From what I gather, they have overly dominated other systems at times and this is an err on the side of not having horse pewpew > all approach.  If shooty cav utterly rules the roost, it would become a very boring game. I'd stop playing and look elsewhere to use my toys.

Perhaps (?) it needs a boost, but I'd be cautious. 

One idea that springs to mind is that thinking in terms of Knights being move 5 is what should be evaluated. If that all remains the same, I'd look at making Skirmish cav move 7.  They'd motor around the board, out manoeuvre, have a better chance of getting away from everything. Doesn't make their shooting any more effective, but does give them a ton more options and longevity. It does make it impossible for non-FoF foot to catch them, however. Otherwise, I'd look to evaluate if Knights should be move 5.

Quote from: martymagnificent on May 16, 2019, 10:21:19 PM
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

I think the solution is, as previously mentioned, make it a Yellow to push through 1 BW and a Red to push through 2 BW.

Quote from: AntiokosIII on May 17, 2019, 03:28:04 AM

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.

Not my decision Si's 

But basically because under previous sets (FoG specifically and DBM) they have been far too easy to use and overly dominated - MeG is making their life harder as a balance/reaction.

Quote from: Dru on May 17, 2019, 05:24:15 AM
I'd look at making Skirmish cav move 7. 

Unnecessary. Skirmisher cavalry moving 6 BW is fine.

It's fine if your suggested approach to prompting is accepted, otherwise I'd agree a 1UD bump would be good for skirmish cavalry.
Either way achieves the same thing - a bit more survivability against loose cavalry TUGs. I prefer the bump down for prompting.

QuoteI'd look to evaluate if Knights should be move 5

But what is a knight ? please define what "knight" means to you

Norma Knight ...but if you consider protected lancer, devastating charger ...it is nearly the same as a macedonian companion ...or should the term "knight" only apply to fully armoured knight even without armoured horses ?

Quote from: stuuk on May 17, 2019, 10:06:40 AM
It's fine if your suggested approach to prompting is accepted, otherwise I'd agree a 1UD bump would be good for skirmish cavalry.
Either way achieves the same thing - a bit more survivability against loose cavalry TUGs. I prefer the bump down for prompting.

Well put. That was my point.

Quote from: badhabum on May 17, 2019, 10:22:08 AM

QuoteI'd look to evaluate if Knights should be move 5

But what is a knight ? please define what "knight" means to you

Norma Knight ...but if you consider protected lancer, devastating charger ...it is nearly the same as a macedonian companion ...or should the term "knight" only apply to fully armoured knight even without armoured horses ?

I was typing quickly. "Knight" I was referring to "Other loose cav or camels" per the QRS that are move 5. 

Either restricting prompting (yellow = 1; red = 2) or giving Cav SUGs a boost to move, would help mitigate the unnatural ability of these 5BW TUGs to capture the SUG cav.  Restricting is better to also give shooty non-SUG cav & infantry a bump up too.

Personally I am in favour of the idea of Prompt through fire: yellow = 1; red = 2.  Though shield cover needs to be considered. This reduced prompting will impact them most of all. 

If testing indicated that this reduction in prompting is too severe, then my idea of bumped up movement for Cav SUGs is something to consider. It may be a crap idea.

It's a bit of an odd one - skirmishing SUGs are okay, but sometimes they get caught and killed and do zero damage.
I don't think there's any other unit in the game that's quite so finicky.

They can be really good, or really awful. Perhaps the oddity with them is that they are so swingy.

Quote from: stuuk on May 17, 2019, 10:06:40 AM
It's fine if your suggested approach to prompting is accepted, otherwise I'd agree a 1UD bump would be good for skirmish cavalry.
Either way achieves the same thing - a bit more survivability against loose cavalry TUGs. I prefer the bump down for prompting.

I'm happy with them at 6BW regardless.

If they went to 7BW I'd bet good money that people would immediately complain that they reached the table edge too quickly ...

IMHO, skirmishing SuG's were never all that problematic. The problem is with skirmishing Tug's. It is quite difficult to shoot lancers with a 5 MU move without getting run down. There's a 1/3 chance of getting caught even if you run away instead of skirmish. If toy Skirmish the chance is even higher. To have a chance you have to resort to gamey tricks like using 2 units at divergent angles, so that the charger has to wheel to follow. Frankly, I seriously doubt any Hun or Mongol worth his koumiss ever did this, and IMHO any rules set that forces you to resort to unhistorical methods to do well is covering up a flaw somewhere.

