Bit of an existential question prompted by musing on the return drive from Britcon.
 
Whilst I admit to doing no analysis of this, I feel that horse archer armies are, and pretty much always have been, fairly consistently avoided by most players.

I'd suggest that this is because they are seen as hard to use and definitely hard to use successfully with any consistency. The former is, I think, pretty much how Simon designed MeG, partly as a reaction to FoG where horse archer armies were seen as quite dominant whilst easy to use so too obvious a choice. The latter may be harder to judge as so few people seem to use them.

IMO the actual interactions are getting pretty much the right results, but that something in the way these armies play on table puts people off using them, hence their relative rarity.
 
So I guess my questions are whether I am right, and if so is it something that it would be good to try and tackle - and how that could be achieved, of course 

IMHO horse archers do too little damage and are too easily run down to win a 3.5 hour tournament game. I. Own several but am not a good enough player to make them work. In a longer game with a larger table they would be much more successful, I believe.

I think you are right Nik. They can be hard to use successfully but I would suggest that their effectiveness in the overall game is about right. I further suggest that the style of play required to use them effectively does not appeal to many players. Patience and a sense of timing is necessary and so requires careful and considered play. While I am not a particularly capable horse archer army player, I find playing my Mongols to be much more mentally draining than using my other armies because the decisions seem to be more critical to get right.

Horse archer armies, and you might include Numidians as well if you wish, rely on Fire and Movement. And that, despite so many other positives is not MEG's strength. I'm not sure that much can be done which would not alter the fabric of the game. However, here are a few thoughts.
Change Feigned Flight from a charge to a pursuit. Feigned Flight is a brilliant concept but a failed actuality, has anyone ever seen it work? By changing its timing and making it into a pursuit it better reflects its nature. I'd also think about allowing one unit per command to acquire it.
Double moves allow Skirmish cavalry in particular to travel great distances, but what then? They can't threaten anything for a while. They are out of shooting range and can't charge next turn as they are skirmishers. Also, if flexible it's a turn at least to get into a formation that can charge. There is no benefit to shooting into a flank or rear so why throw away two turns to get there? Perhaps upgrade one colour on the dice for firing into a flank or rear? This would set the cat among the pigeons and ensure that skirmish cavalry behind the flanks had to be taken seriously.
Make it quicker for Flexible Cavalry to change formation and be effective. With Flexible Foot, one card and they are good to go, tow or three bases deep and three or four wide and away you go. For Flexible Cavalry, one card to change from Loose to Skirmish and then one to change from two bases deep and three wide to three wide and two deep, and the other way round as well.
I like Steppe style armies and their history is fascinating but good luck if you want to play them using MEG. This is not a criticism of these rules, they are in many ways brilliant, the very idea of Flexibles itself is outstanding. But these are just some musings that might promote some thought as to how they could be improved re Horse Archer Armies.
Regards,

I think this is a multi pronged issue with a lot of contributing factors. Too much to cover in a single post honestly. The TLDR is that currently cavalry archers only really work by baiting an opponent forward so that you can get a unit into position to charge a flank. Even when this works it simply takes too much time to work in a tournament.

1) Experienced shooting doesn't do enough damage on it's own to kill enemy units. Even if we ignore the ability to pick up wounds experienced shooting still takes 7 game turns to pick up a unit. Most games simply don't last that long (and even that assumes your opponent is foolish enough to just stand there and let you shoot them to death).

2) Cavalry archers are really expensive. Your basic protected cavalry archer with short spear and experienced bow is 135 points a base (For comparison a legionary with melee expert is 108). That unit can't expect to win a melee fight or kill things at range. And this is true up and down the quality scale for horse archers, they simply can't beat any unit of comparable cost in a direct fight.

3) Since you can't effectively kill units at range and can't fight them toe to toe since your so much more expense the only option is to use your shooting to bait them into presenting a flank to exploit. But since you're more expensive you can't expect to outnumber an opponent to envelope them. You need to outmaneuver them with a smaller army of weaker unit.

4) To have a chance at doing that you need to have good cards to accomplish the moves you need and more command that your opponent to control the flow of battle, which just compounds your cost issues.

5) Your opponent sees all of this coming so they don't just take the bait. They're going to be cautious and avoid presenting flanks. So even if you are a skilled player and you can force them to do it, its going to take a while.

6) All of this is dependent on other factors. The table needs to not have too much terrain. Your opponent needs a mostly foot army, melee cav is cheaper than your horse archers and beats them. they might also have foot archers which negate your shooting to a large extent. So you can easily just get countered by an opponent's army composition.

All that is only scratching the surface.

Edit: fixed some grammer.

Throwing in a comment RJC made to me a few days ago.

Quote from: RJCEvading with horse archers involves lots of choices, which typical means slower game play. 

I certainly notice that when I haven't used a horse archer army for a while I play slower due to the number of decisions that a horse archer army player needs to make (not just evades).

