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Post by martin on Oct 20, 2020 11:00:24 GMT
I’ve taken Thracians and Illyrians to tournaments. Not world beaters, either of them, but didn’t do too bad either.
When you choose one of these all-conquering armies for a tournament you do so in the foreknowledge that you ain’t gonna be on the podium, BUT use the opportunity as a challenge to yourself to see how well you can make them play (or to see if you survive any battles without being thrashed). Tournaments aren’t ALL about coming out top of the tree. (Other fun choices include Slave Revolts, Nubians, Early Libyans etc etc).
...and another ‘rule of thumb’..... NEVER blame a tournament organiser. They organised the tournament, and often at a certain amount of hassle and possibly cost, too. I’ve been to tournaments which weren’t run how I personally would have liked, but at least they had been arranged for us mortals to take part....and am grateful for the opportunity.
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Post by paulisper on Oct 20, 2020 11:31:22 GMT
Hear, hear Martin! Also, we're blessed (in normal circumstances) with a wide variety of tournaments in the UK, many of which are themed to avoid the continual dominance of certain armies at open-style competitions. Long may that variety continue to exist...
p
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Post by stevie on Oct 20, 2020 12:00:17 GMT
I agree Martin and Paulisper... ...lets see more tournaments for the underdog armies. However, up till now that has consisted of separating and segregating the wimps from the heavy tournament hitters, as we all know the wimps will invariably get crushed. (“Stevie has a new suggestion that would allow the heavies and wimps to compete together... ...so of course it must be a terribly bad idea!” Ha, ha, ha! )
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Post by greedo on Oct 20, 2020 15:03:22 GMT
There may be a couple of reasons that the wimpy armies don’t do well in tournaments...
1) DBA was designed as a large scale set piece battle game. Those tend to have heavy infantry with some lighter troops supporting. It was not intended to be an “every army is equal” game. 2) “wimpy” armies did not conquer the known world. Mongols? Yes, but they used a combination of heavy and light horse. Name me an army that conquered the known world using nothing but peltasts. Those armies/tribes were defensive in nature, which leads me to... 3) It slows the game down if you start engaging in guerilla warfare. Having heavies chasing down a bunch of light troops lurking in cover is a pain in the a$$ and takes valuable time in a tournament with a time limit. Having wimpy armies face each other would speed this up.
That said, I’m in full agreement about making heavies slightly nerfed in order to prevent them from flattening lights too soon. Still deciding about universal rear support house rule..
Also have only played in 1 tournament and loved it. Glad the organizer put it together. I would never criticize somebody who puts that level of effort in.
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Post by martin on Oct 20, 2020 17:14:40 GMT
There may be a couple of reasons that the wimpy armies don’t do well in tournaments... 1) DBA was designed as a large scale set piece battle game. Those tend to have heavy infantry with some lighter troops supporting. It was not intended to be an “every army is equal” game. 2) “wimpy” armies did not conquer the known world. Mongols? Yes, but they used a combination of heavy and light horse. Name me an army that conquered the known world using nothing but peltasts. Those armies/tribes were defensive in nature, which leads me to... 3) It slows the game down if you start engaging in guerilla warfare. Having heavies chasing down a bunch of light troops lurking in cover is a pain in the a$$ and takes valuable time in a tournament with a time limit. Having wimpy armies face each other would speed this up. Some of the best tournaments I’ve played in are those where ’challenging’ armies predominate. eg When the PAWS club run early Biblical period tournaments they’re so much fun...cos ALL the armies are dross, and winning with any of them is never a certainty. Also Tarrington can be a blast, cos players sometimes take a tatty, also-ran army and let everyone else do their best with it. Magic....
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Post by stevie on Oct 20, 2020 17:31:09 GMT
You make some good points Greedo.
1) “Not every army is equal”. Yes, in DBA there is a pronounced bias towards the heavy armies, while the light armies are disproportionally disadvantaged. This means that my £40 light army is in no way as good as your £40 heavy army. Playing with light armies can still be fun...but if you want to win, then tough, players have no choice but to buy and paint a heavy army.
