"WAB player seeking advice from other WAB players!" Topic

Yes, a gaming related Topic.

I have a WAB 2K Barbarian army. It's fun, as using it requires / rewards very little tactical finesse – turn up, use them and win or lose. They do what they like at critical moments and thus rob me of victory or grant me unexpected triumphs in a way I find delightful.

Now, as well as four slabs of Infantry, a unit of Mountain Tribesmen and two or bog-standard skirmishing archers, I use a coupla units of Light cavalry with shileds and javelins – two units of ten.

Now they never achieve much, and I was considering forming them up into a single unit of 18 and giving them a standard.
Pros:
– they would look awesomely alarming
– They can form up into 6*3 and get a leadership of 7
– They would give me one less unit
– They would be less likely to panic
– They might outnumber the enemy and thus have a chance of winning on autobreak

Cons
– They are pretty rubbish – pointy stick and a shield
– They would be my second most expensive unit
– They are bound to fail a warband test and charge something nasty in the front
– People who know my army would be less than scared of them

What do people think? And any other pros or cons you can think of?

Pat

It would depend on the army list as to whether they would give you a leadership of 7. That is based on rank bonus, not ranks, and if they are barbarian cav they might not get rank bonus. (I think)

Just something to check out.

They would look pretty alarming.

One of the other cons is that you don't have any skirmish cav. Could you put a unit of 10 of them on the table and leave the other 8 as skirmishers?

The other con is that when they break they affect your regular units with panic, so they might start a general route, something that they wouldn't do as skirmishers.

The way I see it is this:

You have a force that is infantry strong and cavalry weak.

You can't fix a weakness, usually, with a half-measures.

So you aren't taking something that is cavalry weak and making it cavalry strong, it is still cavalry weak but you are putting some points into cavalry where they are more or less wasted. Right now you don't really have any points in cav, just in skirmishers, as skirmishing cav operates more in the role of skirmisher than cavalry.

They are just fast skirmishers.

So it depends. If you enjoy seeing your army get hammered from time to time, then you should do it. I don't think the effect will be huge either way. So if you think there is a historical reason to form them up then that is what I would do.

If you are more concerned aobut winning or don't see a historical precedent then don't do it.

My thoughts tend to focus on how they might have fought and while you can't simulate that exactly, of course, I would try to get as close as possible.

You might ask here, too:

wabforum.sadwargamers.co.uk

Why bother? Flood the table with big warbands and trust to your dice, that seems to work best for Barbarian armies…

Pat – I haven't used Barbarians yet (although I am seriously considering putting together a Gallic/Galatian army as another opponent for my Romans and Seleucids) so take the following with a big pinch of salt.
Given the fact that an awful lot of cav are overpriced and underpowered in WAB, I tend not to take much unless they have some sort of additional talent like Feigned Flight or Parthian Shot. Your barbarian light horse strike me as the sort that would only have one real use, ie to shoo away skirmishers or other light troops that might be threatening to envelope your flanks – so why not go the whole hog, and cut them down to 1 unit of 12, tucked away nicely in the rear? That way there is a few more points to spend on the guys who are going to do the real damage – the chieftains and warriors.

Just a thought, anyway.

Cheers,
Paul.

LOL!! Lannes said it better than me and a whole lot quicker too ;)

Which historical army are you trying to create? How did they use cavalry (if at all, on the battlefield!). Base your army on what the real guys did, and you might not win, but you can at least take the moral high ground!

Now if they were Goblin cav with bow and spear, I could see your point. See if someone want's to buy them from you, or use them in Skirmish raiding games.

I have a friend who regularly wins WAB tournament. He plays Barbarians as one single warband! indestructible

That is odd I would think it was very vulnerable to attacks on the flank or rear. Or does it just extend the whole way across the table?

One warband? LOL! You need to play him on a bigger table!

Guy

Helmet, have his opponents tried standing on a box so they can see the table, or perhaps getting their mummies and daddies to assist in beating this unbeatable army?

A one-warband Barbarian army.I have seen more unbeatable eggs.

Pat

ROFL!!
How long would two units of Norman milites or similar take to force that lot to FBIGO off the table? Three turns? Four?

I can, joking apart, imagine some people having problems with that army. People that did not know characters have to go in the centre, people who lacked the balls to charge in the centre and kill the Shaman, people who neglected to put ANY scenery on the board, people like that.

Now, the semi-mythical 'One Unit of 'Sacred Band' Spartan Greek army – that gives me the heebs.

But a person who would field such an army – words fail me.

Back to my OP – The big unit of cavalry would have a chance of taking on enemy skirmisher units that were large, or half-way decent, and might if used well auto-break some oppo units. And remember, thay can skirmish into position then form up. I think I will go for it.

Pat

Generally 2 units of 10 Cavalry is much more flexible that 1 unit of 20. Good luck moving them into position, when you need to.

Skirmish them as Pictors says, and block the opponents March moves.

Then check the HMGS-E WAB tournaments rankings and look me up. You'll never pay any attention to any tactical advice I could give you. (Ha!)

Ralph

"Now, the semi-mythical 'One Unit of 'Sacred Band' Spartan Greek army – that gives me the heebs"

------> Now that is a bad tactic… it's failry easy to make sure that player never does any better then draw the game. But there is the loophole in the victory conditions where one unit can control all four quadrants if it sits in the middle of the table… which is a dirty little of a rule and should be fixed up.

Back to topic. I once saw a player that had 100 model warbands. It was very visually impressive, but reached the limits of diminishing returns (similar to other WAB units that get less effective the sooner they reach the magical number of 48 models).

I think the most effective "Barbarian" WAB army is one with a few tooled up big bands… and then a bunch of little throw away units to swarm flanks. Although cavalry is a good option again, now that the errata allows them the rank bonus for leadership so they don't just totally suck.
JeffJ