Byzantine Tactica

With this week's game delayed until tonight I am again spared the task of doing a battle report which I have forgotten to take half the photos for. I have however made some progress on my Knights of Lazarus using Fireforge Templar models and some rather nice transfers from Battle Flag. I have not yet completed a unit but the eight Sergeant Crossbowmen have been Quickshaded and are waiting for that to dry before being varnished. I am also trying a new basing technique using a mixture of Polyfilla, sand and acrylic paint, this has gone on pretty well but seems to be taking a while to set fully ( 4 hours and counting ).

The bases look pretty good so far and I will give them a wash and then a dry brush to add some depth. I am not sure whether to add any grass or bushes or just leave them as a plain sandy base, once I have finished the dry brushing it may be more clear cut.
I have also started on some Sergeant Spearmen and took a quick picture just to show how much the Quickshade adds with a minimal amount of skill/effort on my part.

With the Byzantines about to have their first outing I have been giving some thought to the best way to use the Battleboard.

With my list from last week in mind I would expect a standard setup for the Byzantines to be the two units of Warrior spearmen in front with the Warrior archers behind and then the Hearthguard cavalry holding one flank.
The board has two abilities you can use during the opponent's turn, Mutual Support & Common Efforts. Mutual Support can be activated with any dice if an enemy is activated with 6" of a bow armed unit. I'm not sure how useful this will be as I don't have any bow armed Hearthguard and most likely the foot archers will be hidden behind the spearmen. Common Efforts can be activated with a common dice and allows you to move 2 fatigue to another unit, this could be very useful for moving fatigue from a melee unit to a supporting archer unit.
Normally units cannot shoot through another unit so placing a ranged unit behind another unit would render them useless, with Massed Archery ( costing a common & uncommon dice ) this restriction can be ignored allowing the archers to fire safe from enemy attentions. This is quite an expensive ability but I suspect one that will be used pretty often until the battle lines close. Support Archers also allows the Byzantines to ignore LOS blocking and only costs one dice ( uncommon or rare ) but will most likely only be used when a charge is received due to the range restrictions on it. Strategikon will also mostly be used when receiving a charge so it may be that the Byzantines best tactic for the infantry is to get in bow range and then try to draw the enemy into combat rather than charging in themselves.
For the cavalry they can make use of two abilities, Kontos will allow them to hit hard as well as be activated for a movement, the cost of an uncommon and a rare does make this expensive though. Withdrawal will allow the cavalry to make a long range charge into enemy lines and then disengage 12" rather than the normal 4". This should leave them back within friendly lines and possibly mean the enemy cannot charge them before they can shed some fatigue. This would seem to be a good ability for picking off units and then getting out of Dodge.
Of course no plan survives contact with the enemy so we will see what those tricksy Normans try this evening. The Normans are also an army balanced between shooting and fighting so we may see a shooting match develop before the melee units get stuck in.