What was your feeling on how prompting through fire should have gone Nik?

There is a lot of finesse needed to use a mobile shooty army, but none required to beat one, and a couple of bad die rolls on evades can scupper you.
In competition last year (before the new changes) my medieval Alan got rolled over by an arabian style average cavalry, long spear - move forward at top speed, charge everything. Rinse and repeat.
I don't see anything making that better for the Alans this year.

Quote from: stuuk on January 08, 2019, 10:15:01 PM
Lets look at what's actually changed, at least how I see it and what it means:

What also changed is Powerbow. It tip back the scale in favor of the charger and not the shooter

Quote from: stuuk on January 09, 2019, 09:30:22 AM
What was your feeling on how prompting through fire should have gone Nik?

Yellow card to remove 1 slow, red to remove 2.

I was in favour of binning it entirely, but your suggestion is better. Currently it's so easy it's almost a given.

I like the idea of the slowing and prompt through fire mechanisms, its just at the moment I don't think it really works that well. As you say it is just too easy to do that it isn't making enough impact on decision making.

Quote from: nikgaukroger on January 09, 2019, 10:23:33 AM
I like the idea of the slowing and prompt through fire mechanisms, its just at the moment I don't think it really works that well. As you say it is just too easy to do that it isn't making enough impact on decision making.

I like your previous post - yellow to remove 1 slow, red to remove 2 - better than changing knights to close. If they become close then the uneven ground terrain will come into play, which might have a pretty bad effect on knight armies.

It is also VERY powerful - the prompting means you know exactly how far you will go and know with certainty whether it's worth it or not.
Perhaps a simple change to enforcing the decision to prompt or not to before a shooting unit runs away would be sufficient? That way you have to gamble a little instead of knowing for sure you'll catch them.

I ran horse archers at Historicon last year and did OK with Sassanids and Timurids. They were not world beaters, but they were playable and lots of fun even in defeat.

A lot of this discussion haas centered around whether this years rule changes are 'correct'; an interesting discussion, but not the one I hoped for. I have not devised a plan to succeed with horse archers against knights with unarmored horses, but I hoped some more talented player than I would point one out. My focus is on playing well with the rules we have, not on changing the rules to suit my favorite armies.

The 'work the flanks' suggestion is obviously correct- all I need now are opponents dim enough to allow me to do this consistently. So far, they are scarce. It's not all that hard to protect knightly flanks with cheap infantry.

Condsider your terrain choices - depending on the opponent Rough Going can be your friend as well as the more obvious Magic Cavalry Terrain.

Quote from: nikgaukroger on January 09, 2019, 08:40:51 AM
MeG is not overly friendly to shooty armies - I think if you play it you have to accept that.

For the specific knights/shoot mounted match-up my gut feeling is that Si made the wrong choice when changing prompt through fire, however, we shall see how it goes as we get used to the changes (and as I have mentioned there is an easy plausibly historical fix anyway).

All that said last year I found mounted shooty armies pretty usable but you do have to put quite a lot of work in during the game - they're tricky. As I was 4th at Ribble and won Ray's small comp with basically mouted shooty armies I was happy enough.

My most important piece of thinking on this is that mobile shooty armies should be difficult to use well.  In past rules - including my own FoG rules - they were easy to kill with and very safe.  Hence them dominating FoG comps for years.  So don't expect it to be easy, but enjoy the challenge.

I did a fair bit of testing of this interaction. So here are my insights...
1. Generally need to invade vs. aggressive armies.  I find people defend too much.  I chose invade 2/3 times at the ITC.  With a shooty cav army it is vital to stop the Knights moving more than once in turn 1.
2. Make them work to catch you.  If skirmish is risky run away.  Angle you UGs to go away from the centre making the knight do more than run straight ahead. If you have skilled shooters even on black you cause trouble.  You need to nibble some bases early.
3. Sometime take a hit and lost a TuG but let the damage they do weaken the enemy.  And you can risk a break off to get away often. if you have a superior lancer UG in a shooty cav army trade some damage.  The weakened Knights will be then rather fragile to fire.
4. Kill of the rest and deal with the Knights last.
5. Put something solid on your base edge where the knights are heading.  Keep them honest.

Personally I think its about right now. Advantage knights if a simple head on vs fall back; advantage shooty can if used really well.  What I was aiming for. Take the Shooty cav if up for the challenge; take the knights if you don't want as many puzzles! Enjoy.

Si

Just to revisit this after Campaign last weekend here is something I sent to Si as feedback.

Quote
As Campaign game me 3 Serbs to face I thought I'd just note down some feedback on how the knights vs shooty cavalry interaction appears to be working under the 2019 rules. As I played the same interactions at Campaign 12 months ago I have a useful benchmark.

Basically this is much better than it was. It is still quite tough for the shooty cavalry (and MeG is designed for them to be tricky to use well), however, they have more of a chance than they did 12 months ago. Having a few units of skilled shooters in the army is still a necessity – and there is nothing wrong with that.

I had wondered if the knights moving at 5BW may be an issue, and whilst, in a perfect world, I think 4.5BW would be the ideal, 5BW is not a game breaker.

So overall my view is the interaction is OK.

FWIW against the 3 Serbs I drew 6-6 against Cid in a cagey game where a couple of pieces of rough terrain got in his way, won 15-4 against Ian where 100%+ out scouting and a usefully placed terrain piece helped,  and lost 2-15 against Alasdair where I made poor initial PBS choices (and, of course, Alasdair is a good player).

I do, however, wonder if knights are now a bit too cheap. They benefited from a lot of the points reductions in the 2019 army builder and I feel the outcome is they're a bit under-priced.

and

Quote
The one bit of the interaction I think could do with a review is that I think it is still too easy to push through fire. The reduction of how close the general has to be to 2 BW has made pretty much no difference in my experience.

I honestly struggled. My first 9 evades failed...
But then I did alright game 4 and 5.

They ain't easy to use and they ain't meant to be in MeG. Its a quite harsh learning curve - after a year of using them I'm happy against most armies now, but it really has taken that long.

I would suggest a general should only be able to prompt a unit he is with through fire. Would be a difficult thing to do from a distance.

Martin

Quote from: nikgaukroger on May 16, 2019, 07:15:20 PM
They ain't easy to use and they ain't meant to be in MeG. Its a quite harsh learning curve - after a year of using them I'm happy against most armies now, but it really has taken that long.

Just curious why horse archers are 'supposed to be' difficult to use? Historically, they were very effective over a long time. I am wondering why you felt they should be hard to use successfully.