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 Just Tony wrote:
But combat resolution directly affected Psychology, just as it did in actual regimental combats.

Look at pretty much ANY of Alexander of Macedon's battles as examples. More people were killed from breaking and fleeing than were killed in the actual press of fighting.

Yes, except that it's not done properly. The flank wouldn't be of the unit, it'd be of the battleline as a whole.

The problem is that WHFB allowed too many armies to ignore Psychology, which makes the game kinda rubbish. When you get to the top tier, you don't see armies that completely disintegrate on a couple bad rolls, despite that being the realistic result because players won't play that when given the choice of an army that holds like SMs do.

WFB wasn't historical, and it couldn't be. Not with Dragons and Wizards that completely upend classical strategy and tactics. AoS is a better game in the sense that it works with the concept of Fantasy combat vs pseudo-Historical combat. If you want to play Ancients without Fantasy elements, that's fine, but you'd never be doing matched play, either - those were overwhelming imbalances where the question was of who lost less / won faster, and most players don't want to be on the side that's stalling for time / extracting a higher price of victory.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Well, being able to shoot out of or into combat means there's not really any point in tying up a shooty unit with expendable cannon fodder.

In WHFB, and even in 40k, using a throw away unit to stop a unit from firing at your soldiers was a viable and useful tactic. It doesn't matter if they don't kill anything, because that's not their job.

And getting your elite units into melee quickly was a way to protect them from shooting too, which again was a viable tactic. Its why I don't really like 40k 8th ed's falling back rule, because it undermines this interaction and there's not really any penalty. There should really be an attack of opportunity, or a roll off based on the move stat or something.

You can't do that in AoS.

Wheeling is a consequence of the unit facing system. Since you always have a front, and you can always move forward, wheeling was a way of making complex moves with a block, so that they aren't stuck going in a straight line.
You still can't use wheeling to scoot your block over the side though. To do that, you need to do a reform, which slows their movement.
As you have such movement restrictions, you had to be very careful where you place your regiments. You don't want to put them somewhere where they can't move forward without effectively wasting a turn reforming, for example.

Very well said. I will agree that in this aspect Fantasy Battles has more depth than Age of Sigmar. Now for some other people do not get upset, I am not saying AoS is any shallower but a good point was made. Anyone else would like to counter this? If not will at least agree? Then give examples as to why Age of Sigmar has depth to it as well.

*edit*

Just saw Johnhawgs post. Good points there. Any counter to that as well?

Well, I for one, am not trying to convince anyone, or argue that WHFB was a more strategically deep game than AoS. I believe it is, and I'm sure, with some time and inclination, I could make such an argument (not necessarily one that convinces every/any one here.)

But I don't have the time or inclination. And since the point of this thread is just asking what we/I am not playing AoS, I can leave it at that.

FWIW, my canonical example of excellent Ancients scenario is to have one player force march their army alongside a lake, only to have the vanguard encounter enemy forces...

This, of course, is the Battle of Lake Trasimene, where the outnumbered Romans get largely slaughtered by Hannibal's Gauls. For the Roman player, the objective would be to avoid having the entire force killed or captured, while killing more than a handful of Gauls.

The problem is that almost no Ancients player wants to play the Romans. In fact, just seeing the setup is often enough to turn them away from the tabletop, because they *know* the scenario. They're unprepared and outnumbered 2:1, and they can't retreat because their flanks are cut off and it's certain death in the lake.

However, as an AoS game, if you add Dragons and Wizards to make up for the lack of infantrymen, and the Romans are actually Chaos Warriors, maybe they have a chance.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
FWIW, my canonical example of excellent Ancients scenario is to have one player force march their army alongside a lake, only to have the vanguard encounter enemy forces...

This, of course, is the Battle of Lake Trasimene, where the outnumbered Romans get largely slaughtered by Hannibal's Gauls. For the Roman player, the objective would be to avoid having the entire force killed or captured, while killing more than a handful of Gauls.

