game 4

[madaxeman]

Game 4 ms ve Adam random "competition" game matchup
I used Carthaginian
(4 x 4 skirmishers, 1 x 8 spearmen, 2 x 6 Scutarii, 1 x 8 Celtiberians, 1 x 3 Elephants, 1 x 4 Gallic Cavalry, 1 x 4 Libyphonecian Cavalry, 2 x 4 Numidians, 1 x 8 Gallic Foot) I tok 1 IC and 3 Crap ones (and why not...?)
Adam used some sort of Mongol/Tartar thingy, with 2 units of very good bow armed cavalry, and 9 units of superior LH

We used the "quick setup" rules, which left no real terrain (partly as we wanted a mix of types, which then got exploited by our gamey tendencies in terrain setup to leave a fairly open field with one flank closed off)

I set out a line of foot, anchored on a wood, with the other flank protected by elephants, then the 2 units of cavalry and numidians extending the line. Adam had a screen of LH, with the 2 cav units behind.

My plan was to push forwards with the line of presumably impervious foot, and either overwhelm the LH flank, or more likley draw the enemy cavalry to fight mine, where I could support with the elephants. Adam duly wheeled his Cv over to the flank also, and skirmished across the line with the rapidly advancing (moving first) LH line.

This meant the Carthaginians were pinned back and hardly got to move with their foot, and as the massive cavalry block was wheeling faster than I expected, I pushed my Gallic Cv and Libyphonecians forwards (after a bit of shuffling around to try and expand them out towards the edge of the table), and saw the mongol LH retreat in front of me - evading a couple of charges

The Libyphonecians had gotten too far forwards however, and suffered some bad shooting outcomes, being reduced to 3 based, and ended up marooned and disordered before the Gallic cavalry or elephants could come to their rescue. They were then despatched totaly as the 12 Mongol heavy cavary opened up on them blowing them away. The flank then sort of ground to a halt (in terms of decisive moves) as the elephants tried to wheel round to get at the Mongol cavalry, who in turn wheeled past the elephants.

The real interesting bit of the game came in the centre, where my infantry were trying to push away the mongol LH, who were shooting them. Being superior drilled skirmishers, the mongols were able to do CMTs with ease to retire, and in any case, as long as they stayed more than 1 inch away they could not be caught by any of my charging foot even with a short evade and me going long, and with my 2-3 units of javelin armed skirmishers off to one side, I wasnt doing any damage to them. In return however, even with only 1 shooting dice per 2 bases, the Superior re-rolls meant most of my units (being 6's and 8's, the max unit size in the army) were at risk of a 1-H-P-3-B most turns. This was slowing my infantry advance and killing off my units gradually and meaning my generals had to keep shifting to try and fix dispordered units.

Eventually one unit (the Gallic Foot) suffered a DISR in my turn, and then another 1HP3B in Adams, and rolled badly in the Cohesion test to break - leaving a huge hole in the middle of my line and DISR/FRAGGing 2 more of my units either side of them. With this the game was effectively over, as we realised that there was no way for me to recover this situation, and certainly not to win the game as I had no way of breaking (as I couldn't catch) any of Adams LH, and was also many many many turns away from pushing any of them off table.

Questions and Comments as they arose:

1. Slopes - it isnt explicit who defines them as rough etc. Some rules woudl have it random, or even decided as you reach them. Maybe make explicit?
2. Scouting on quick setup. I know, I know its quick, but ouch!
3. Expansion by 2 elements - can it be either side of the origial formation?
4. Skirmishers Must Evade is on P15 of the 4.06 rules, but not in the 4.09 QR sheet.
And what about if they are uphill?
And what about mounted skirmishers - the "in rough" qualifiers dont seem to work for them....
5. Page 16 - Variable move - its surely 1 D6, not 2?
6. Any Advance move can include a 1 element slide. We sort of see what its for (avoiding friends, etc) but as the game developed, this became an integral cheesy-feeling element of every single move we did. For slow moving or unmaneuverable troops it was almost more valuable that what their basic movement could achieve (ie units of 3 elephants sliding towards Mongol cavalry, Mongol Cavalry sliding out of the way... )
7. Shooting with skirmishers, 1 d per 2 bases, when combined with the "you must shoot the nearest" priority. This made it realtively easy to engineer situations in which enemy units with a frontage of 4 were forced to shoot with 1 and 3 bases at the moving players 2 facing units - ie only getting a shot on one of them. I think I have said this, or similar, before, but maybe the shooter needs some more control in who elements target
8. Can shooters from different units combine their "1 per 2 bases" shooting to achieve 2 bases wirth?
And when one 1/2 is a rear rank cavalry, and another 1/2 is a solo LH skirmisher?
9. What is an "obstacle" that routers have to avoid ?
10. When it became clear my Libyphonecians were f__ked, it was the clever move to push them forwards as it got them away from 3" of any friends. Hmmmmm????
11. When does El/Cm caused diorder end? When it stops applying, or by rallying with a general?
12. 1HP3B - I assume after losses are take off?

