Does anyone have any advice for running and collecting non-tribal swarm armies?
I've never personally seen a swarm army run that wasn't mostly or all Tribal TuGs, so I don't really know how one would set up a formed/drilled swarm army for success, or what the experience of playing this kind of army is like.
It's a lot of extra minis to collect and paint, so I want to know what I'd be getting myself into before I order anything new for it.
(For context, the army I'm looking at using is Joseon Korea— the last army in Ghengis— of whom I already have a nice little cavalry army collected.
Joseon infantry, however, seems to range from vaguely competent to astonishingly mediocre. Is this even a viable basis for a 12-13 TuG swarm army?)
Thank you all for your advice!
Swarm in essence means you need lots of bases.
So Tribals yes but have seen a couple of other variants:
The Skirmish Swarm - swathes of LF to get through. I played an Early Libyan that had its entire front covered and a Greek on that maxed out cheap javelin men.
The Poor Swarm - downgrade troops and see if pure volume can do the job. Seen three of these. A huge Formed Greek Hoplite army, a Skythian army and a Roman one - you get a lot of legionaries if you make them all poor without many additions.
Joseon Korean has some nice cavalry. I would tend to emphasise that rather than attempting a 'swarm' of infantry. Even better use the Goryeo Korean list which can have much better infantry (ie mixed units)
A review of Chinese/Korean armies used in comps reveals a simple truth: only the infantry that is in mixed units is seeing the tabletop (the exception being the unusual Qin). No one seems to want to use separate units of polearm and infantry shooters. Polearm is overpriced (there is a thread on this forum on this topic). Experienced foot shooters, without a front rank that helps keep them alive, are something you, at best, want very few of.
I am currently painting my third 15mm Chinese army, so I have tried plenty of different lists. The last round of changes (removing mixed units from many lists) has essentially removed a great many armies from consideration.
Martin
Intersting Martin.
I think we have the rules spot on now.
Always watching what people use and don't use for the points.
What would you suggest for points?
Could you start a different stream with your thoughts please.
Always listening....
S
Foot polearm is almost exactly the same cost as SSp + ME (1pt cheaper in fact for Average troops). Both have + and - depending on what they are facing and being basically the same cost feels about right to me when you look at them across the range of what they could meet in games. Price works for me using polearm units in my Edward IV and Baekje armies for example.
@Martymagnificent:
Yes! Joseon cavalry is quite nice! My main list is loaded up on horse archers and shock cavalry.
But Joseon infantry looks ever so pretty, and I want to find some way to make them the stars every once in a while. Flooding the table with them just seemed the most direct solution!
Besides, my opponents already try to choke the table with terrain when I announce I'm running Joseon, so I'm hoping that will play to the strengths of my infantry being loose-order when that happens.
In general, I have some glimmer of a game plan in my head, I just don't know how well this kind of thing works in practice.
Simon cited that Poor-legionary army (which sounds like a great way to catch a body off guard!). Does that kind of approach work without any Superiors (or equivalent) to shore up hot-spots? What kind of command card commitment does it generally take to keep that kind of army moving forward and take proper advantage of their agility?
And— most importantly— is the fun of running this kind of swarm army worth the trouble of painting an extra hundred and eight infantrymen? :P
Thank you again, everyone!
We are playing a Pacto campaign down here with 6 players.
Recruiting forces half troops to be poor and half average.
Have had some really good battle with large numbers of Poor troops.
Has really proved the points system is rather good and they do ok.
A lot of poor pike has proved pretty handy if they can avoid being shot at.
Poor Romans done pretty well.
Mass of poor cavalry in another.
Loads of poor foot shooters in another.
Has been interesting.
Si