Art De La Guerre

[ethan]

I wonder if any of the people that have been playing longer, from the 2nd edition, have any thoughts on what does and doesn't work well in building armies?

[Soranon]

It's difficult to give you an answer... If you look at this two webpages, you will understand what I want to say :

http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/liste_tournois.php
http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/liste_armee.php

I dont think anybody can say : "The golden rule for winning is...."

It depend too much of who is the player and what he is used to play.

For example you might say that no army should be smallest that 20 units... By Vincent Auger at Petite Guerre Master 2013 (a pool witch gather all the better players with no less than 1300 elo points) finish second with a gazhevid army with only 17 units....

Or you might say that Sultanat of Delhi is a killer army because it has 76.19% of victory in tournament... But dont forget that this army was only played seriously by 3 very good players...

When you watch the statistic of some great French player like Boris Eloy you can see that whatever army he choose to play, he finished most of time on the podium. At Cavaillon in october 2014 he finished 3th with Frankish and Norman army (impétuous HC and Heavy lancer), defeating a Gazhnevid army and their elephants...

I understand you'll like some answers to your question. I'll try to give you mines, but dont forget that I'm not the better french player and that it will be my answer (some other player should have other way of thinking...)

- I you don't want to loose quickly, try to take the more units you can... Army with 27-30 units are really difficult to break.

- For horse archer always think to take them elite because it protect your cavalerymen from taking losses but also give them better chance to inflict losses...

- Heavy Infantry army often have 22 units or more... But it's sometime difficult...

- Cavalry army shouldn't have less than 20 units.

- Generals are really important : Always build your corps in thinking that you could make several 1 on PIP. So assume you can move all your troops with a 1 result. An heavy infantry corps could often have a ordinary general but a cavalry corps will be better with a competent or a brillant one.

- For a corps with impetuous or non manoeuvrable troop, you should think about buying a brillant general.

- Don't included generals in melee units... You can loose your general on a bad dice, remember it... But I think for horse archer unit it's a very good way to spare points...

- Elite and armor are wonderfull capacities... But very expansives ones... Be sure your elite troops will not be crush to easily because they are out numbered...

I think, the best way for you to find your way is to watch what army compose players in battle report or army dsicussion. Most of them are in french but in consulting them you can find army building.

http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/forum/index.php?c=3
http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/forum/viewforum.php?f=11

And don't forget that you can ask how people play an particular army

Sorry for my bad english, hopping that you'find something usefull in all that.

[ethan]

Thanks for the reply, like most things there are not set "here is what you need to do to win" but was curious what people had been seeing.

The tournament statistics are interesting, are the actual army lists available or just the results?

[Soranon]

It's V1 and V2 statistics for official AdG tournament. No V3 statistics for now...

There's no great changes between V2 and V3 but some could change some little things... You can only found this rankings in french (so use the french version of the web page

http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/fr/statistiques.php


This is the ranking of the armies :

http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/liste_armee.php

This is the ranking of the players :

http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/liste_joueurs.php

This is the result for each player :

http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/detail_joueur?id=370

You can go on the tournament result for more details :

http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/detail_tournoi?id=176

And you can see the match played by each player in "clicking" on his score :

http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/detail_partie.php?id_trn=176&id_jou=370


This is the Elo ranking of French and Belgian players (and at last an English, a welsh and a german player if I remind...)

http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/liste_joueurs.php?tri=2

All this is not really interesting for learning how to compose an army but it's interesting for learning witch army are succesfull or not... Or witch army is better in each metagame.

For example, you can see that Alexandrian Imperial army is a very played army and a successful one :

http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/liste_armee.php?per=2
http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/detail_armee.php?id=40&per=2

This army has 55% victory in tournament, was played in 259 games and you can see the result against each army this list has been played...

Not all french player used to look at this but sometimes it's usefull...


For advise in building your list, you'll find better in the "Listes d'armée" french section

If you don't read french, maybe google translate will be your friend ?

[Wagmestre]

Absolutly ok with Soranon.
Very pleasant to play AdG because each army list has a chance to win.
Even non conventional armies had good results, such as mapuches (hope same name in english): more than 30 units, middle foot, javelimen, few bowers, and a very good final place in 2013 ballainvilliers medieval tournament.

Perhaps pike armies would be strong in v3, but just wait and see !

[chris6]

Even though i only played 5 games till now. 4 in late middle ages, 1 in punic war, i think its the same with army building as in most other games. The first thing to figure out is: What is your prefered style?

More on swift moves over the flank? Take cavalry and try to get open ground.
Swift but you need more numbers? Take less cavalry and a bunch med infantry and go for some bad going.
Need a solid army that can hit hard against almost every other army? then take heavy infantry, but be aware of your flank protection.

And there are a lot of nuances in between.

One major point is already mentioned. Think of what role the corps you are building will have. This tells you which bgs should be in there and the quality of the general. eg: last 2 games i had a corps on a flank march with 2 knights and 2 light horses. well, 2 knights are somewhat overpowered maybe, but against another knight heavy army i felt good about it. For the general ordinary was enough. Just 4 Units to lead and i did not know if the corps shows up at all.

One corps was made of 6 impetous elite knights and 2 crossbows. I wanted them to hold a while on my side of the table, thats why thy had a brillinat general to feed the pips in.

Third corps was 4 Longbow, 2 Pikes mediocre, 2 Handgunners elite. Handgunners to get infront of the opponent, dont let him make 2nd or 3rd moves. Pikes to make him think about the flanks of his knights and longbows to hold bad going and or protect my flank/camp long enough until the flank march arrives to smash his troops between my knights and the flankers.

Sounds like a good plan....but i lost....

My knights did not hold their line even though they had the better quality against his knights and the flankers arrived to late to do their job.

End of all this is: Armycompostion is all about the troops you have and a plan to build around this troops. eg: If you have knights let them fight in the open, thats what they can do best. If you have lot of skirmishers, dance around the opponent and pinch his nerves.

And in the end you will need at least some good rolls...

[Soranon]

[chris6]

Yes, my army was exactly like this. And it was List 293....if i would play more competitive i would have gone with Burgundian Ordonnance and more Pikes besides the knights...but i knew in advance that my opponent would play holy roman german army around 1450, thats why i was going with this list.

And i did choose the impetous version of the knights to see how being impetous behaves in the game.

And yes the army was small, but i already knew that my opponents army would be as small...

Next time i might change the army and go for some foot knights and no crossbows. No flankmarch .... we will see...

but what i wanted to say is....as far as i am concerned: Armybuilding isnt a straight forward thing. At first its about picking an army you like, maybe for the look or for the nationality or whatever...Than look at the troops you have in the list and what are the things these can do, than a plan....and there is the army.

[cmuk]

I have found it difficult for a newbie to begin building army lists, so maybe we could post lists and critque them to help new english speakers ease in to the game?

Ill create a thread for my 300pt assyrian army and you guys can tell me what im doing wrong!

[Commodore]

[cmuk]