The problem is that almost no Ancients player wants to play the Romans. In fact, just seeing the setup is often enough to turn them away from the tabletop, because they *know* the scenario. They're unprepared and outnumbered 2:1, and they can't retreat because their flanks are cut off and it's certain death in the lake.

However, as an AoS game, if you add Dragons and Wizards to make up for the lack of infantrymen, and the Romans are actually Chaos Warriors, maybe they have a chance.

Replace the Chaos Warriors with Idoneth Deepkin (who live in the water) or Nighthaunt (who can FLY) etc.

Rocmistro wrote:
Well, I for one, am not trying to convince anyone, or argue that WHFB was a more strategically deep game than AoS. I believe it is, and I'm sure, with some time and inclination, I could make such an argument (not necessarily one that convinces every/any one here.)

But I don't have the time or inclination. And since the point of this thread is just asking what we/I am not playing AoS, I can leave it at that.

Fair enough. I never pointed anyone out so please don't think I was doing so. I do believe it is a good reason why not to play. So further explanations can explain why people do or do not play. Maybe it's "because of the internet" or "we just got lazy" but when reading people's comments they come out as fact which can get people upset. Then they something that seems like fact.

I guess all I am asking is we need to stop being lazy and keep saying "In my opinion...". (again not picking on you or pointing you out, sorry if it comes out that way) If people want to state facts, then they need to prove it. Nobody is really proving anything and we are just shouting over each other. If the mods don't think this is a good reason then I will make a new thread but I believe these are excellent reasons why people play or do not play.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
But combat resolution directly affected Psychology, just as it did in actual regimental combats.

Look at pretty much ANY of Alexander of Macedon's battles as examples. More people were killed from breaking and fleeing than were killed in the actual press of fighting.

Yes, except that it's not done properly. The flank wouldn't be of the unit, it'd be of the battleline as a whole..

True-ish. It has to start somewhere, and WFB scales down to the initial breaking point. WFB has a wacky scale, I'll be the first to admit. There weren't very many regimental combats fought that small, but we are also scaled to a certain sized table, which hems in how it can be relayed in miniature form. Warmaster scaled this better in theory, but the Warmaster armies wound up mosty looking to be about the same "size" as their WFB counterpart and, unlike Epic, didn't add things that could ONLY be run in Warmaster. At least nothing of note. It's one of the things I detested about the Apocalypse release for 40K AND that 40K basically rolled Apocalypse into standard gaming: this eliminated the main draw to Epic. Why paint a Titan the size of a Guardsman when you can paint a Titan to use WITH your Guardsman?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The problem is that WHFB allowed too many armies to ignore Psychology, which makes the game kinda rubbish. When you get to the top tier, you don't see armies that completely disintegrate on a couple bad rolls, despite that being the realistic result because players won't play that when given the choice of an army that holds like SMs do.

8th, maybe. 6th did not have that many, and the ones that WERE suffered other weaknesses that could be exploited.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
WFB wasn't historical, and it couldn't be. Not with Dragons and Wizards that completely upend classical strategy and tactics. AoS is a better game in the sense that it works with the concept of Fantasy combat vs pseudo-Historical combat. If you want to play Ancients without Fantasy elements, that's fine, but you'd never be doing matched play, either - those were overwhelming imbalances where the question was of who lost less / won faster, and most players don't want to be on the side that's stalling for time / extracting a higher price of victory.

Does the presence of Orbital Bombardment, giant Tyranid Hiveships, or any other over the top 40K thing invalidate the tactics used? The style of combat in 40K is essentially modern small arms combat with light mechanized support, shouldn't the space combat nature of the 40K universe sort of invalidate that? Especially when Virus Bombs exist? Dragons don't change regimental combat in WFB away from historically fought regimental combat any more than Elephants would. Which is good, since Alexander was one of MANY who used Elephants in regimental combat.

 Just Tony wrote:
Why paint a Titan the size of a Guardsman when you can paint a Titan to use WITH your Guardsman?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The problem is that WHFB allowed too many armies to ignore Psychology, which makes the game kinda rubbish. When you get to the top tier, you don't see armies that completely disintegrate on a couple bad rolls, despite that being the realistic result because players won't play that when given the choice of an army that holds like SMs do.

