Interpreting the Army Lists (Early Achaemenid Persian)

What does a VD stat of 2/3 or 1/3 mean?

Also, how are the Sparabara & Immortal units structured, ie what does the "+" thing mean in the left hand column? Does it mean the unit is half pavise and half short bow, or does it mean a large unit made up of one unit of archers and another of Pavise Bearers? Or something else?

Finally, wouldn't they have Composite Bows?

Thanks

The X/3 means its VD 3 if the general is attached to the unit.

The Sparabara/Immortals are large units made up of Pavaiases at the front with Bow to the rear but no penalty for shooting from the rear.

Just to add that the new rules around a large T unit (T+T) in AI means that the front unit is a T unit and that all calculations are taken from the front unit. The back unit feeds into the front unit. There is no need to worry about a penalty for shooting over stands.

I personally would model the front unit with two ranks of figures, the front rank being spearmen with pavise and the second rank being archers. The back unit would have two ranks of archers. This would show the unit being predominantly archers with a front veneer of spear.

Gaius Cassius wrote:Just to add that the new rules around a large T unit (T+T) in AI means that the front unit is a T unit and that all calculations are taken from the front unit. The back unit feeds into the front unit. There is no need to worry about a penalty for shooting over stands.

I personally would model the front unit with two ranks of figures, the front rank being spearmen with pavise and the second rank being archers. The back unit would have two ranks of archers. This would show the unit being predominantly archers with a front veneer of spear.

that's how I do it

Why would Sparabara be any better at overhead shooting than other types of troop?

that's what they were trained to do

Eques wrote:Why would Sparabara be any better at overhead shooting than other types of troop?

They're not

The problem is the usual deep mixed formation is a unit of spearmen with some archer support, with the spearmen in the clear majority. The Sparabara "spearmen" are rather different - basically a 10 rank unit where only the front single rank has spears (and not very long ones at that) so at least 90% of the unit is bow armed - possibly as high as 100% depending on the source. Sparabara are actually bow units with a wicker shield wall, however unlike most bow armed units they did have some ability to hold their own against Hoplites. Making them deep bows wouldnt work because in deep units the casualties come off the rear rank first - which means they suffer disproportionate losses to their firing ability. So the solution that was arrived at was to allow them to shoot from the front rank, which has the advantage of actually working