Lore of the Fast Knight
"The most fun you can have in DBM with your clothes on" was how Jeff Hady, a US wargamer, described using Irr Kn(F) armies. I agree - these are high speed, high risk, hard hitting yet very fragile armies, and when things go wrong the army collapses fast. But when it goes right, there is nothing quite like the speed and ferocity with which a Kn(F) army can tear another army apart. (And when we talk about Irr Kn(F) armies we are talking 16+ Kn(F) plus generals). I played the Normans nearly exclusively in tournaments from 1995-98, and the Bactrian Greeks as well.
This section is divided into:
10 Commandments of Kn(F) Generalship culled from that experience.
Connoisseurs Guide to Irr Kn(F) armies
Special Manouvres, including the Norman Mounted Display Team manouvre
10 Commandments of Irr Kn(F) Generalship
| 1. You shall always put cheap
troops with the Irr Kn, such that the total breakpoint of
the command art pretty close to the number of knights in
it. 2. The main battle command shall always be that of the CiC, as he alone hath the pips to control it. However, harken unto me, Grasshopper, for tis but a pin! Yea truly, the main command is to divert yon foe so the other commands can do their work first. It therefore needeth the minimum number of looneys to persuade the enemy it can seriously bash through his line. 9-10 is enough. It needeth also enough to dissuade a serious attack by LH(S) or Cv(S) - so some Bw art a Good Thing! 3. There shalt be 2 other strike commands, 2 shall be their number. They must both be able to do serious damage. For mye Normans, a Kn and a Breton command normally take this role. The one attacketh one wing, the other skirmisheth with t'other wing - or hammers it if it be LH! 4. These 2 commands shall be bolstered with crap, yea, but they must also have some troops who are at the very flanks of thy army, to fendeth off the vile LH and Ps etc that thy enemy will attempt to use to divert thy Kn. LH are truly cool, as they can wasteth a lot of time and pips for thy enemy. Bw too are advantageous, in that they shooteth away yon formation, and wasteth many enemy pips. 5. Thou shalt also keep a small reserve command, because try as thee might, thy deployment will be erroneous, thy opponent may outmanouvre ye, or ye may even be outflanked. It is too hard to re-moveth Irr Kn about the place, thy only chance is a small command with its own dice in the rear, moved to the point of need. 6. Impetuosity is thy foe before contact, thy friend afterwards. Thusly, get in contact fast! Then use thy pips to allow the rest of the army to get onto flanks, shoot of stragglers etc. 7. Beware ye of the temptation to make this army a combined arms force. An Irr Kn(F) army is a bunch of looneys with a support cast. Unless thou art very lucky, thy Kn(F) will blast off on bound one and disappear into yon horizon, and thy foot will be a huffin & a puffin to catch up. Big groups of support troops, and preferably on horses or with an extended reach - ie Bw - are what thee desire! For example, take the Ax(S) in the Bosporan list - they are of little value other than as filler as thy knights will go nowhere near shrubbery, and his shrubbery stuff will go nowhere near Kn. Thy tactic is to mask off said shrubbery with a LH or 2, while thy Kn go hell for leather at the stuff in the open! 8. At 400 ap thy army shalt always have 4 commands, else thee will be totally outmanouevered. At 350 thou canst have 3 or 4, 4 if ye enemy is a mobile army, 3 if not. 9. If thou art smart, thee wilt have chosen an army that can dismount its Kn. This allows you to dismount during the battle in times of real trouble (like when you are surrounded by hairy Mongol LH) or deploy as a foot army against ye troublesome foes such as Bw(S), Elephants etc. Though some saye the dismounting rule art an aberration, most Irr Kn(F) armies that can dismount in ye lists would do so historically in either of ye above cases, so holde your heade up with pryde. 10. Above all, have courage. This is not an army for the control freak or the squeamish. The idea is to get it close enough in reasonable order to a solid bit of enemy, and let fly. It will take losses going in and fighting, but it also causes losses. When it goes right, ye will gloat over the carnage. When it goes wrong - well, its over quickly and the bar beckons! |
The Irr Kn(F) armies - Connoisseurs Guide
Book 1:
Lydian is the only army with enough Irr Kn to class as a real Kn(F) army, its hard to play as slow foot and fast knights usually come unglued and cannot support each other easily.