8th, maybe. 6th did not have that many, and the ones that WERE suffered other weaknesses that could be exploited.


Does the presence of Orbital Bombardment, giant Tyranid Hiveships, or any other over the top 40K thing invalidate the tactics used? The style of combat in 40K is essentially modern small arms combat with light mechanized support, shouldn't the space combat nature of the 40K universe sort of invalidate that? Especially when Virus Bombs exist?

Dragons don't change regimental combat in WFB away from historically fought regimental combat any more than Elephants would. Which is good, since Alexander was one of MANY who used Elephants in regimental combat.

I own multiple Titans for 40k. They are awesome, even if I hardly even play 40k these days.

I played Dogs of War in 6E. Between being human-based *and& saddled with Paymaster Panic, DoW were perhaps the most vulnerable to Psychology of all the WFB armies at the time.

40k has basically no tactics other than "get there with the mostest fastest", which is typical of pretty much every skirmish battle game. It's not modern small arms, it's mob fighting.

Elephants can't fly. If the Romans could drop a couple of Dragons on the enemy flank, that changes everything. Same with having Wizards dropping GIANT Comets from the skies, or Shamans having their God literally stomp the enemy to death. Much less a Purple Sun that annihilates everything in its path...

Personally I want to love AoS...there's lots about the game that gets me excited. The problem is, whenever I actually turn up to play a game I hit the iron wall of reality. AoS is tedious and confused, and as a result never fun (for me).

AoS started out with a lean four-page ruleset: exciting! A simple game can still be fun and challenging, and a simple game is much easier to tweak and hone until it is balanced and streamlined. But sadly this was not GW's gameplan. Instead of improving the existing rules they have decided that the way to make AoS "better" is to constantly add rules that (from my perspective) add nothing to the game whatsoever. I'm talking about Realms, endless spells, etc. These things are just arbitrary bloat, not actual rules additions that add any sort of tactical depth or replay value.

Despite the piles of scenarios in AoS, few to none of them lead to anything other than "I push my dudes toward your dudes until there are no more dudes." Coupled with the fact that there is really only one strategy: buff unit with auras until hit and wound rolls are mere formalities, and the fact that the only thing worse than sitting through your opponent's turn in AoS is doing it twice, and you really have an all-around NPE.

Again, this is my opinion based on my experience. I'm not here to argue with anyone, I am here to answer OP's posed question. I would LOVE to love AoS. The model lines are great, especially the newer ones. But the game itself borders somewhere between boring and infuriating.

I'll more or less second what exliontamer said.

I do want to like AoS. I really do. I have somewhere around 300 beastmen that I would love to (24 metal minotaurs, ooh-rah!) that I'd love to use. I'm going to dabble with the new Beastman codex that launches this week, and maybe try a game or two, but we'll see how it goes.

If (*if*) I somehow was convinced (or had an epiphany) that it was the strategy game that some of you guys believe it is, though, there is still another problem. It's basically just 40k with a little more <hack> and a little less <pewpew>. I mean, seriously, the stats are almost the same, the curve, scale, basic flow, is all pretty much the same as 40k. Why burden myself with the extra rules and book-volume overhead? 40k scratches the same itch.

 exliontamer wrote:
Personally I want to love AoS...

AoS started out with a lean four-page ruleset: exciting! A simple game can still be fun and challenging, and a simple game is much easier to tweak and hone until it is balanced and streamlined. But sadly this was not GW's gameplan.

Actually, it was. That much was obvious from the initial launch: Warhammer narrative play, casual AF.

Except that the WFB players demanded WFB 8E points and "crunch" so here we are.

To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.

auticus wrote:
The last time I saw reference to that scale (1 model = 20+ men) was 5th edition which was the 1990s. From then on that was removed from rulebooks though older players carried on suggesting that.

However I know from my own experience that most players from 2000 on did not see it like that, they saw individual models and did not have an army feel at 28mm.

Every game that uses closed formations has that. Napoleonics, fantasy, historicals, etc.