I do remember some comments to me along the lines of "you've chosen an army that either wins or doesn't lose" and that turned me off a bit from using them. That's obviously opponent (or more specifically what army an opponent uses) dependent but if you do come across an opponent with a lot of foot and not so great cavalry it can feel that way - that their chances of a decent game are not as good as yours. I always found them fun to use but against decent mounted they tended to struggle as they could get ridden down by better and cheaper fighters, as pointed out above. I definitely think it is a slower game with horse archers so better chance with other types of armies to get a decisive result. But the way to improve speed of game would be to improve mounted archery kill rates which is not a great idea in my opinion.

I don't think the interaction or how MeG models horse archers need changing because I wouldn't want it to go closer to a FoG kind of situation. I think there are other types of armies that are even less used (eg barbarian foot armies or Roman armies that aren't stacked with cavalry) that would need a bump before horse archer armies do.

Well said Craig W.

If it was decided to do anything, a couple of possibilities

1) Remove the impact minus for mounted who have shot. They usually aren't great in impact anyway. If it was felt this was too generous, change it to a minus for mounted who make a skirmish move (ie you have an option to stand and shoot, then fight without penalty)

2) make it harder/riskier to remove slowing effects. Some possibilities would be

a) require the general to be with the unit
b) make the charger commit to playing the card to push through fire before they see what the evader shoots/rolls (ie when they declare the charge)
c) introduce risk of death/injury for the general leading the charge

3) Extend the new bonus to shooting within 1MU to mounted with bow.

Martin

Quote from: craig.w on September 01, 2025, 08:37:52 PMI do remember some comments to me along the lines of "you've chosen an army that either wins or doesn't lose" and that turned me off a bit from using them.

I don't think that is a very accurate description of horse archer armies in MeG to be honest. One of the nice things about MeG for me when I came to it was that unlike some other games it is entirely possible to beat a horse archer army with almost any other army - they aren't (almost) guaranteed no-loss armies.

Quote from: martymagnificent on September 02, 2025, 02:35:57 AMIf it was decided to do anything, a couple of possibilities

1) Remove the impact minus for mounted who have shot. They usually aren't great in impact anyway. If it was felt this was too generous, change it to a minus for mounted who make a skirmish move (ie you have an option to stand and shoot, then fight without penalty)

2) make it harder/riskier to remove slowing effects. Some possibilities would be

a) require the general to be with the unit
b) make the charger commit to playing the card to push through fire before they see what the evader shoots/rolls (ie when they declare the charge)
c) introduce risk of death/injury for the general leading the charge

3) Extend the new bonus to shooting within 1MU to mounted with bow.

Martin

Personally I would have issue with these as they are all about making it easier for horse archer armies to win.

IMO the challenge is to keep the effect as it is but somehow remove the barriers people have to playing these armies - sort of, getting the results as they are but making getting there an easier playing experience maybe? YMMV.

QuoteIMO the challenge is to keep the effect as it is but somehow remove the barriers people have to playing these armies - sort of, getting the results as they are but making getting there an easier playing experience maybe? YMMV.

As already written by others : a mounted shooty army needs time, patience and planning . Other armies as well but especially mounted shooty. Experienced shooters on white do take some time to kill enemy TUGS and skilled are not cheap .

So the player needs to be concentrated on the game and that is tiring

One possible way is to modify shooting factors  if shooting in the flanks and rear ( colour upgrade )that should help killing some TUGs. How to determine flank shooting is easy, same as flank charge . No shield cover allowed unless in orb

Just an idea

Quote from: badhabum on September 02, 2025, 03:43:55 PMOne possible way is to modify shooting factors  if shooting in the flanks and rear ( colour upgrade )that should help killing some TUGs. How to determine flank shooting is easy, same as flank charge . No shield cover allowed unless in orb

Just an idea

This certainly has merit and is already something to be considered for the wider review 

Quote from: nikgaukroger on September 02, 2025, 06:53:37 AM

Quote from: craig.w on September 01, 2025, 08:37:52 PMI do remember some comments to me along the lines of "you've chosen an army that either wins or doesn't lose" and that turned me off a bit from using them.

I don't think that is a very accurate description of horse archer armies in MeG to be honest. One of the nice things about MeG for me when I came to it was that unlike some other games it is entirely possible to beat a horse archer army with almost any other army - they aren't (almost) guaranteed no-loss armies.

I think if you added "played by experienced players against other experienced players" after "horse archer armies" you might well be right, but the rest of the world does not play any near the number of games that get played in the UK, and when you have rusty or occasional players then that becomes a turn or two less that gets played than would be possible in the UK, so in those cases the horse archers don't get pushed off the board or chased down.

Maybe I'll use one again in a comp soon to see how I go, I think the last time I used one was pre-Covid. I always found them fun to use tbh.

I'll still stand by my point that barbarian foot armies need a bump more than horse archer armies...

Quote from: craig.w on September 02, 2025, 07:00:00 PMI'll still stand by my point that barbarian foot armies need a bump more than horse archer armies...

I think they got a bit of a bump with the shift from dev charger to Short Spear and CFP Jav. Doesn't, however, help all of them. I think they are probably generally better in MeG than in any other system I've ever played (albeit often still not good)

Martin