POLL: Do You Maintain A Reserve?

It depends on what rules I'm playing.

When playing my Warmaster High Elves, I always hold back my heavy cavalry, chariots, and flyers, and engage with the infantry first. Essentially, each type other than infantry is a reserve, chariots and flyers are usually committed last, because they hit hard, but are fragile. I always love playing Chaos players, something about their mentality leads every one that I've ever played to charge in as fast as they can with their mounted & monsters, leaving the slower infantry behind. Its frequently possible to then defeat them piecemeal.

When playing DBA, I try to keep a single mobile element as a reserve, ideally Cavalry or Light Horse. But its a close reserve, often attached to a group that is moving into combat. Movement rates and the pip rule in DBA are such that if a reserve is too far away, its likely to be too late, especially if you start to run short of pips, which is a near certainty once combat starts! As a result, I'm often more focused on using a spare element to turn a flank, rather than keeping it back as a reserve. (Alexander always tried to break or turn one flank, in most games, you are well-advised to emulate him.)

All things being equal, a reserve is probably more useful with rules that keep track of attrition, morale, and exhaustion. Warmaster actually does this in an abstract sense, because as units lose stands, they not only become less effective in combat, they also become more difficult to issue orders to. Furthermore, because your breakpoint is based on units that are totally eliminated, Warmaster rewards you if you retreat units that are worn down out of harm's way. My much beloved DBA, I must admit, lacks such features.