Hi Barry,
answers in the text...
barr7430 wrote:Dear Burkhard,
hope the text below is useful. Remember, in a wargame you just can't stop something you don't want to happen because it is not what you thought would happen! S H I T does happen!
1. When you catch infantry in line with cavalry, why do you not get a positve modificator? I know you get a negative if they are in square, but this seemed a little weak to us!
Well, a lot of things may have gone on before the contact such as: Cavalry failing to charge and being shot to pieces
Cavalry charging and not contacting/routing because of the STAND & FIRE result
Infantry forming square
Infantry going WAVER and then getting creamed in the combat on 1/2 dice
Infantry going into RETREAT or ROUTING and getting obliterated.
Sometimes in games when we don't get EXACTLY the output we want we question the mechanisms. If you look at all of the above potential outcomes and realise that sometimes the Lads just stand, fight back and win.. that makes the notable cases in history. I think maybe you chaps just got excited and wanted the cavalry to be better!
Well we were just wondering if we had made a mistake. After all none of the above had happened. Well the infantry routed and got obliberated, but none of the negative effects for the cavalry happened. So the cavalry did real well.
We just wondered if we had missed something since we were expecting a possitive modifier for catching infantry in line. Since we are still learning the rules we wanted to make sure that no mistakes become a habit.
2. Is there no option for cavalry (or infantry) to voluntary break from close combat if they initiated it? I mean, if a unit commander finds that his attack is not going anywhere and his unit is being annihilated, would he not try to rally his troops and extract them from thr situation?
I think you need to go back and read that section a little more carefully. Such outcomes do happen in a win-lose situation where the loser score is 3... not too bad.. they disengage.
Have you ever tried to attract someone's attention from 10 metres distance in a football or sports crowd? How easy is that? Officers have little or no control once men are fighting for their lives
, we become animals trying to survive and are not inclined to listen to some idiot trying to attract our attention whilst a huge Frenchman is trying to slice off our arms with a 1 metre sabre... it is all about probabilities and realism and not what we want to do because we are not winning the game!
Not exactly the same, but I have always been able to yell loud enough for my men to hear, even with explosions going off around us!
But if I get you right... we missed nothing and there is no way to volutary break off close combat, right?
3. The cavalry was still stronger and wider then the infantry after the first round of combat. Is there an option to draw the other BG's into the combat, too?
Sorry. don't understand BG could you explain please. There are rules for reinforceing a drawn combat under CLOSE COMBAT
Sorry meant Combat Group, not battle group.
Do you have a page number for "reinforceing a drawn combat under CLOSE COMBAT"... looking it up again, I can not find it.
Maybe I did not explain the situation well enough. This is the situation after the first round of close combat:
InInInInInInXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXCaCaCaCaCaCaCaCa
In = Infantry Combat Group
Ca = Cavalry Combat Group
X = Open Space
What I was refering to the Cavalry Combat Groups shuffeling to the left and/or the Infantry Combat groups shuffeling to the right, to get more combat groups into close combat. As mentioned before we kept our units positioned as per the diagram above for 9 or 10 rounds of close combat which seemed kind of strange to us. I know there is no fixed amount of time for close combat, but we were wondering if 7/8 of the cavalry and 5/6 of the infantry would just stand there and watch a fraction of their unit slashing away.
THX,
Burkhard
P.S.: Again this is not meant as criticism for the rules... we just want to make sure we do things right!!!