In attack of poor Crossbows – Musings on the FoG system

In the many prestigious gaming circles AWB mixes with there is the miniature gaming group known informally as Butchers of the Bell Curve, a friendly and casual little group that regularly engages in playing both Fields of Glory and the sister publication, Fields of Glory Renaissance.

Within this group the topic of units of crossbow armed, poor quality medium foot have become somewhat of a running theme after during an otherwise uneventful FoG game during November last, a six figure unit of this rubbish managed to defeat in close combat a much more highly fancied unit of Roman types.

Members of the Butchers of the Bell Curve have fallen into two camps. First, as supported by the owner of said crossbowmen, is that they are clearly excellence value for money and all armies should got to the effort of fielding them. The other faction, as shamelessly supported by AWB among others, is that they are cheap rubbish and you get what you paid for.

Let us now take this harmless debate and shamelessly poke it with a stick a few times to make it angry.

First up let us revise the basic functions of shooting combat under the FoG system. First up is to try and remove stands, a task that requires getting a minimum of three hits per shooting phase due to the -2 DRM on the Kill Dice the game system uses, and second is to try and force Cohesion Tests on your target using the slightly easier task of inflicting at least 1 hit per three bases. (Which, for example, would mean two hits if shooting at a six base sized target).

Anything else is wasted so if you cannot get hits on your target then you are only annoying him and slowing the game down.

Crossbows, while no doubt an easy weapon to train your smelly peasant to operate and quite capable of punching through armour, were slightly slower to fire then other missile weapons in this period and hence for most foot targets under the game system they are at a disadvantage. In game terms this means hitting on 5s or 6s when trying to go head to head with say an enemy unit of foot skirmishers. As the system requires Poor rated troops to re-roll any raw 6s and keep the new result, this means a single D6 will give a hit approximately every 22%.

Not too bad, you might say, but remember you need at least two hits on your six base large target to force a test and at least three to have a chance of removing a stand.

So, assuming you are rolling 4 dice (as that is what AWB have crunched the numbers for and cannot really be arsed doing them again), it means you will score 3 or more hits (and maybe kill a stand) about 4% of the time and cause two or more hits (enough for a Cohesion Test) a slightly more impressive 21% of the time.

Which all seem wonderful so let us compare to an Average rated unit under the same conditions.

Now no longer having to re-roll 6s, a dice will hit 33% of the time and the chances of 3 or more hits become 11% and two or more 41%. The loose conclusion is that Average Crossbow are about twice as good just from shooting.

Things get worse when you allow for the fact that your unit may also receive fire and be forced to take tests themselves. While Cohesion Tests have many DRMs and are difficult to fully break down into a simple figure, if you assume an unmodified roll, a Poor unit will pass 42% of the time compared to 58% for an Average unit.

So, going head to head between an Average and Poor unit lined up and shooting at each other with four dice each, the Poor unit will drop a Cohesion level about 23% of the time compared to only 9% for the Average unit. Of course once a unit starts dropping levels they lose dice and gain negative DRM and it all starts to get rapidly worse.

(AWB also admits that under the system the firing units may not actually have four dice, but cannot find their maths text books and had to crunch the numbers the long and painful way. Just work with us here, okay?)

That is just shooting. What happens when you get into close combat?

While without going deep into each and every army list, it is a safe assumption that most crossbow units are not going to be armoured and not going to be wielding a secondary (melee) type weapon. Hence the chances of going into a combat round at a major disadvantage and needing to hit on 6s are quite realistic and high, which would already be bad enough if Poor troops didn't have that re-roll requirement. Since the odds of getting a hit with one dice under this situation works out to approximately 3%, unless you can fight from a good defensive position (say uphill like the unit that managed to start this entire discussion back in late 2012), then you are not going to cause more hits in the combat, you are not going to force the enemy to take kill tests, you are going to be the one who is taking the Cohesion tests yourself and unless you manage to really butcher the bell curve, you are going to die.

Well, so what? The entire unit probably only cost you 12 or 18 points out of your 800pt army so who is going to get upset?

Well winning the game under FoG involves breaking an army and a dead unit counts towards the break point no matter how cheap and nasty it is. Also a routing unit always runs the risk of upsetting nearby friends as well as opening a hole to allow the opponent one more closer to looting your baggage.

Yes a cheap unit does make your army bigger which is always a good thing, but the original argument against fielding Poor Crossbowmen is that you get what you pay for. Always remember they are extremely unlikely to dish out much damage and have little staying power if even remotely seriously engaged. If they are making up the numbers and help support your cunning tactical victory over the enemies foolishly over extended armoured cavalry then they have earned their worth. If you place them on your critical flank and they die horribly then more fool you we say.

Still, your army. Your dice. Have fun.

(as a disclaimer, AWB is currently painting some Peter Pig crossbowmen to take part in a Maximilian Imperial army which do have the option of being taken as Poor for 2pts a stand. AWB wishes to make it clear that they in one way wish to appear as hypocrites, just merely as extremely slow painters.)