I've been text-driving the Albanian Principalities army and generally enjoying them quite a bit, but there's one part of the army that's been absolutely stumping me.
Despite being the Albanians being an aggressive light cavalry army, they requires the inclusion of 12+ bases of generic skirmishing foot archers, and I can't for the life of me find any useful synergies or battlefield roles for these troops, given the context of how the rest of the army behaves.
I'm hoping that knowing more about these guys will tell me what their job was and how I should use them!
So: who are these average/experienced foot skirmishers representing and what was their historical role in the medieval Albanian order of battle? When the Albanians successful defeated Ottoman or Venetian forces (which they did often), what were these lightweight infantry screens doing to help make that happen?
(And how can I replicate that on the table; someone in my club runs Ottomans occasionally, and I'd love to pull off a historical win! > ) )
Thank y'all for your insight!!!
Rather surprised that you cannot find a role for the skirmishing infantry. Personally I'd be wanting to take them even if they weren't compulsory and almost certainly more than the minimum. IMO they are a great supplement to the cavalry.
As archers they have a shooting range twice that of the cavalry who are javelin armed and so can hit the enemy when the cavalry may not be able to or when you don't want to push the cavalry that close.
They add extra shooting to an army that needs to have effective shooting and at a lower cost than the cavalry and, as SUGs, are to some degree expendable; use them to work with the cavalry a bit like I do with my Hittite army which has loads of skirmisher infantry to go with the shooty chariots - https://gamer-at-the-end-of-time.blogspot.com/2025/09/chariots-of-fire-day-1-hittite-chariots.html for me using them recently.
They can also have an obvious use for terrain where you may not want to be putting your cavalry - not necessarily to hold, per se, but to cause some problems for the enemy.
Probably the last thing you'll want to think of them as is a "screen".
I've tried using skirmishing archers in these roles before and have never had any luck with either.
Trying to use these sugs as added firepower for another shooting unit has usually just fizzled when I've used them shooting foot. (The sug usually causes zero hits before contact)
I'll give it a go next time I run this army, though; maybe they synergize better with light horse than they do with foot shooters.
(I kinda' doubt the IRL Albanian infantry was expected keep up with the light cavalry's advance, though!)
When I've tried using archer SUGs to delay on a secured flank, I've similarly been met with total disappointment. Even when perched on a mountain, the sug has never survived to the end of a second melee phase, which slows down the opposing tug by zero BW.
That's why I was asking what the historical uses of these troops are; the obvious answers from a tabletop perspective don't seem to work in the context of this army.
[[Edit: the skirmishing archers also aren't particularly cost-effective in the Albanian context. A file of skirmishing archers gives me a white die for 120 pts, vs the Albanian cavalry tugs getting a skilled die for 208 pts per file. The Albanian cav being almost 80 pts/base cheaper than Hittite chariots makes quite the difference! XP ]]
Those skirmishers were very useful. I took them average because I wanted them to have some staying power vs enemy shooting
It was the first time I would really use this composition and during the tournament I have learned a lot about my army. It will not go on the shelves
https://www.thelonesomewargamer.com/post/grand-helvetika
https://www.thelonesomewargamer.com/post/helvetika-maximus-day-one-game-2
https://www.thelonesomewargamer.com/post/helvetika-maximus-day-2
https://www.thelonesomewargamer.com/post/helvetika-maximus-the-last-game