Richard
A single horse squadron is brittle and very much a one trick pony. Look to page 44 of the rules as an example of two different ways you can move horse around the table. The unit on the left is the one I would use as you have the option of peeling off a squadron in a charge or if really needed you can use the 'all or nothing' charge. You also have another squadron at the ready to reinforce the melee. The formation on the right I would reserve for Elite or Guard.
the infantry lost, but came out shaken from the morale test
Question, what are the morale grades of the troops involved? Reason I ask, if Raw the troops break after loosing one bound of melee, drilled two, elite three and guard four.
the cavalry are disordered (and lose half their possible melee dice) whilst the infantry lose half of theirs for the disorder, and half again for the shaken, with a proviso that they will always roll one 'free' dice
You are correct. Everyone is disordered after the first bound. I too play AoR and always hated doing the math for pips in melee.
if a cavalry unit fails to break any opposing one in the first melee round, it immediately falls back either to rally or let a fresh unit take over.
Horse can break off from melee but it is a morale check result that allows them to do so. Melee if fought until there is a winner. In BLB adding another sqdn to the melee gives horse the continued advantage in melee.
dice rolled by cavalry in the second round seems to go down quite dramatically
Horse are a shock troop, if they fail in the initial charge to break the enemy its just slug fest.
Does anybody have a houserule that such unsuccessful cavalry rallies back to allow a second (or third) squadron to attempt to charge home if it fulfills the criteria for joining an existing melee?
Rally back is an option in the rules to get your horse out of a bad position. Once in melee its a fight to survive. I refer you to my comments on top and page 44 in best how to have supporting squadrons at the ready to reinforce a melee.
Lets look on page 40 as the example of your situation. We will say you charged the the front squadron in the hopes of breaking the foot and holding your second squadron in reserve to exploit the victory. The dice gods not being favorable the melee was won but the foot are drilled so though lost the initial melee are still slugging it out for another bound. You then can commit the second squadron to the fight. They are in formation and range to charge, pass their morale and go in.
So now your dice are; 1 D6 for the principle squadron +2 D6 won previous bound, +2 D6 reinforced by one unit, = 5 D6 - 1/2 disordered = 2.5 rounded up = 3 D6
The foot have 3 D6 base - 1/2 disordered = 1.5 rounded up = 2 - 1/2 shaken = 1 D6
3 D6 to 1 D6. If you win this bound of melee the foot will rout automatically (as I have assumed they are drilled). If the dice gods frown again and its a tie, well then it gets a little dicey in the next bound of melee as you don't have a third squadron to reinforce. But it's a gamble isn't it? And part of the fun. You can expect to win, but will you?
Hope this helps clear it up a little bit.
Joe