We just recently mentioned hail caesar, a 28mm scale wargame and no one pretends it's 1-1 scale. Same for KoW.

I just spent tonight pinning/re-basing and priming and undercoating 24 metal Minotaurs for AOS (round 50mm with shattered dominion pieces to match my silver tower stuff) and a metal doom bull, 2x metal Shaggoths and 2x metal shamans. Idk the army will make but the beast of chaos tomb when get in has me excited (been years since had an army I wanted to play and actually covert over to AOS). This is the army and time for me. So why am I not playing AOS? I have a lot of fantasy armies just I haven't had the codex I was looking for, now I might play a bit.

Your mileage may vary. Totally different experience / expectations over here.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.

Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.

Karol wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.

Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.

Close order formations actually lasted for a while, up until the end of the 19th century.
Due to the inaccuracy of firearms until much later (like...a century ago) and the fact that most of them could only fire one shot before reloading, close order formations were actually the optimal way of organizing firing lines, as the sheer number of concentrated shots made up for the guns' aforementioned weaknesses.

It was only after guns became more accurate and capable of multiple shots before reloading (as well as the invention of the machine gun) that close order formations were rendered obsolete in favor of looser formations and fire team based tactics.
I don't know the exact terminology, but that's the gist of it. People have been bunching up in big blocks to fight other big blocks for a very, very long time. It was only about a 100 years ago that they stopped doing that.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Karol wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.

Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.

Close order formations actually lasted for a while, up until the end of the 19th century.
Due to the inaccuracy of firearms until much later (like...a century ago) and the fact that most of them could only fire one shot before reloading, close order formations were actually the optimal way of organizing firing lines, as the sheer number of concentrated shots made up for the guns' aforementioned weaknesses.

It was only after guns became more accurate and capable of multiple shots before reloading (as well as the invention of the machine gun) that close order formations were rendered obsolete in favor of looser formations and fire team based tactics.
I don't know the exact terminology, but that's the gist of it. People have been bunching up in big blocks to fight other big blocks for a very, very long time. It was only about a 100 years ago that they stopped doing that.

The introduction of the breechloader rifle in the early 19th century around the time Napoleonic Wars was pretty much the end of close order formations. The ability to quickly reload a firearm made formation battles an absolute bloodbath.

Karol wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.

Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.

It really is not.

 EnTyme wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Karol wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.

Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.

Close order formations actually lasted for a while, up until the end of the 19th century.
Due to the inaccuracy of firearms until much later (like...a century ago) and the fact that most of them could only fire one shot before reloading, close order formations were actually the optimal way of organizing firing lines, as the sheer number of concentrated shots made up for the guns' aforementioned weaknesses.

It was only after guns became more accurate and capable of multiple shots before reloading (as well as the invention of the machine gun) that close order formations were rendered obsolete in favor of looser formations and fire team based tactics.
I don't know the exact terminology, but that's the gist of it. People have been bunching up in big blocks to fight other big blocks for a very, very long time. It was only about a 100 years ago that they stopped doing that.

The introduction of the breechloader rifle in the early 19th century around the time Napoleonic Wars was pretty much the end of close order formations. The ability to quickly reload a firearm made formation battles an absolute bloodbath.

Ranked line formations still existed during the American civil war though, and that was mid 19th century.
Then again, that might have been why the American Civil War was such a slaughter.

It was only after guns became more accurate and capable of multiple shots before reloading (as well as the invention of the machine gun) that close order formations were rendered obsolete in favor of looser formations and fire team based tactics.
I don't know the exact terminology, but that's the gist of it. People have been bunching up in big blocks to fight other big blocks for a very, very long time. It was only about a 100 years ago that they stopped doing that.

I think the last time someone tried it with both armies trying to pull it off was durning the american civil war. Dudes were shoting each other from more or less point blank range, considering some of the weapons they were using. I maybe wrong about it though, never been an expert about the far east jap vs rus conflicts etc.




ok. how about this example of tercio. You could think this is a WFB pre battle report set up, but it is the actual formation and how they were used between XVI and XVII century,
[url]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tercio#/media/File:Terciosmarchando.jpg[/url]

Yeah, the last use of ranked fighting was in the American civil war, a war that also saw the use of rifles and explosive shells, and proved to be an utter slaughter fest because of that. After that ranked formations where not really used, except for during the Zulu wars, although that was more volley lines than anything, and was against tribes people with little more than a few ancient muskets.

