Evolution of English armies in the late Middle Ages

[Imperial Dave]

Reads back....ah yes

Much obliged.

 

[Erpingham]

One advantage of a ruleset for a tighter period e.g. WotR is you can more easily focus on a defined type and write a rule for it. So you can say "This is the rule for bow/bill units" if you want to include same. If you have a wide ranging set, you need a consistency of approach e.g. between different types of mixed archer/melee infantry.

[Nick Harbud]

Yeah, but even with such rulesets (of which DBx is a well-known genre) one can run into problems.  Typical examples in DBR include the troop grade classifications (Inferior/Ordinary/Superior) that has to cover both hand-to-hand combat effectiveness and missile weapon proficiency.  Therefore, when one comes across Muscovite Streltsi who, on the basis of their fearsome berdisch axe, are classed as Shot Superior despite having an arquebus that in every other contemporaneous army would make them Shot Inferior.