Book 2:
The Sarmatian/Alan armies are the best known - Alans have the best mobile support troops and good filler, Bosporan the cheapest supports so you get the more robust army.
Vandals are the real Crazy Man's army, but there are few filler troops, so you end up with a small, all Kn(F) army that is relatively easy to break. Other Teutonics such as Heruls, Taifals et al leaven the Kn(F) with archers and a few other bits & pieces
Gepids are not for the faint hearted, with Irr Kn(F) and Ir Wb(S) in one army. Keep the Wb(S) commands separate from the Kn, and its a fearsome army to face if you are a heavy infantry outfit. Easily outmanouvred by cavalry armies though.
Patrician Roman and Bactrian Greek can field a useful Irr Kn(F) force, but with regular generals cannot be considered a "true" Irr Kn(F) army - but they're still pretty good armies though!
Book 3 - Irr Kn(F) Heaven!
"Steppe Looneys" - Central Asian City States & Georgians can be fielded as Irr Kn(F) or Irr Cv(S) armies, a very useful morphing capability. Both are well supplied with good supporting horse and foot. The Georgians get a 4th non-ally Cuman General, which really adds to their mobility
"Round Shielded Looneys" of the Dark Ages include Middle Franks, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Serbs and Carolingian Franks. All these armies put big numbers of Kn(F) into the field and support them, the Goths have useful psiloi supported heavy infantry, but Goths and Franks run the same problems as Lydians with slow Sp support troops (Bw are better as they are harder to avoid). Lombards have a fascinating combination of Knights, huge archery batteries and Avar allies, but the Kn(I) minima rules them out below 400ap. The Carolingian Franks are the best as they can field good cheap support, cavalry skirmishers and the generals can be regular. A major plus of the "Teutonic" armies and the later Kite shielded Westen ones is that they can dismount as good heavy infantry, which hugely increases their flexibility against a variety of enemies.
The Hindu Indian Rajputs are an interesting Kn(F) army, mixing the common "Kn(F) & Bw(I)" configuration with elephants and Irr Bd(F) - a very colourful army, in theory very tough but hard to co-ordinate in practice I found. The Rajput military culture is the epitomy of the looney Kn(F) model!
"Kite Shielded Looneys" - the zenith of Irr Kn(F) looneydom, and the pinnacle must be the magnificent Normans - conquering England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Italy and taking a darn good crack at Africa and Byzantium in a 50 year period. A strong army, with many options and good supports. There are many others (East & West Franks etc etc), but few have the fine balance of the Norman army. Probably the other tres romantique outfit is the Feudal Spanish army of El Cid, again a good army with good supports but no dismounting capability caps flexibility.
Book 4
Western Feudal Tail-enders - the later "kite shielded looney" armies (Sicilians, Crusaders, most West European armies), before they increase weight, reduce speed and become the thundering chivalry of the medieval period. Anglo-Norman is quite popular because of the Ps supported Sp blocks, similar to the Ostrogoths, with the same pro's and cons.
Eastern Looneys" - Bulgarians, Armenians & Serbs - who have useful light horse supports and are easily morphable into contemporary Byzantine armies. Komnenan Byzantine just about qualifies, but like Patrician Romans is more of a regular army with a large Irr Kn(F) contingent.
Buyers Guide
In terms of fighting power, sheer romance and morphability the Big 3 are Carolingians, Normans and Georgians with El Cid's Spanish and the wild, colourful Rajputs as runners up. Carolingians - well, thats the army of Charlemagne, the Chanson de Roland and Tours. Normans are there for all their amazing exploits and the character list - William the Bastard, "Iron Arm" de Hauteville, Robert "the Weasel" Guiscard, Bohemond. Athough the Georgians cannot dismount, the 4 generals and their unrivalled mobility - not to mention being an "exuberantly extrovert" Christian state that called its border forts "kiss my arse" in Arabic, and marched to Jerusalem with insults on its banners (in a sea of Muslims), led by a warrior queen, and with reputedly the finest wine and women in Eurasia - tips the balance!
