How best to use Pk?

Stevie - Excellent thoughts - however, I am not following your argument above. Can you elaborate. Why can’t the Sp just hit the first Ax in the flank and force them to turn to face?

Paddy

Try only 4 Pikes (2 blocks of two) upfront.

Have the 3rd Pike block in echelon. Then the other in echelon to that one.
This will buy you another turn or two.

Joe Collins

Ah...only the two Ax are facing to the left (facing West as it were)...all the Pk are facing North.

In the first diagram the Ax are using their Threat Zone as a weapon, preventing the Sp from ‘lapping around’ the Pk flank.
In the second diagram the Threat Zones are facing different directions (West and North) but the Ax is using its physical presence to prevent the blue Sp from getting front corners into contact.

The first diagram can be easily formed, even if you only roll a single PIP.
Have the Ax and Pk in a single line to start with, then just move the Pk group forward and not the end Ax element.
The second diagram is more tricky to form...the advancing Pk group could leave the wrongly facing Ax group behind.
Having the Ax group facing North in reserve behind the Pk group, but wheeling them left at the last moment works well.
Especially if you have quick moving 3Ax (not so easy for slow moving useless 4Ax troops).

There are many other supple variations on the first diagram.
For example, make use of that reserve Ps element:-

　　 Sp   Sp  Sp  Sp  Sp  Sp  Sp
　                        　   Pk  Pk  Pk
                        　 　  Pk  Pk  Pk
　           (<---)           Ps
　　                      Ax

Here all the red elements are facing North, except the red Ps which is facing left (i.e. facing to the West).
Now if the blue Sp move South to hit the Ax, they’ll be marching themselves into an outflanked position, causing them to suffer a -1 in close combat from the flanking Ps and risking destruction if they recoil.
However, if the Pk column recoils, the rear Pk element will be destroyed, as pushed backed troops cannot push back others.
Still, it's a 50-50 chance, and it may deter the blue Sp from advancing.
And better to lose a single element rather than the whole column.
(Actually, if the blue Sp do advance all they way to contact the red Ax, then they won't be overlapping the red Pk.
And with a CF of 6 v 5, the pike only has 10 chances out of 36 of recoiling...so it's worth thinking about)

Of course, we should remember that in the Macedonian army, the role of the Pk was merely to pin the enemy line, not win the battle.
The decisive blow was delivered by the mounted troops smashing into the enemy flank.
Under DBA, the Macedonian Kn will have to punch their own gap in the enemy line (which they are fully capable of doing).

 

Some potentially useful player aids can be found here, such as the “Quick Reference Sheets” from the Society of Ancients,
and the new “Army List Corrections” file: fanaticus-dba.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Reference_sheets_and_epitomes
And this is the latest January 2018 FAQ: fanaticus-dba.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ_2018

You may find my experience useful in our own little linear campaign. I used four stands of pike and mostly, but not always, I managed a win with the Epeirots. I tried a few different tactics as did my opponent. The Epeirot high aggression was frequently useful.

ancientwargaming.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/epeirot-adventures/

Hi twrnz,

Thanks for the write ups! I find it particularly interesting the way you used the Sp echelon to protect the flank of the Pk in one of the games! Something that I need to get a lot better at doing! Did you not find it frustrating having the elephant in the middle of your formation??

Cheers,
EG

I really like the ideas put forward in this thread. However, all the examples are from ancient armies. I want to do a campaign based around Charles the Bold. I did some test games myself, and the Swiss simply couldn't put a dent in the Burgundian armor. As I was running test games, I put the terrain to the Swiss advantage, meaning they had a narrow from, but the cannon kept disrupting their lines and sometimes destroying bases. The Swiss had trouble mounting combined attacks. Meanwhile, the Burgundians could wait with their center and threaten fast blade and psiloi on the flanks with their knights.

Why aren't the Swiss kicking Burgundian arse as they did historically?


Erik

Thanks for the tip Joe. I will give that a try.
I think I will also try not always using the pikes in rear support. You can easily get caught up focusing in the +3 three rear support and forget to the pikes can funktion in one rank as well.

Finally, yes DBA is not a balanced game. You often forget that, because gamemechanics usually work hard to make balanced gamesystems.


cheers
Erik