Some great tips. I use control groups much like Tosa describes, and it helps a lot. For next week I will be customizing my control buttons. I've been using the stock ones and they're not really handy for this lefty.

Practice games (not just battles, but practicing manuevers with another on the battlefield) can work wonders. if you're interested and ever have the time, I would enjoy doing this. I need the practice too, and can usually meet in the evenings on weeknights after 7 PM EST. I can show you the kinds of things I do, and you could show me what you do. Maybe George would join us (he said he is planning to next weekend, yay!). Sometimes Yuuki is around, maybe he might join us occasionally. I used to do this all the time with new 47 Ronin. It accelerated their learning curve from beginner to intermediate dramatically. For us though, going from intermediate to advanced takes more time, and of course, practice, practice, practice. Maybe we will discover new tricks.

As Yuuki says, match-ups are so important in SW--more so than in the other TW games because it's well-balanced and we don't upgrade. Also crucial are use of terrain, getting a good charge in with cav, supporting units with others for morale--particularly when in the midst of a lot of enemies. Timing attacks with the coming and going of rain can work wonders--particularly against their cav if they don't have many and you have more, and against their pesky archers and CA who tend to come out of hiding when it rains.

I realize how hard the reserves concept can be. I am still playing en masse, using my whole army as one much of the time. From the standpoint of using morale as a weapon, this can be good, but when you commit, you commit! If you commit in error ... well you know how that goes, lol. I will be trying a more divided approach as I get used to SamWars, to see if I like it better. Really though, it's all about the right approach under a particular set of circumstances.