The Japanese had stopped using ranked formations by the 1850's, under part of the reforms of the military structure.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Yes, except that it's not done properly. The flank wouldn't be of the unit, it'd be of the battleline as a whole.

That's not strictly true. At Gaugamela, Alexander drew the Persian left wing away from the centre and then attacked the Persian centre with his Companions and other troops. There is a degree of analogy in there with just attacking the flank of one WHFB unit. I see where you're going though, it is a bit tenuous and the way it's handled (+1 resolution) is probably not the best abstraction. But then WHFB has never been that realistic. In the very early days it was more of an RPG type game and some of the rules were more detailed (2nd edition 40k was the same), but as time went by it relied more on broad abstractions and gradually became more unit orientated (and finally more magic orientated). Getting the combat res bonus for flanks and rear charges was more about encouraging people to think about manoeuvre and positioning and the advantages that could accrue from clever movement and forethought.

Part of the problem I have looking at AOS is that there really doesn't seem to be much value in using terrain and moevment to intelligently position a unit. There seems to be no bonus for attacking an enemy in a way that would be genuinely disadvantageous to them, such as from behind where they would have a harder time supporting each other + the shock value of the sudden assault from an unexpected direction. I agree with what you were saying about psychology, there have been far too many units over the years that have just straight up naturally immune to any kind of effect that would give even seasoned warriors cause for concern (arguably some factors would give more cause for concern the more seasoned the warriors were...). Yet AOS doesn't seem to address this at all, so on that basis surely it's worse than WHFB?

Over simplified rules are also what's averting me from 8th ed 40k. The idea that a tank can park with just a smidge of its track showing round a corner and subsequently unload all its weapons, even sponson mounted ones that are on the opposite side, is ludicrous and robs the game of a lot of its prior depth. I also find things like the crazy amount of deepstriking and other units that appear after turn 1 to be quite obnoxious, along with the lack of a decent cover mechanic and some of the weird, virtually terrain less boards that everyone seems to play on now. I want my sci-fi or fantasy game to have a set of very clear and fairly intuitive pluses and minuses to certain actions .e.g moving through terrain is slower but it makes you harder to hit, long range weapons can shoot early but suffer penalties at long ranges, a long charge is risky but you gain some advantage by taking the initiative and attacking.

I think the issue is not so much about "does AOS have tactical choices?". If it has rules and different selections then it almost invariably will have tactics of some kind. The issue seems to be more about "what kind of tactical choices do people want?". AOS seems to be about army selection and stacking buffs. 40k seems to be about the same, plus winning the first turn. 8th WHFB was mainly about who could roll the best spells and who could pull them off in the game.

Personally I prefer games where my choices in the battle have more impact, and positioning, formations, placement and movement are the main factors, with dice as the joker element. On Empire:Total War for example I often fought with my battalions in two even lines, with the less experienced ones up front to absorb the enemies main blow and the more experienced second line as a reserve for counter attacks. The more compact formation was easier for me to handle and often meant I could split the enemy army in half. I mainly used cavalry as a reserve to chase fleeing troops, not as a strike force, which freed up my main liine units to turn on the enemy and start overwhelming them. It had echoes of using Gretchin/Goblins as shock absorbers/disruptors, setting up a counter attack by more meaty units held back in reserve. I'm not sure AOS can really manage this, or give me any advantages to out positioning my opponents. WHFB could to a degree.

 EnTyme wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Karol wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.

Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.

Close order formations actually lasted for a while, up until the end of the 19th century.
Due to the inaccuracy of firearms until much later (like...a century ago) and the fact that most of them could only fire one shot before reloading, close order formations were actually the optimal way of organizing firing lines, as the sheer number of concentrated shots made up for the guns' aforementioned weaknesses.