I can hear people telling me that if I love the rules otherwise (I do) and don't like the way the rules treat horse archers (I don't), play some other sort of army and quit whining. Fair enough. I am currently playing a very different sort of army, and enjoying myself rather a lot.

I do love my horse archers/steppe nomads, though, and if I can come up with a simple, fair, easy to play mechanism to make these armies play more in accordance with my view of their historical performance, I will. Don't hold your breath, I already know it's not easy.

I guess there's a longing for the good old days of horse archer armies in FOG, which I found too overpowered. Playing in a miniatures game, angles are part of the game and not a gimmick. A gimmick is a scythe chariot in WRG 7th.  

I had an interesting game today . A mounted bow army vs some lancers .As I was facing an AlexMac army I expected more foot but the army was cavalry based . The fight ended in the mounted bow army defeat. The problem faced was pretty simple : the end of the world and white dice for the shooting . You may write about how difficult it is to master such an army, etc...but on the end, white dice are not damaging enough to kill the lancers, unless of course you get very lucky. Also once in melee, all the lancers are melee expert, the mounted bow are not . Also at one point there is no more room to run away or manoeuver and it is pretty difficult to end a game in the specified time frame. To do that you need a shock army or lots of skilled shooters. That's my analyses. I will use a mounted bow army in my next tournament so will be able to test more .

Quote from: AntiokosIII on May 17, 2019, 10:10:58 PM
IMHO, skirmishing SuG's were never all that problematic.

You may say that, but as I play Parthian and Medieval Alan I can tell you that a large number of SUGs do have some issues.
The most important being the ability to march right up to them, sit at <1UD and charge right away - it means you can double loose cavalry right upto them, which is a real pain for sk SUGs.

I am considering taking one of the above to skulls, but the biggest issue I have with them is whether they can finish a game in the time allowed

Quote from: badhabum on May 19, 2019, 07:49:49 PM
To do that you need a shock army or lots of skilled shooters.

With the latest list changes armies that had lots of SUGs (Parthians, Alans etc) lost half of their Cantabrian, so they lost their 'skilled' shooters.

Quote from: stuuk on May 19, 2019, 09:41:03 PM

Quote from: AntiokosIII on May 17, 2019, 10:10:58 PM
IMHO, skirmishing SuG's were never all that problematic.

You may say that, but as I play Parthian and Medieval Alan I can tell you that a large number of SUGs do have some issues.
The most important being the ability to march right up to them, sit at <1UD and charge right away - it means you can double loose cavalry right upto them, which is a real pain for sk SUGs.

I am considering taking one of the above to skulls, but the biggest issue I have with them is whether they can finish a game in the time allowed

I've said this before, but I think taking away half of the cantabrian made these lists weaker. Sure, when you get charged, a lot of the time you run away and don't get to use it, but I found it made a big difference when shooting up big infantry armies, and just in general having a chance to roll green dice can make a big impact.

I still don't understand why the cantabrian was taken away. I hear 'game balance' which implies that SUG heavy armies were dominating the game. I don't see this in the statistics for 2018. It also means you get the situation where an army with 0-24 bases gets all cantabrian, and 12-36 gets up to half from 6-18. How does this make sense? Parthians were hard to use before, now to get a win in 3 hours is really up against it. White dice just doesn't cut it.

The other issue I have is that shoot & charge or charge-only loose cavalry can double march up to 1BW, get a shot in on green dice, then the SUG will have to run away because it's probably been slowed by the green dice machine gun, so it replies on black, or if it's lost a base, black minus. Seems pretty rough on the SUG...

Quote from: nikgaukroger on May 17, 2019, 05:54:50 PM

Quote from: stuuk on May 17, 2019, 10:06:40 AM
It's fine if your suggested approach to prompting is accepted, otherwise I'd agree a 1UD bump would be good for skirmish cavalry.
Either way achieves the same thing - a bit more survivability against loose cavalry TUGs. I prefer the bump down for prompting.

I'm happy with them at 6BW regardless.

If they went to 7BW I'd bet good money that people would immediately complain that they reached the table edge too quickly ...

Yes, if they moved 7 I'd probably be even less likely to take them. They'd be off the board in no time.