"Mongol Armies Have Much Success on Tabletop?" Topic

The Mongol Empire/Invasion Army had a lot of success against a number of opponents in real life. Has anyone seen a wargames Mongol Army have much success on the tabletop? If so, what rules set was being used for the battle(s)? Thanks.

I think the problem with the Mongol army is the wargame tables are never big enough to allow for the kind of tactics they often used.

I understand rules developers don't want to make shooting too powerful. But if board size is limiting nomadic armies' true abilities, maybe letting them shoot twice or increasing effectiveness of their shooting in compensation is warranted.

Game theory has progressed to incorporate abstract vs super realism more and more. Sometimes there is so much hang up on what "true" ranges are that their effectiveness on the battlefield has been nerfed.

Just a thought

What has happened is that "naturalism" has won out over actual realism. The late Redmond Simonsen wrote a very revealing article on this in Moves magazine.

If a set of ancient rules had rules for a Mongol Army that allowed them to win every game people without Mongol armies wouldn't play it for long. Good players can win with Mongol armies in most rules but skill, tactics and dice luck always play a role. The Mongols seemed invincible for a while because their opponents in many cases were behind them in tactical skill. Finally, they ran into the Mamelukes and suddenly victory was not assured anymore. Then the Russians also got a lot better and smarter and turned the tide in Russia.

A Mongol Conquest army won the To the Strongest! Worlds one year; it had the expected light and heavy cavalry but also units of keshig prisoners driven in front of it. In the hands of a seasoned player it was pretty deadly.

This is an area in which a comprehensive pre-game could make allowances for the army campaign style?

martin

Pb of space both depth and width; not enough emphasis on true commad efficiency maybe? That id they fought feodal armies, but they had a pro effivient responsive sytem plus manouevering, mid Gengis and 2 more generations after.
Many batyles ate won on a grsnd tactical base which is sort of out of the normal/ usual points one off tabletop game mostly done for "ancients".
On the other hand short of micro campaigns it is hard to do, rolling dice just before the game to find yoursrlf in an impossible situation does not make for a good game. Not easy.

I consider the Mongols a very tough army in Impetus. LC with bow supported by elite MC with bow is a deadly combination.

The old Warhammer Ancients rules favored the Mongols. Mostly because of their ability to infiltrate and overwhelm the flanks. Also a factor, the lists allowed an over representation of super effective Chinese foot crossbowmen. That became a double whammy of impossible to catch horse archers backed by a steady machine gun base of infantry that could not be ignored.

However they suffered when forced into "take and hold" objectives so that was a key levelling factor. The WAB victory framework of who controlled table quadrants often was what determined a winner.

Also the ahistorical matches favored the Mongols. New Kingdom Egyptians would have nothing that would work for them against Mongols unless they absolutely over loaded with archers. OTOH the Mongols dreaded and bellyached about phalanxes that spread out and reduced the areas of infiltration.The Mongols also hated the Persians because the Persians could absorb a lot of bowfire punishment and dish it out to anybody that got left in the lurch.

Historical period matches seemed to quell their effectiveness. The Byzantine and Sassanid WAB armies were a keener match because they had missile melee balance.

Usually when playing the Mongols in WAB with conventional armies, one could expect at best a draw, and that is if the Mongol player made mistakes, and you made none.

In skirmish style games there is a lot of room for using rules such as Lion Rampant which is fun with lots of cavalry.
The local San Diego Historical group recently put on a game of Mongols in Khwarazm with figures from the collection of Rene Lafarque.

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I play Mongols in Kings of War. My group lives in terror of the Mongols on more open tables because the game allows for realistic Mongol tactics and it's usually a blood bath. Samurai armies heavy in pikes and muskets give me fits. Slightly different time periods but they just sit back pounding me and daring me to hit their pikes.

I played a game with them using Triumph Fast Play rules and found that it was almost impossible to kill the Mongol light cavalry. I won the game by capturing the enemy (Teutonic Knights) camp and earning enough victory points to win. This was played on 4 x 4 table too in 15mm scale.

Mongols did well in Armati, the problem only problem I found while playing at the Nashcon tournament was concentration. 1st game of the day I won pretty quickly, 2nd still a win but now you're forgetting some of the fine movement to keep the archers out of reach, 3rd game late in the afternoon was usually a loss. To much fun and other things catching your eye, plus tired from gaming all night. 'awww man I forgot to move that group as the Teutonic knights slam into your lights.

We allow armies with lots of light cavalry a larger playing area than normal in Tactica II. The reasoning is that armies that rely on mounted bowmen are likely to seek out a larger arena to fight. I recently played my Mongols vs. a Teutonic Knights army and the Mongol superiority in mobility won them the battle. The Mongols are not as effective when fighting a similar opponent like the Mamelukes.

Also: most games do't by far give justice to the speed of cavalry, especially a light, well organized type like them. Because they want to compensate with the small tables.
Infantry armies would be at a total disaventage esp. Those ennemies they had who would never ever dream of anything close to Romans manouevering abilities.
3 times faster than infantry at least…

The thing in fantasy matchups is that the Mongols are not always going to get their preferred terrain. So fighting Romans doesn't necessarily mean that the Romans are chasing the LC across the Steppe plains. The tight spaces are sometimes the result of strategic necessity that go beyond the field of view of pick up battles. So I don't have a problem requiring the Mongols to fight on tighter tables.

Even in non-fantasy match-ups, the Mongols could not always pick where they fought. They had several defeats during the second invasion of Hungarian while fighting in the hills of Transylvania. The local forces included light cavalry but also a mixture of other troops.

Not much of the world pays its taxes to Mongolia. They must have lost a few.

I've played Mongols v.s. Sung Chinese using To the Strongest rules and the Mongols are quite successful. If I remember correctly they have won 13 and lost 2.

Interestingly, I think the Sung Chinese are the one of the tougher opponents for the Mongols in Impetus. Lots of foot bow and crossbow plus decent cavalry.