Paul, a lot of assumptions on your part?
This was a beginner's tournament, so none of that min max stuff going on. The winner only had 6 units btw.
Mongols can be a tough match up to certain armies, especially cavalry armies with no skirmishers or foot armies with little protection, etc. A Numidian army would be an easy counter for this or an army with more skirmishers as well. Had I attended, I believe that my Komnenan army list would have been difficult for any Mongol player.
The winner was Bob Putnam. A former expert and top 1/10th of 1 % WRG 7th player. As such, he "gets" cavalry shooty armies quite well.
The army lists are quite balanced. But rock, paper and scissors certainly exist as some matchups favor having one troop over another. So unprotected troops suffer from missile fire, concentrated misdile fire does work, pikes do beat out Persian levy, etc.
This was a beginner's tournament so different levels of experience were at play as well. I encourage you to look at regular tournament results of tournaments in Britain. Spartacan won one recently, not sure anyone would deem the army imbalanced? Lol Alexandrian Expeditionary won another sans ANY pikes or elephants.
