[Frylock]

Originally Posted by flameslayer93

The reason I don't think you would do as well as you assume, is because the Roman Archers are also meant to be played as a team of trappings. The whole army isn't supposed to be little one defense soldiers.
Imagine it to be like this:

I had some archers and DW7k. The total isn't my whole team, but they were the ones I built the army around.

As your bonding hero comes around(for this we will use typical Human Champions like Finn or Hawthorne), the Deathwalker is obviously faster than your knights(KoW move is 4, DW7K move is 6) and should be able to get to one of your champions. In this event, I will have considered to have inflicted 2 wounds on one of your bonding heroes. Your Champion isn't just going to shake that off either. If your champion is within threat range of one of my Romans, they volley on him. Chances are, if your Champion can attack one of my Romans, they can reach your Champion. If your Champion cannot attack a Roman, then the ones who conveniently positioned themselves on various higher spots on the map while you were busy dragging your army over here(road or not, it can still be a lengthy process to bring a big enough swarm to not get completely pounded by Romans who are playing to counter you) put holes in Knights. 3 attack versus 4 defense(with dwindling numbers on each side mind you) can punch through fairly well. When your knights attack the pod conviently located on the ground ready to Volley at a Champion, it is unlikely that all of them are engaged. So an impromptu Volley can occur.

Let's imagine you got my DW7K tied down. I am relatively confident that he can survive an attack or 2 of 3. Then, well it's time to say arrow volley or just wiggle around to get engaged with as many things as possible before going BOOM! If your Knights are there on a road, I'll be glad to nail an nearby champion with the volley. You still don't want to disengage unless you need to risk the loss of a knight. And then even worse, you'd be untying my Deathwalker. Surround the DW7K with 2 or 3 knights and he already earned his points by getting rid of something more valuable by kills. By getting rid of some of the swarm.

These theory-scaped results are assumed on the following builds:

Knightsx4 280
Finn 360
Hawthorne 450//////18 figs

Roman Archersx6 350
DW7K 450///////19 figs

It would be assumed that our builds do not have to be exact. More or less, I'm playing Trap&Kill. Your playing Bonding Swarm. Your knights can't move quickly enough on many maps w/out road(and more often than not, you are going to be somewhat constricted if you wanted to get the bonus, likely feeding me kills). Only about half of my Romans have to move at all and until your knights are out about halfway, they have plenty of time to get ready. Then I scatter the OMs on DW7K to follow my initial strategy.

1. DW7K hates knights. Just one little knight can completely tie him down. Then the knights could completely ignore him. You wouldn't want to risk a double-disengage from the knight just to put 2 wounds on a Champion. The best strategy against Da Bomb is just engage him with a single squaddie, and forget about him.

2. Keep in mind that although the knights are slow, the archers are just as slow. And the knights are moving 5 figures per turn, as opposed to three. Not to mention the knight army only has one place to put OMs vs. 2 for your army. You probably wouldn't have time to set up a perfect pod on height before the knights reach you.

3. Even if you somehow managed to get all 6 squads of archers on height, the knights would still tear through them. 3 attacks of 3 against 4 defense<4-5 attacks of 3 against 2 defense.

4. As far as volley is concerned, I would be happy if you were targeting my heroes instead of my squads. Those four squads of knights could beat that army without any champions. You'd be much better off just going for the knights.

I applaud your efforts to use underplayed "bad" units in armies, but the reality of it is the Roman Archers and DWs are outclassed by better units like knights. That doesn't mean you shouldn't play them, though.