Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[lilroblis]

Good evening
I am sitting waiting to meet with my board, and have decided that during my exile to South Africa I would like to paint a new army, however I am not quite sure what to paint.
I have Carthoginian, Macedonian, Teutons, 100 years war, and Han Chinese. I have sold my Romans and Japanese and am looking for a new army to paint.
What am I looking for you will ask:
Good punch - something reasonably mobile that can win most fights it is supported in.
Some solid foot that does is not a knockover vs anybody
Good light troops - some regulars (irr light troops hav seldom done well for me)

Given that I lost most of my army books and the rest are on the slow boat, does anyone have any pet armies that they would reccomend?
I have been considering Sicilian Hohenstaufen, or possibly an Indian list.
However I would prefer not to limit myself to these, I am sure also that I do not have the patience or skill to paint a meso-american army well.
So given this background, and what I have what would you suggest?
All the best
Robert Turnbull

[Mark Stone]

[scott holder]

I'm going to bounce off Mark's comments for a moment.

Condotta: beguiling list on paper, a real bitch to master in real life. Avoid unless you're really into the history.

KOSJ: Todd should weigh in here. He was doing a post-mortem on them after this year's NICT and found some negatives.

Moldavians: Here's where I agree with Mark. This list has real potential and represents some cool historical stuff. I don't see the Irr LI as that huge a detriment here. If you're used to playing with it, you find ways of making it work.

Nike Byz: If you face the wrong opponent, you're totally hosed. Case in point, last round NICT matchup, Jon Becker's Nike Byz vs Scott McDonald's Mongols. Jon tanked his terrain picks and Scott picked up the rest. Result: billiard table. All Jon could do was hunker down. It wasn't pretty.

Now, if you're into medieval, take a long hard look at the Early Burgundians. Sure, Dave M and Derek played it with the Swiss but other variants are marvelously simple to operate. I find an army with "two moving parts", in this case tons of cheap longbowmen and hordes of Irr B knights very appealing and easy to run. But looking at what you have, you already have a fair amount of medievals so I'd go back to Moldavians.

Going outside of medieval western Europe, there are a ton of things in Oriental Warrior that would fit you. Sassanid Persians as well.

scott

[Frank Gilson]

Note that these two lists do get stuck with troops that are just not worth their points cost at all.

Moldavians must have four elements of Irr C LMI JLS,Sh. If you buy that minimum, you have a near useless unit. If you buy extra figures, you may make some better use of it, but it's still a hard to use unit that wants to be in terrain to avoid dieing to mounted but will be so slowed down by that terrain as to not necessarily matter to the battle.

Early Burgundian must have at least two elements of Irr C HC CB, arguably worse than the LMI JLS,Sh mentioned above. Do you enlarge that unit to four elements so that it is 'useful'? ...or just eat the 61 points. If you go with the late period to use Swiss then half your knights (except generals) must be Irr C and you must buy two of the worst elements of all, Organ Guns.

Downs and Markowitz do well because they're great players, but I wouldn't want to be 'down' 61-111 army list points of strictly inferior troops if I could avoid it.

Frank

[John Murphy]

I have done a lot with Moldavians over the past couple-three years (hence my avatar).

I run them in kind of an extreme fashion which probably a smarter list-builder would not. But I do find it is a lot of fun to play them that way.

Essentially though you have the best light troops in the game, better LC than Mongols because of the bulk and better LI because of hordes of cheap half-sheilded irreg bows than most knight armies can field. WHat that means is that 4E IrrC LMI JLS,Sh unit is never threatened by anything unless you want it to be. And it can make nice bait for something since the rest of the army is so elusive - though I have it found it very tricky to try to do this in practice - but I am not that good a player.

The only thing I founf where this army comes up short is that in order to get anything heavier than HK it is going to cost a ton of points on stuff that is much worse that what you can already field in this army. And the only real good shock foot is when you drop a knight unit off its horses. So the overall effect is perhaps a bit too light, at least the way I have played them.

Frank is a much better list builder and might disagree with some/all of this, I would take his word over mine even though I actually have played this army a ton.

But for sheer fun factor... this army played as uber-lights with Irreg A's is one of the best in my book.

[Ewan McNay]

Rob -

- I have most of your list books, I believe, which you left at Bill's house.

The answer to your other question is clearly Sassanid (or maybe Timurid, actually - better line foot, albeit not close order; the Paighan spearmen in the Sassanid list are pretty decent for their cheap cost.)

[lilroblis]

I hear the advocacy for early burgundian. I played them last year in the theme (no swiss), and enjoyed them, but feel (and showed) that with my Macedonians I crush them, good LC and Li screen off half the ermy and I destroy the rest.
I have looked at Moldavians, and while I like the list for fun, in a NICT type environment the light knights die agaist LB, Bow, elephants, pike, Good LC (tire them out and then rely on law of averages with other troops) they lose to easily against too many armies.
What I like about Hohenstoffen as an example is you have lots of good LC, can fieled cheap lmi B, sh and have lots of knights. There are few armies I really fear (players but not armies).
My macedonians do very well ahgainst the moldavians etc(sometimes), it comes down to me passing waver tests for being LMI charged by knights, if I fail I typically lose if I pass 67% I win. There ae other ways of configuring it for the moldavians but the outcome does not change.
I appreciate the feedback, and will continue to read other as we progress
All the best
Robert

[lilroblis]

Ewan
Can I pay you through Paypal to ship them airmail to South Africa?
my e-mail is robert.turnbull@sappi.com

[jamiepwhite]

How about one of the southeast Asian armies to paint? None of your other armies seem to be from that region thus this would be a new army for you to paint.

Khmer - Maiden Guard, lots of elephants
Burmese - Trashy foot, big elephant units
Vietnamese
Champa
various Indian dynasties

Jamie

[Murray Evans]

I think you need to find the figures that you like - for instance I agree with Ewan and Sassanid, it is way different to your other armies, and there are some great figures available (A&A or G Beast).

Also, some great Byzantine army combo's with figures from Crusader - can Morph into lots of different options (I play Late Paleogean with Moogs and HK).

Go for the figures - if Indian is thought good then Vendel could be good.

Muz