2) “Light armies did not conquer the known world”. Well, nor did the Romans, but the light horsemen of the Asian Steppes did conquer and dominate a large chunk of it (I’m thinking of the Skythians, Alans, Hsiung-Nu, Huns and their Turkish ilk all the way up to the Mongols). As for the light foot armies, they were no simple easy pushovers either. It took Rome three major wars to subdue the Samnites (lasting 3, 23 and 9 years each), and almost two centuries to finally conquer the whole of the Spanish Peninsula. Meanwhile the Aitolians tenaciously held onto their lands for over 400 years, and so did the Southern Slavs. Indeed, the Scots-Irish actually expanded their light foot armies into Dark Age Briton during the 5th to 8th centuries AD.
3) “It would slow tournaments down to have guerilla warfare”. You are probably right...although it needs to be tried to be sure. Tournaments are artificial environments, that require special time considerations. Still, there’s always playing at home or in a club to get a more realistic perspective.
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Post by Baldie on Oct 20, 2020 20:09:32 GMT
Still, there’s always playing in a club Very optimistic
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Post by paddy649 on Oct 20, 2020 21:04:26 GMT
“wimpy” armies did not conquer the known world. Name me an army that conquered the known world using nothing but peltasts. Those armies/tribes were defensive in nature...... Hmmmm. If you define “wimpy” as armies with more than 6 LH, Ps or Ax then there are many - especially LH heavy armies. Mongols, Turks, Alan’s, Huns etc. LH heavy armies are nerfed out of existence in DBA 3.0 However, I can also name a “heavy” army that did conquer the world that is also nerfed by DBA3.0 and that is the Macedonians. So not all heavy armies are equal! Sure doesn’t have to be an “every army is equal” game but it should be a semi-historical game and it doesn’t always get there. Also remember that battles are not fought if one side feels that there is minimal chance of winning! What is interesting is that often small, unbalanced revolutionary armies tend to be over-estimated by DBA but world conquering armies are under-rated. Iris this that creates a level of imbalance. Playing historical opponents definitely reduces the problem but doesn’t eliminate it. Anyway - just my 2p worth!
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Post by macbeth on Oct 20, 2020 22:27:45 GMT
Thanks for that analysis Macbeth.👍 All I can say is “I rest my case”. Yes, armies with a mix of light and heavy troops do stand a more reasonable chance. But I’m talking about armies consisting almost entirely of Ax/Ps/LH, with no punch. I blame tournament organisers for not actively encouraging these wimps to appear. After all, it is the tournament organiser who sets the parameters of a competition. That they refuse to use this power is down to them and therefore it’s solely their fault. And yet as mentioned the Mongols come up in my events time and time again. They have a couple of very dedicated fans, and every now and then they do well when the situation presents. In my defence Your Honour with respect to Tournament Organising I have taken some steps to improve the level of the field. 1) We ran a series of 'DBA With A Twist' events where there was some tweak to the rules and far and away the most popular was the now internationally recognised 'Collision Course' format where the deployment rules are modified to match the 'Accidental Encounter' style from WRG7th. Look through the Tournaments board here for more details. In a format like this the fast paced Cv/LH armies do quite well as they very quickly zip out of the column commands, and race across the board, attempting to win the game before the third command arrives. I remember well being mangled by Alan LH in the first Collision Course after DBA3 was published. 2) At my events I instituted the 'Magister Militum' prize where I use my Element Rating system to rate the armies and then adjust the scores - (Opponents Rating/Own Rating)*Raw Score. This works especially well when dismounting is allowed and so a 3Kn//4Bd element is given a rating equal to the sum of both types, pushing the rating of these armies through the roof. At its height - when we were getting well over 20 entries to the DBA events there were several of the better ACT players consciously choosing more interesting armies with their sights set on this trophy (The Maurice). Armies such as Inca and Middle Anglo Saxon (the one with Wb not Sp) were among the choices that took away this prize. Cheers
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Post by markbb on Oct 21, 2020 0:52:53 GMT
And there is growing interest in themed tournaments here in Australia. A few weeks back, Gregorius organised a great comp where players had to field at least 4 Warband elements (and could have no more than 2 knights). Early next year, I hope to organise a comp themed around pike use. I'm sure they'll be a Wimp Wars soon.
And I endorse David's comments above - he did us all a favour in instigating the 'Magister Militum' award - it is extremely sought after. I'm guilty of choosing 'weaker' armies (Thracians, Wallachians etc) in order to be more competitive for this prize.
