Cavalry to fragile.

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Darkman
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Cavalry to fragile.

Post by Darkman » Sun Feb 07, 2010 8:19 pm

Hi so we had one of our big games today. So approx 35 squadrons aside and about 20 Battalions. So we had loads of opportunities to test out various rules.

The one thing that came up was the fragility of Cavalry squadrons. Especially when they were in combat with Infantry. The number of times that a squadron of cavalry would charge an infantry battalion, win the combat and then fail their 50 close combat test was interesting. (point is it 50% casualties in combat or 50% casualties overall. eg They take 1 casualty from shooting and 2 in the combat, is that 50% or not)

Also if they do get an chance to charge a second time then even if they win there is a good chance that they will rout. This is because they are on -3 to test on the 50% test. once they go their chance of rallying is very slim due to now being on a -4. Their opponents on the other hand will more than likely just fall back and then rally.

A few of ideas to solve this.
1 Winners in combats never have to test.
2 Reduce the casualties that cavalry take by half. Or increase the 'size' of cavalry units.
3 Introduce a lost combat modifier.

Thoughts
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Post by barr7430 » Sun Feb 07, 2010 8:49 pm

How was the overall feel of the game Steve?
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Post by flick40 » Sun Feb 07, 2010 9:39 pm

Interesting you mention horse vs foot in your game. When there was significant pike in the ranks horse had a hard time with foot. When the pike were reduced and bayonets slowly introduced horse rode them down. Once bayonets were firmly in place horse again had a hard time with foot. Seems you could divide our period into 3 eras; early, middle and late.

What these dates separating the periods would be is up for debate. (as is this whole discussion). Barry has already split the period up with rules for when units are blade and when they are bullet. We have to realize that the period was in flux, weapons and doctrines were changing as each army tried to figure out what worked. Splitting the period would be going down that road Barry wants to avoid, complexity.

Back to squadron survivability and trying to come up with an answer within the current rules. I like no morale check for melee winner regardless of his state. The unit is in battle frenzy and only realizes they have won, not that they are the last man. (that comes later) No casualties for ties in melee. If horse one to the winner, two for foot. Added with the combining of squadrons these changes should give us the change needed without making them too tough.

If these changes don't play test themselves out as reasonable then the only other option I see is enlarging the squadron. (booo)
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Post by Darkman » Sun Feb 07, 2010 9:40 pm

Hi Barry
We found that cavalry did not tend to ride down infantry as much as they used to infact most of the time if the foot could cause a casualty on the caavalry in shooting and did not break on their morale check then the cavalry would rout on the 50% test.

Cavalry combats were over quickly due to the points mentioned. Infantry did not tend to charge into foot. All of us agreed that allowing rank firing foot to charge unshaken foot was losing the period feel to the game we did allow it but no one did it.

The +1 for units from own brigade and the +1 for defend orders tended to make infantry units unbreakable especially if the c-in-c was in range as well.

We thought that we had certain problems aside we had a good game because we had enough units to throw at our opponent to see if we could force a break through and still have a reserve. The opinion was that because cavalry was fragile small games would suffer.

The number of different results from horse morale tests was excessive and could be simplified. maybe even incorporated with the foot one. Also all the morale modifiers could be in one table. (e.g. foot morale 1 base = 1/3 casualties)

Thought was that could the firng use the same system as the combat?

We did play a few rules thtat we carried over from BLBV.1
And some of these are going to be seen as herasy :D

1 we allow cavalry to wheel in the charge and the reinforcing stage.
2 horse can interpenetrate horse as long as neither is routing. this takes account the more open order of horse when they manouver.
3 we took out the medium range as reduced long out to 8"

That is all for the moment. I have a 5 am wake up tomorrow so am going to get my head down. Luckily I might be able to put some more up in quiet points at work tomorrow. Still somethign to mull over.
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Post by Darkman » Mon Feb 08, 2010 7:54 am

Just to point out what I mean when I say increasing the size of the cavalry squadrons.

We mark off losses on record sheets.
18 boxes for foot and 6 for cavalry.

There would be no problem in increasing the number of boxes for cavalry to 12.
This way you would increase the survivability of the horse without extra factors required. The combat casualty chart would not need changing. You could still take 2 casualties for winning a combat and yet not be at a 1/3 losses. You could fight 2 rounds of combat and not have to take a test for 50% casualties.
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Post by hautpol » Mon Feb 08, 2010 11:19 am

Having tried many a squadron charge, I think the suggestions put forward by flick40 would seem about right in addressing the 'fragile' squadron issue.

I must say that I'm not altogether convinced about the need for a '50% in close combat' test in the first place. Any unit that emerges from close combat with 50% losses will struggle to pass any of the many other tests. It will then tend to gravitate towards the mass of units cowering at the back of the field which are no longer effective.
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Post by Darkman » Mon Feb 08, 2010 11:31 am

So would that mean that horse losing in a combat would take 1 casualty plus the difference and the winner 1 casualty?
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Post by Darkman » Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:43 am

Now having had time to number crunch the horse are only in BLB 2 more fragile than BLB1 due to the extra 50% morale test.
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