. There are just only so many retainers a king can keep a personal relationship with – and so on down the line.

Second, those retainers aren’t ‘on retainer’ to serve forever. They are obliged to a certain number of days of military service per year. Specifically, the standard number – which comes out of William the Conqueror’s settlement of his vassals after taking the English throne – was 40 days. The entire point of this system is that the king gives his vassals land and they give him military service so that no one has to pay anyone anything, because medieval kings do not have the kind of revenue to maintain long-term standing armies. It is no accident that the most destructive medieval conflicts were religious wars where the warriors participating were essentially engaged in ‘armed pilgrimage’ and so might stay in the field longer (God having a more unlimited claim on a knight’s time than the king).

Finally, imagine organizing supply for an army like this. Every retinue unit comes in a different size: Lord Tarly might have a few hundred men, Lord Risley a couple dozen, Lord Hastwyck showed up with just his household guard of five and so on (for dozens and dozens of retinues). You – the king’s quartermaster – do not know how large these retinues are, but you must ration and distribute food so that you don’t run into a position where one retinue is starving while the others have surplus. You also need to coordinate the baggage train of excess food…but of course most of the wagons and pack animals belong to all of the minor lords with their small retinues. You begin to see the problem: centralized supply – necessary for keeping a large army fed – is practically impossible.

(If you want to read about the difficulties of keeping even an early modern army (with somewhat more centralized supply and logistics) together at long distance, consider reading Geoffrey Parker’s The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road and keep in mind that, at its peak, the army he describes (and the insurmountable challenges of paying and supplying it) was never more than 90,000 men – smaller than Renly Baratheon’s host – and tended to be on average a bit less than 60,000 strong).

second, this vassalage system of retinues should effect the army..taking a HQ unit should only unlock only so many units of knights and men at arms (which should either have a figure cap per unit, or be required to take multiple unit commander type figures based on total figure count.), and those knights in turn unlocking only so many peasant type units. (which again, should either have a figure a per unit or be required to have multiple unit commander type figures based on size)
this would reflect the fact that the army is not a professional force but rather what amounts to an adhoc affair, where the Baron calls for his knights-bannerets, who gather up their personal retinues (some of which would be cavalry, some of which would be men at arms) and recruits some village peasants/serfs to be bowmen or just warm bodies to pad out the numbers, and march off to a mustering point where they meet up with the other knights, and the baron's own personal retinue of cavalry, men-at-arms, and village peasants.

this means that in order to build a larger army, you have to invest in more HQ units. it also lets you play around with unlocking limitations. a grail knight champion HQ unit for example might be required to unlock a unit of grail knight cavalry and grail pilgrims instead of regular knights and peasants (thus making them feel less tacked on to the army proper.), etc.

this also opens up some options for unit variety. since your army is the household of a noble, you can bring in other parts of his personal court. like the castle's Huntsman leading a unit of hunting hounds for a Baron, or a Sheriff and some constables. etc.

lore wise i'd also expand on the grail cult.. model the grail knights more on the religious military orders of the crusades, instead of just being what happens if a questing knight manages to find the thing. this also would let you play around with upgrades.. you could have two or three orders of grail knights, each following a particular aspect of the lady, giving the knights thematic stat modifiers depending on which order you make them part of. (this should probably be an upgrade taken by the grail Knight champion, and then apply to all the lesser grail knights in the army). questing knights can be the lowest rank of these orders, who quest to gain experience and prove their worth.