It was only after guns became more accurate and capable of multiple shots before reloading (as well as the invention of the machine gun) that close order formations were rendered obsolete in favor of looser formations and fire team based tactics.
I don't know the exact terminology, but that's the gist of it. People have been bunching up in big blocks to fight other big blocks for a very, very long time. It was only about a 100 years ago that they stopped doing that.

The introduction of the breechloader rifle in the early 19th century around the time Napoleonic Wars was pretty much the end of close order formations. The ability to quickly reload a firearm made formation battles an absolute bloodbath.

Which is why wargames up to the Napoleonic wars/ACW model units as blocks and lines using formations.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Yeah, the last use of ranked fighting was in the American civil war, a war that also saw the use of rifles and explosive shells, and proved to be an utter slaughter fest because of that. After that ranked formations where not really used, except for during the Zulu wars, although that was more volley lines than anything, and was against tribes people with little more than a few ancient muskets.

The Japanese had stopped using ranked formations by the 1850's, under part of the reforms of the military structure.

Many of the large ranked formations were also used throughout history by relatively untrained troops - they gained confidence by being with their mates and the simplicity of what they needed to do - march towards the enemy and kill them before the kill you.

Also giving the ability for the commander to try and control them at least until he couldn't see what was going on any more due to dust, smoke etc.

Manuevering successfully on a battlefield is apparently more the job of veteran/elite forces.

Beyond magic and the supernatural there were lots of things that WFB did differently to the real world - men on horses do not just charge disciplined formed ranks of infantry, especially spearmen or similar - at last not more than once. Because they die. They go after broken units, fleeing units or other cavalry for the most part and if they defeat their opposite numbers - try for the flanks of the formed units or units such as archers who seldom have spears.

 Mr Morden wrote:
men on horses do not just charge disciplined formed ranks of infantry, especially spearmen or similar - at last not more than once. Because they die. They go after broken units, fleeing units or other cavalry for the most part and if they defeat their opposite numbers - try for the flanks of the formed units or units such as archers who seldom have spears.

To be fair, a lot of systems and media get that wrong. Even Total War did that until CA realized that it doesn't work like that and made cav next to useless unless you micromanage them in the later games.

Then again, I can totally imagine a cold one being perfectly fine in a melee. I mean, its an hungry velociraptor with an equally hungry crocodile man on its back. That's pretty dangerous, even in the thick of it.
The problem with horses is that they are actually really timorous beasts; they are prone to flight and it requires a lot of training to keep them disciplined. With a predatory mount the hard part would be to stop them from engaging the enemy.

I thought TW nearly always had it that charging spearmen was a BAD idea if you were cavalry. Certainly in all the ones I've played if you charge spearmen at any angle other than fully on the rear, your cavalry will generally be terribly torn up - even top end heavy armoured against peasant spearmen is a bad idea.

Media normally gets that one right; that horses VS spears is a bad idea. Other units its more hit and miss and there's a lot of random stuff thrown in too (eg balls on chains which appear to only have any historical reference in a few works of art and have never had any relics found on the battlefield nor record of such weapons ever being used).

Of course a game also has to simplify things, otherwise its far too much for a person to play and enjoy (at least not without reading a thick library of volumes on war)

 Overread wrote:
I thought TW nearly always had it that charging spearmen was a BAD idea if you were cavalry. Certainly in all the ones I've played if you charge spearmen at any angle other than fully on the rear, your cavalry will generally be terribly torn up - even top end heavy armoured against peasant spearmen is a bad idea.

Media normally gets that one right; that horses VS spears is a bad idea. Other units its more hit and miss and there's a lot of random stuff thrown in too (eg balls on chains which appear to only have any historical reference in a few works of art and have never had any relics found on the battlefield nor record of such weapons ever being used).

Of course a game also has to simplify things, otherwise its far too much for a person to play and enjoy (at least not without reading a thick library of volumes on war)

Yes, TA got that right consistently, but against non-spearmen cav would absolutely wreck infantry in the early games.
I remember parthian heavy cav being an absolute wrecking ball against legionnairies. I think they stopped doing that in Medieval. I remember cav not being as dangerous against blocks of infantry in that game, unless they were already on low morale. Which is how cav should be used. As a terror weapon. Well, unless you're riding a mount that's really good at killing things, of course.

