HYW - Longbows, etc.?

[BigMike]

Don't listen to Big Mike, he's a well known cannibal and a molester of llamas.

you have only circumstantial evidence of that...

back to the main topic...

I agree that the longbow was a powerful weapon, no doubt of that and with bodkin arrowhead there is no denying the shots could chew through a lot of armour, so maybe depending on your preference you might want to give them something like the sling rule where they reduce morale save at close range.
I'd go with this precisely because of your point about needing to be at close range to have much chance of penetrating armour, by giving them the crossbow rule I think you'd give the longbow an ability to defeat armour which it simply didn't have beyond a few tens of meters. the other reason i'd use the slings rule is I dislike rules which apply a standard penalty regardless of circumstances. it just makes no sense to me to have a unit with heavy armour given a huge penalty and the medium infantry beside them not suffering at all.

[Cubster]

I'd go with this precisely because of your point about needing to be at close range to have much chance of penetrating armour, by giving them the crossbow rule I think you'd give the longbow an ability to defeat armour which it simply didn't have beyond a few tens of meters.

Agreed, the power would give you extra range or extra punch, which is pretty logical when you think about it. Again, we come back to how much you are prepared to micro-manage the effects. When the bowman made the decision to switch from firing into the air to firing on a flat trajectory, there would be a great difference in the effect of the shot and obviously the range of the target ... presumably also what type of arrow was chosen.

it just makes no sense to me to have a unit with heavy armour given a huge penalty and the medium infantry beside them not suffering at all.

Well I think you already covered that yourself. A bodkin was a needle specifically for punching through armour, whereas a flechet was a blade specifically for causing nasty flesh wounds. Different target, different arrow, to try to get the same effect.

A slow moving metal shell was a sitting duck and a horse with cloth armour was just a big target of meat unless they could close very quickly or flank them.

[BigMike]

I think the switch from a flatter trajectory and a switch of arrowhead between plate and softer armoured targets is probably reflected best in reducing morale save by 1 rather than a blanket 5+ maximum which heavily penalises the armoured man and doesn't impact on the lighter armed archers.

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only on the WL forum!

[clivethecelt]

So, enquiring minds wish to know: (when) will there be a HYW supplement for HC, please, Gentlemen of the Warlord?

@BigMike, Cubster: splendid debate: been watching this very gentlemanly discourse with some interest, as one of my areas of interest is the Anglo-Scots Border Wars, where both "sides" still relied heavily upon bows (English) and latch crossbows (Scots). None of the rulesets I've come across differentiate well between the two weapons, so I like your compromise - apply the Crossbow rule, but give the longbow the -1 modifier to Morale Saves. Would you just keep that to short range, as per the Slings rule, or extend it to all ranges?

[BigMike]

Personally i'd have the weapons as follows.
Crossbows: Crossbows. With maybe the option for marksmen for any particularly experienced mercenaries the Scots have hired
Longbow: Marksman, 'slings'. After all i'm assuming your Scots are going to be relatively lacking in fully armoured units, so a save reduction will penalise them at close range while a shooting re-roll will probably make life unpleasant enough for the enemy at other ranges!

Cheers

[clivethecelt]

Thanks, Mike. Most "battles" were just close-range skirmishes or ambushes, so applying the Slings rule doesn't penalise the longbow users vs. crossbowmen, which is excellent - though the rate of fire might need playing around with! As far as armour goes, most reivers (both Scots and English) wore just a jack o' plates or leathers, and there wasn't much use of heavy plate - Flodden was probably an exception to that, of course (though there is, or used to be, a half-suit of Reiter armour in the Borders museum at Jedburgh - probably pinched from a passing mercenary!).

[BigMike]

for tweaking rate of fire you might try taking a leaf out of the Rorke's drift players books and swopping some archer combat dice for additional shooting dice. I'd be very careful with doing it though!

[Cubster]

Yeah, rate of fire is a tricky one. I don't believe a round of shooting represents a single arrow being fired, any more than a combat round represents a single blow being landed, yet at the same time you can't give longbows 5 times the shooting numbers of crossbows! That would be crazy! A lot of rules give a nod to this by not allowing crossbows to move and fire, which still doesn't really reflect it perfectly but is at least a start. Mike's reroll option sounds sensible ... dagnammit.

It's tough for me to remain impartial because I'm a big fan of the longbow, but crossbowmen were certainly used to counteract the longbow, so it can't have been at that much of a disadvantage. Pavises would help of course and in sieges it wouldn't be a huge issue as already mentioned.

[rick priestley]

Don't listen to Big Mike, he's a well known cannibal and a molester of llamas.

Come now... we've all done it!

But returning to the theme - yes I've played plenty of WoTR games with the Perrys and friends - the usual infantry units are households - or something like a herce - with a mix of longbows and billmen. We generally count these as heavy infantry (4+ morale save) with the shooting element integrated into the unit - 3 shots. With the longbowmen we tried various things - but in the end we found it works best with the marksmen rule - i.e. 1 re-roll. That is enough.

We also counted handguns as crossbows but made the enemy take a break test each time a casualty was inflicted as well as on the usual 6 rolls.

With the heaviest cavalry - we went to morale saves of 4+ with 1 re-roll (stubborn) - but might go to 3+ - though I'm a but wary of 3+ rolls as they can skew the game a bit.

Rick

[grant]

Don't listen to Big Mike, he's a well known cannibal and a molester of llamas.

Come now... we've all done it!


Rick

I knew it!


and



How's that for a slice of fried gold?



Seriously though, I would love to be able to play WotR; unfortunately nobody in my local group is even remotely interested. They are all into Romans and such. le sigh.