Fellow Generals. How do you get the best out of light cavalry? I always feel that they either under perform or they get used as chaff and their main role is to take the charge (and die) to allow heavier cavalry to get their first charge in safely. Maybe it’s that I lack the patience to hold them back for late game shenanigans or that I’m expecting too much from mounted shooters. It’s a shame because I love the idea of the unit and love the models I have with several more troops on the painting table
What are other people’s experiences and thoughts?
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Light cavalry don’t need to shoot every turn, some turns it is best to use your speed to get into a position that threatens enemy flanks and rear, or even better getting them set up to help with a charge. Heavy Cavalry in the front, Light Cavalry in the flank/rear will see off a lot of units. Even more so if you have a mounted Wizard to cast Bane Chant on one of the units.
Sometimes being in an opponents flank or rear is enough for them to turn to face you. If they do use your artillery to shoot them, and move the light cavalry to the enemy’s flank. Essentially they can keep enemy units that are bloodied occupied.
They did lose 6" of range on their bows, bit did gain the option to be fielded in Regiments and their Nerve values increased a bit as well.
They are also good at redeployment, if an opponent has set up to challenge them on one flank, use their speed and Nimble to move away, leaving your opponent having to re think their strategy.
In these sort of games, they are often won I. The deployment part.
Hope this helps.
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The key is to be clear about their role.
If you want a unit to take the charge for your cavalry you can probably get something cheaper to do that. Get something for that role.
Light cavalry’s role (historically) is to delay and harass.
Take light cavalry if you need to slow stuff down while you win somewhere else (which might be the next unit or the other side of the table).
The slowing down is done by threat and not engaging. If your opponent ignores light cavalry they’re getting flank or rear charged and plink damage adds up. Make not ignoring them take work (and turns) by using nimble to move out of charge arcs to threaten flanks. Your opponent has to cover those flanks instead of speeding ahead.
If you concentrate shooting it becomes significant and doing one damage is a good as the next unit to fight having brutal, but one troop’s shooting isn’t killing stuff by itself.
Finally light cavalry is invaluable in the late game. They can do that one damage to force a nerve test and are very capable of getting to objectives. Think on that before throwing them away.
Light cavalry can be chaff in a pinch, especially if you want to charge something that will expose a flank though.
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Also, check out Swordmaster’s battle reports, he uses silver breeze to good effect.
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I think KOW really splits the roles. The light cav is hard to use for anything beyond chaff, where as nimble medium cav is the thing to go flank hunting and as a back-line unit. When I was a KOM players I used lights to stop the enemy movement and sergeants as support for the knights or anti-flyer at the back
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Even Light cavalry can do some damage in combat. Against low Nerve value units (9/11 and 10/12) they only need to do a few points of damage and a average dice roll for the test will see them wavering. Which gives the Light Cavalry enough space to breath and pin another unit down. Not every mission needs enemy units to be destroyed, holding them up is just as important.
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Excellent advice folks and mostly unanimous which is unusual in the KOW community😁. I shall try it out over my next few fights and report on progress. In the meantime here’s a totally unnecessary photo of the next Troop of Mounted Scouts.
work in progress, still need to finish the base
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