Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Ewan McNay]

Mark (and Frank) brought up the Q of El-based LI. They're right,
of course, that I omitted any discussion of this.

I don't do it with the Seleucids. A couple of reasons:

(i) it gets expensive. 10 Elephants x 2 LI x 5 (?) points per
fug (might be different if regular, I forget) is an extra 100
points, or an increase of 20% in my points spent on elephants -
so I would have to lose 100 points of troops elsewhere, and I'm
not willing to make the tradeoff.
(ii) Because the seleucid El are melee-targetted, not missile
platforms, the addition of LI B does not make them give out
significant missile fire - and it makes them 'shooters to front'.
(iii) Possibly most important, I haven't seen it matter: for
whatever reason, quite possibly luck, it just hasn't been the
case that I've felt disadvantaged by not having the extra
CPF-boost that the LI would provide. If I started to see this,
I'd consider changing - so my perspective is tainted by different
experience vs. others, perhaps.
(iv) I see the negatives as relatively large; the biggest is
counting as foot and hence needing to approach as foot (as well
as not being able to charge long, but that's a smaller concern).
I want the flexibility to position myself *after* the other
guy's foot, guaranteed, and preferably after his mounted also.

Regular LI: essentially only change the double-fatigue from
combat CPF, and I don't see this as a huge deal, so it would not
change my opinion (and clearly hasn't for the Seleucids).

I would likely place LI on the base of missile-platform El;
Burmese elephants are already so expensive that what the hell
and Indian 3 Bow El need the extra missile power to be optimal.
But I haven't run such an army for a long time, and back then it
was Medieval Indian which I don't think had the option.

What I have done, on occasion, an what I would see as preferable
to base-mounted LI, is run detachments of LI to the El which are
joined at the rear (usually): the El can always just walk away
from the detachment if you feel the need to charge long; the LI
can be run as a screen in cases where that's useful; and you seem
to gain most of the advantages of base-mouonted without some of
the negatives. I would recommend this option. Having said that,
I still don't do it at 1200 or 1600 points. I probably would at
2000, but at lower points there is other stuff that I see as
higher priority.