Reg Kn(F) armies
There are a few with decent numbers of Reg Kn(F) - Minoan, Patricians, Carolingians in regular guise, Khitan, Communal Italians - but this is not the same high risk, high reward, heart in mouth experience. It is interesting, as you are playing with a fine, fast but brittle rapier of an army, and some players really enjoy the highly manoueverable 4-general Communal Italians especially for this purpose
Irr Kn(F) Special Manouvres
Fight the Pips, not the army - Irr Kn(F) armies should aim to swamp an enemy with free pips, so seek to engage early, across the entire enemy line so that the enemy cannot allocate pips optimally.
The Column - Irr Kn(F) love the single line column, as it enables them them to move for 3 bounds + without paying movement penalties. This allows a Kn(F) army to be very manouverable across the table, especially if aligned with....
The Norman Mounted Display Team (NMDT) - in this manouevre, a column is brought side on to an enemy target, and the knights are left to go spontaneous - they then immediately flip out of line and go crashing into the target, This is stunning if you can also...
"Cross a T" and send them into the flank of a target, I once took out a big tranche of Mongol Cv(S) by crossing the T on both sides of the Cv line with small 4 Kn columns, the carnage was horrendous!
Let Forth the Dogs of War - if you are outmanouvered, just let them go - they will, at 2 x 4" per move, close on the enemy mighty fast! Two examples - once my Kn were on the wrong side of some scrub - I let them fly, over the scrub they went, and I used pips on the other side to ensure they hit in the same bound. Another example - I was once out-manouvred by an Early Byzantine who put his whole army on one flank. I was in a line across the table, so I let my centre and far flank go, they got to the enemy far faster than via any pips! A variant of this is, once the enemy battle line is some way off but the initial dancing is over , just let fly and start spending the pips on other useful stuff.
Through the Gap and Flip Out - a Kn(F) battle line (or something else) makes a hole in an enemy line. Any reserve/spare Kn(F) are threaded through in column/singlets in your next bound, and in bound n+1 are left to go spontaneous - typically you can get some then to flip into the rear of the rest of the enemy line, causing all sorts of consternation and massive damage. A variant is to...
Get The Baggage! - a deliberate tactic to get a few Kn in sight of the enemy baggage, preferably through a gap in the battle line as this usually means the enemy is fully committed in pips and good troops. The enemy usually has to scrabble for his (easily destroyed) crummy stuff and tons of pips to fend them off, since if there is one thing Irr Kn(F) are good at its taking out baggage very fast at zero cost! This can really collapse a "tough frontal opponent" such as Assyrians (my best ever victim) very, very fast.
When the going gets tough, dismount! - the Teutonic & Frankish armies can do this, and typical events are to:
watch a terrain feature etc without going looney
under pressure from enemies you cannot easily handle (eg a lone Kn(F) swarmed by enemy LH)
close to demoralisation, so get down and get tough - Sp(O) are not easy targets.
When the tough get going, dismount! - The Lombards and Middle Franks can dismount as Wb(S). It is very disconcerting for a heavy infantry enemy to find that Irr Kn(F), who are generally easy meat to it, metamorphose into spear-crunching warbands!
Charging Through - Irr Kn(F) can charge quite a long distance through a friendly formation directly in front of them. My favourite is a Bw/Kn formation vs enemy dismounters - if they stay on horseback they get shot to ribbons, if they get down they get charged by the knights. Best ever was against Medieval Portuguese, the Norman Bw shot the Portuguese Kn(O) into recoiling disorder and took some out, then the Kn(F) charged through, coming on 3-on-1 to complete the route. The Portuguse dared not dismount because of the Kn(F) presence. This worked better in DBM 1.x when Bw moved 150 paces.