Abyssia Infantry Conundrum

[Astyreal]

Calling all dom3 experts. I am stumped by the Abyssian infantry selections. They all cost roughly the same and for the life of me I can't divine what their relative strengths and weaknesses are. I get that two of them have shields while the other two do not, so more attack minded vs defense minded. But the battleaxe guys vs the flail? I guess the flail has a better attack and thus a better chance of hitting, but its damage is only three and it carries a -2 def penalty.

Surely one of you experts out there can shed some light on the whole business.

[Maerlande]

Sounds like you are doing EA Abysia. Although it could be MA.

Let's talk MA. In general the humanbreds are your best bet so that their huge shields can block arrows. The axe are generally better because they can kill. Spears don't kill very well.

If you want to use the heavy infantry the defence is basically irrelevant because all Abysians have terrible defence. You rely on protection. Flails and morning stars are best vs. other shields. They have a bonus against shields. Axes kill heavy armoured opponents better. Note that the 2 hand flail has 2 attacks. So it's like using dual weapons.

Use tower shield guys in the front line to soak arrows. Flank with heavy 2 hand weapons slightly behind to avoid arrows. Choose axe or flail depending on your opponent's use of shields.

The Abysian infantry are very slow. So if you have to catch archers or light troops use the humanbreds and fire evocations. Don't try to catch troops in the back with Abysian heavy infantry. They will just fatigue out.

Most importantly, all your infantry are immune to fire. So use them with any of the big fire spells and you won't hurt your own guys.

[Astyreal]

I am talking EA. Does that change things at all?

[Sombre]

Yes, you have different units :]

You've pretty much already spotted the differences, you just need to think them through a bit.

Shields - These are tower shields which have excellent parry ratings. This makes the infantry almost immune to missile weapons, because any missile which is parried does nothing. Now if you're talking slings and shortbows, they don't matter so much, because they're unlikely to deal much damage through the armour of Abysian infantry anyway. But against javelins or more powerful missile weapons, this is the major point of shields. Shields can also parry melee attacks and help the abysian stay alive. But a word of warning - since they cause extra enc, they can also get the infantry fatigued out faster and make them vulnerable to melee attacks getting critical hits which bypass prot. If you were facing, say, wolf tribe warriors with twin daggers, the shields might actually be a liability in melee.

Flail vs axe - Flails get a hidden +3 attack versus shield parry checks. So they're much better against enemies that rely on their shields, like Ermorian troops, who generally have low/medium prot, but superb shields. Because they have higher attack generally, they're also better against high def dudes like light cavalry. Axes are obviously better against higher prot lower def guys, or in a situation where you just want your infantry to stay alive, not to be your main method of killing (where they are a meatshield for instance, or you are relying on heat aura to fatigue out the enemy).

Generally speaking I prefer shield + axe, because I rely on the heat aura to fatigue out the enemy and thus I don't need to be very attack orientated.

But honestly, other than the 3 bonus vs shields, there's nothing here you couldn't extrapolate from what you already know. Just think things through.

[Warhammer]

Some people like to mix their axe and flail units as well and will recruit f-a-f-a-f-a-f-a, etc., to try and take advantage of the different strengths of the units.

[Rytek]

If your looking for my opinion as the best overall to recruit when you don't know what you will be facing I prefer the great axe. In ea no crossbows to worry about. The shield guys just seem to fatigue and die faster and really don't seem to survive any better. Add a caster with bonds of fire and watch those great axes woop butt.
In theory its nice to be able to recruit the best counter for what you will be fighting. In practice it is so much harder to do because of the terrible move rate of heavy infantry.

[Maerlande]

Good point on the move rate. With MA and LA I tend to focus on the humanbreds since they are 2:1 in price and move 2. Makes a big difference to have troops in the right place instead of slowly meandering to the front lines.

[Astyreal]

Great stuff very helpful. I actually didn't know about the flail +3 vs. shield parry checks, quite interesting. Looking back to the manual (pg 73) it says that morningstars & flails ignore shields altogether!

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Astyreal

Great stuff very helpful. I actually didn't know about the flail +3 vs. shield parry checks, quite interesting. Looking back to the manual (pg 73) it says that morningstars & flails ignore shields altogether!

As is so often the case, it is wrong.