Well, it’s official. After totally eschewing the use of gunpowder and playing Early era only (for my first couple of years of play) I’ve become a total gunpowder freak. I can’t get enough of Arquebusiers, Serpentines, and Organ guns. There’s nothing more satisfying to me now than seeing a well-organised advancing army disintegrate in the face of a barrage of lead and bolts. Enemy armour is reduced to a moot point (and there is LOTS of armour in Late).

Here’s my current standard Hungarian Late era defensive army (on any terrain with slopes):

2 x Arquebusiers
2 x Serpentines
2 x Organ guns
3 x Pavise arbelesters.
2 x Halberdiers
1 x Jobbagy
2 x Royal Knights (sometimes dismounted)
2 x Szekely

I mix and match these according to the enemy’s army composition but, as you can see, there are very few “footsloggers”. It’s very missile-heavy, with 3 increasingly deadly stages of missile attack that advancing armies have to weather before they engage with my Halbs and/or dismounted Royals:

1. Serpentines (from relatively close range) and pavise arbalelesters (as soon as the icon is green). – These will pretty much ignore almost all armour and delaying cannon fire until “close” range means that the Serps can score more hits. If it is a very steep slope, I start the Serps at long range due to the blind spot at close range. If the General is stupid enough to advance fron-on, he gets the exclusive, withering attention of the pavise arbalesters.

2. Arquebusiers (start firing from mid-range) and Szekely harrassing flanks (at long range) – the arquebusiers, again, will ignore most armour except maybe for Pavises. At high valour, and in two ranks, they can wipe out half a unit in one volley. They are also used to shoot routing units in the ar$e. The Szekely are mainly for disruption purposes, rather than pure damage. Basically just to draw assault units out of formation to buy time for the missile units to keep shooting. You do NOT want an assault force taking on a missile-heavy army without being heavily depleted first.

3. Jobbagy javelins (as soon as the icon is green) and Organ Gun (obviously, as soon as the icon is green) – These two are the icing on the cake. They penetrate armour like cheese and, with a decent general, cause massive casualties. The organ gun is focused on assault infantry (due to poor loading time), and the Jobbagy concentrate on heavy cavalry.

Anyway, just wanted to share. I had so much fun with variations of this army last night, as 3 massive Crusader armies attempted to make their way through to Asia Minor and were refused passage. The casualty ratio was almost shameful (circa 20:1). I couldn't afford to let them through, due to Hungary's really high zeal. They would have stripped my armies to the bone!!