Art De La Guerre

[Hazelbark]

This started as a thread on the tournament results. Moving here for more discussion.

[Mark G Fry]

Adding Armour for Elephants appears (to me anyway) to be all about protecting the elephants from unwanted enemy missiles (on a 360 degree basis) - specifically HC/MC/LC bow - so (as you say Dan) they can arrive in full fighting fitness
You can achieve the same result by placing a LF in front of them, but that costs 4pts and only protects them frontally, and the LF can also be shot up. It also assumes that you have the necessary LF you need to do this, in adequate numbers, in the army list.

However, like other similar Horse Archer/Elephant combo armies (Timurid/Hepthalite Huns/Mughal Sultanate etc.), this tactic does rely upon there being a target for the Elephants to hit in your opponents army

A very interesting army list Dan - thank you for sharing it.

Mark

[Black Prince]

I do struggle to master mobile warfare, and so far I have found the Ghaznavids are a good balance for my level of skill. My usual gaming friends tend not to field armies with a lot of mounted, and this has probably reinforced my list development. To be fair to my friends I noticed at this year's Cancon comp there were a lot of HF armies and the few armies that had a lot of mounted were there were either impact mounted or impetuous cavalry. For the record at this year's Cancon I made a last minute change from Ghaznavid to an English HYW army and paid the price.

Back to my Ghaznavids yes is does fight mainly foot armies with a few mounted and then a lot of them have bloody mediocre pikes, (surprising there are a lot of armies that have mediocre pike). The light foot screen the elephants from shooting but the armour is to protect them in melee, in general the games I play the elephants are in contact with the enemy centre by turn 3 or 4 and remain in contact until the final phase of the game when either they have killed everything in front and to the side of them or been killed. I know my list is not perfect but it works well against my usual opponents which could well be part of the problem as it has been optimised to fight against one type of army. From what I saw at Cancon this year I think it would do OK as 95% of the armies had a solid centre for the elephants to hit. All that said, Dan I will give your list a go as it looks good.

I noticed a Hun army came first at Roll Call, I thought an all mounted Ghaznavid army might be a fun way of improving my mobile warfare skill set. Yes by dropping the elephants you are loosing the hardest hitting units but you are using a different set of tools to win - thoughts anyone?

[ALEXANDER]

Forget all about elephant armour or Li as a protection.
A single enemy Lc javelin can easily charge the Li at great distance and force the Li to evade.

Why not keep the list simple?

Mahmud strategist free +10
2 Elephants 26
2 Medium Swordmen impact elite 18
2 LC javelin
2 HC impact

SG competent included
4 HC bow
1 LC bow elite
1 LC bow

SG competent included
4 HC bow
1 LC bow elite
1 LC bow

[Mark G Fry]

A nice list

You can achieve something very similar with a Sassanid

[ALEXANDER]

If you want more units...
you could drop the 2 HC impact and take

2 bowmen mediocre
2 Li javelin

[Jhykronos]

[Black Prince]

Thanks for input. If I remove all the upgrades from the army I posted, I can pick 2 MC impact and make the unreliable general reliable - I will test out this mod for the next couple of games.