Indeed, flails are dumb. The never really existed, but they looked kind of cool so they stuck. Same with scythes, really.
One of my favorite parts of the goblin slayer manga is when they took the piss out of flails. Because they are stupid weapons. Scythes at least won't hit you in the face if you try to swing it.

Well it depends on the cavalery and the numbers. For example in 1605 the swedish army which was one of , if not the best, force as far as tactics, arment and officer cadr goes. Faced of against a much smaller army Polish army. The swedish army had 8500 infantry armed with pikes and muskets, supported by artilery and 2500 of cavalery. Poles had 2400 heavy cavalery and around 1000 infantry that didn't take part in fighting, unless one counts what they were doing to the civilians in the swedish camp post battle. the Poles charged 8 times. Broke both sweedish lines, over run the scotish second line and routed the cavalery and then proceded to pillage the swedish camp.

Ottomans also did it a few times to habsburgs and hungarian infantry formations in the XVI and XVII century.


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Many of the large ranked formations were also used throughout history by relatively untrained troops - they gained confidence by being with their mates and the simplicity of what they needed to do - march towards the enemy and kill them before the kill you.

That is not even true for medival times, even the english didn't use dense formations of levy troops. And since the later medival times almost all acting armies were either made up of knights, can't really call those untrained, or professional mercs. There were some rare examples of levy troops beating normal units in "pushing the pike", like the swiss for example or scottish. But those soon turned their fame in to being hired as mercs all around europe.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
men on horses do not just charge disciplined formed ranks of infantry, especially spearmen or similar - at last not more than once. Because they die. They go after broken units, fleeing units or other cavalry for the most part and if they defeat their opposite numbers - try for the flanks of the formed units or units such as archers who seldom have spears.

To be fair, a lot of systems and media get that wrong. Even Total War did that until CA realized that it doesn't work like that and made cav next to useless unless you micromanage them in the later games.

Then again, I can totally imagine a cold one being perfectly fine in a melee. I mean, its an hungry velociraptor with an equally hungry crocodile man on its back. That's pretty dangerous, even in the thick of it.
The problem with horses is that they are actually really timorous beasts; they are prone to flight and it requires a lot of training to keep them disciplined. With a predatory mount the hard part would be to stop them from engaging the enemy.

Agreed, once you throw in carnivorous armoured reptiles as mounts then you are looking at a different world - in fact recently read a novel with Dinosaurs in the Napoleonic era (a book much better than I had anticipated!)

Karol wrote:
Well it depends on the cavalery and the numbers. For example in 1605 the swedish army which was one of , if not the best, force as far as tactics, arment and officer cadr goes. Faced of against a much smaller army Polish army. The swedish army had 8500 infantry armed with pikes and muskets, supported by artilery and 2500 of cavalery. Poles had 2400 heavy cavalery and around 1000 infantry that didn't take part in fighting, unless one counts what they were doing to the civilians in the swedish camp post battle. the Poles charged 8 times. Broke both sweedish lines, over run the scotish second line and routed the cavalery and then proceded to pillage the swedish camp.

Ottomans also did it a few times to habsburgs and hungarian infantry formations in the XVI and XVII century.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Many of the large ranked formations were also used throughout history by relatively untrained troops - they gained confidence by being with their mates and the simplicity of what they needed to do - march towards the enemy and kill them before the kill you.

That is not even true for medival times, even the english didn't use dense formations of levy troops. And since the later medival times almost all acting armies were either made up of knights, can't really call those untrained, or professional mercs. There were some rare examples of levy troops beating normal units in "pushing the pike", like the swiss for example or scottish. But those soon turned their fame in to being hired as mercs all around europe.

Thanks sounds an unusual battle - must look it up.

Sorry i don't mean that all ranked units were untrained just that if you were going to throw green troops into a battle having them together was often used whereas those well trained / veteran ranked units could do much more - or at least from my reading?