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Post by gregorius on Oct 21, 2020 2:12:12 GMT
And there is growing interest in themed tournaments here in Australia. A few weeks back, Gregorius organised a great comp where players had to field at least 4 Warband elements (and could have no more than 2 knights). Early next year, I hope to organise a comp themed around pike use. I'm sure they'll be a Wimp Wars soon. And I endorse David's comments above - he did us all a favour in instigating the 'Magister Militum' award - it is extremely sought after. I'm guilty of choosing 'weaker' armies (Thracians, Wallachians etc) in order to be more competitive for this prize. How soon you forget Mark 😱! I ran a Wimpy Wars themed tournament at last year's MOAB. Each army had to have a minimum of 6 elements from the Ps, LH and/or LCm troop types, and dismounting wasn't permitted. Cheers,
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Post by greedo on Oct 21, 2020 3:36:13 GMT
There is a neat house rule adding more mobility to LH (move costs 1/2 a pip) in the house rules section. Add Kn and Cv to those armies and you become quite a contender.
I still stand by my assertion that light infantry alone didn’t conquer the world. They perhaps defended the terrain tenaciously so it took longer to conquer them but they didn’t invade anybody. They should be a supporting role in DBA and not generally line infantry.
That said the house rules around making it more likely that light infantry are defending, and making defenders win when the sun sets (or the attackers time runs out) Would still make them play historically, so I’m cool with that.
The Other house rule dropping heavy infantry down a peg in close combat is another good one that doesn’t ruin things, as another option.
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Post by stevie on Oct 21, 2020 5:26:21 GMT
Yes, tournament organisers such as Macbeth and others should be praised for their efforts. They are aware of the heavy v light imbalance, so they make active efforts to address this... ...either by changing the deployment rules, or artificially segregating the lights from the heavies, or by balancing the tournament point scoring system (another alternative could be to award a point for each enemy element/camp/city destroyed plus a bigger score for an outright victory, but a wimpy army gets half the outright victory points for just turning up, even when they lose, as they probably will). However this just reinforces my main argument. If tournament organisers are willing to change the deployment rules, or artificially segregate the lights from the heavies, or balance the scoring system, then why not add a new victory condition?:- “Attackers must defeat the defenders, or at least sack their camp, or the defenders are the winners”. As for time considerations and making competitions last longer... ...heavies don’t like bad going, so a heavy/mounted v heavy/mounted battle would be unchanged... ...lights prefer to avoid bad going due to PIP costs and group movement, so light v light is unchanged... ...it only when light v heavy/mounted is ‘guerilla warfare’ involved, requiring a nightfall time limit. And it would be in the heavy/mounted army’s interest to get suck in quickly and not waste time. Who knows...it might even work... ----------------------------------------- Anyway, getting back to the main theme of this thread:- “What is the least popular army” ...for me it’s any light wimpy army in a tournament without any house rules to balance them.
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Post by paddy649 on Oct 21, 2020 6:22:42 GMT
Martin’s tournaments, where players use historically matched balanced pairs of armies, works well. It means that dross armies can be used if paired with other dross armies. It also means that contestants get to play with anew army almost every game and so doesn’t get stale.
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Post by Baldie on Oct 21, 2020 7:24:00 GMT
TBH I love all the different types of tourney.
Matched pairs, wimp wars, take yours use someone else's and open play.
They each have their own challenge and I still end up playing with or against some army I have never seen or often never heard of.
Doubt my Macedonians or Ancient British will see me slaughtering all and the mongol mix of LH, Cav and aggression 4 means my O&G force are unlikely to get a trip out.
I do think a tourney based on a very restricted list would be interesting say everyone has to take Macdonians and Persians or everyone takes a successor force and plays as attacker and then defender against each opponent. Or all the armies are exactly the same.
However other than those fools at Northern cup who present us all with beautiful forces and scenery highly restricting lists means we need to collect and paint something unless we are lucky enough to own it already. Restricting entries to a tourney is not a good thing however as more is def merrier.
Despite DBA being by far the best rule system for tourneys, masses of choice, small tables, quick games meaning loads of games in a day and still time to look round shows it wasn't written to be a fair game and there are some very tricky matched pair fights.
I def prefer to play and get beaten than not play but even a fool like me isn't going to take a warband heavy army to a comp. Oh wait ......
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