Other stuff.
1. I lost because I was unable to inflict Cohesion tests, and Adam was. Obvious, but not too much fun - smacked of 7th edition Partly army choice/matchup/not having enough skirmishers able to shoot, but across the entire front of the battle, even what maybe should have been paltry shooting will luck out a few times each turn.
2. Unit size is a significant factor in resistance to shooting, and the Carthaginans "max of 8" seemed to make them vunerable. Even the hoplites got a pasting. Max unit size maybe needs to be thought about more in the lists for impact of this effect?
3. We felt we were starting to get the hang of the rules, and could start to think next time about how to put together armies etc with a view to winning rather than a view to "erm, I'll have some of these please as they are pretty"
4. In retrospect I didn't feel I had any real chance of pushing a moving-first LH army off the table with foot - well, certainly not before suffering enough (statistically likley/certain given the number of units involved on both sides) catastrophic cohesion and shooting results to lose the game across the line. And there was no chance of catching/breaking them at all - pushing them off table was the only possible way of inflicting casualties, so if he hadn't had the heavy cavalry, I would have had less than no chance. As above, odd matchup anyway, crap tactics, poor play, but...
5.... its going to be hard to get your head round cavalry and the like actually shooting again
6. I need bigger units for fighting, and tiny ones for padding out the army breakpoint but keeping at the back
7. 800pts isnt enough to cover the table with 2 deep average foot.
8. Pin and Punch could be good again....

It certainly looks and plays more like an ancient battle than WMA (which I have been playing a bit recently) but I'm not sure yet that its as much "fun" mostly due to the pivotal importance of Cohesion tests (you can win by causing repeated Cohesion tests rather than needing to actually kill people by fighting them) and the (admittedly realistic) "when troops are committed to a particular spot, they are definately staying there and you can't shift them around very easily" bit....things do break down into a checkerboard / firework display of "units" quickly as well (esp with variable charge moves).......I still feel a few games away from being able to work out tactics as such.

[rbodleyscott]

Thanks for the feedback Tim. I will leave Simon to answer your points in detail.

I just wanted to point out that you cannot double drop from a cohesion test when shot at. This does make a huge difference to the feasibility of shooting enemy to death, because it give a lot less chance of a sudden decline, and hence more chance of recovery by rallying.

However, you did have a bad matchup. Carthaginians are very much not the best army for fighting steppe nomads, and I suspect this would have been borne out historically if they had had to do so. I guess if you were using Carthaginians in an open tournament you would need to max out on elephants and screen them with LF.

The splitting shooting thing is intentional - as you have found shooting is plenty effective enough without making it easier to concentrate fire.

I also wondered where you found the 2d6 for Variable Move Distance - I thought we had corrected that several versions ago. I can't see anything on P.16 on any recent version. It looks to me as though you are using version 4.02.

[madaxeman]

Thanks for the feedback Tim. I will leave Simon to answer your points in detail.

I just wanted to point out that you cannot double drop from a cohesion test when shot at. This does make a huge difference to the feasibility of shooting enemy to death, because it give a lot less chance of a sudden decline, and hence more chance of recovery by rallying.

However, you did have a bad matchup. Carthaginians are very much not the best army for fighting steppe nomads, and I suspect this would have been borne out historically if they had had to do so. I guess if you were using Carthaginians in an open tournament you would need to max out on elephants and screen them with LF.

The splitting shooting thing is intentional - as you have found shooting is plenty effective enough without making it easier to concentrate fire.

I also wondered where you found the 2d6 for Variable Move Distance - I thought we had corrected that several versions ago. I can't see anything on P.16 on any recent version. It looks to me as though you are using version 4.02.

A-hah! I had actualy thought that only dropping one cohesion level from shooting would be a possible fix !

I think our printed rules were 4.04.

[rbodleyscott]

I think our printed rules were 4.04.

I think the version numbers sent out to beta-testers may be a bit out of synch with the version numbers used internally. Hopefully this will be corrected with the next update.

[plewis66]

6. I need bigger units for fighting, and tiny ones for padding out the army breakpoint but keeping at the back

That doesn't sound like a very historically accurate way of fighting battles! Personally, it's the kind of thing I'd rather do without. But like I say, that's personal preference.

About the 800 pts seeming small, I'd agree, but only from the basis of one battle so far. On the table the armies looked a bit thin. Once we've got the rules sorted, I suspect our informal games will quite quickly become 1000pts.

[madaxeman]

Oh - We are still not totally sure/satisfied with the role of generals.

They seem really to function only as " backstops ", whizzing about to shore up shakey units - which maybe is part of the reason I percieved the game to be about cohesion tests / a return to 7th this time around. Many and cheap therefore becomes the way to field them.

There is also no real sense that they are "commanding" anything at all... which in turn doesn't lead to the sensation of commands a la "Craterus commanded the right wing, and was pushing forwards, whilst Steganos' troops in the centre became bogged down....".

Accepted that you need coherent formations to advance etc, but it would be more satisfying if they could have some sort of overtly constructive role in the game mechanics rather than to function as a set of de facto WW1 style mobile field hospitals whizzing around patching up the walking wounded and sending them back to the front.

[madaxeman]

6. I need bigger units for fighting, and tiny ones for padding out the army breakpoint but keeping at the back

That doesn't sound like a very historically accurate way of fighting battles! Personally, it's the kind of thing I'd rather do without. But like I say, that's personal preference.

About the 800 pts seeming small, I'd agree, but only from the basis of one battle so far. On the table the armies looked a bit thin. Once we've got the rules sorted, I suspect our informal games will quite quickly become 1000pts.

Agreed.... But the game mechanics/Victory conditions so heavily favour this its a no-brainer in any sort of competitive game situation. I gues the victory conditions are an area that admittedly has a lot pf tightening up to do, and this may emerge as a result of Usk.

More importantly for me was the importance of maximum allowed unit size on vulnerability to shooting. 3 units of 8 hoplites would be a lot worse than 2 units of 12 - which seems odd.

[vincent]

About the 800 pts seeming small, I'd agree, but only from the basis of one battle so far. On the table the armies looked a bit thin. Once we've got the rules sorted, I suspect our informal games will quite quickly become 1000pts.

I have a different feeling. In my games with Olivier, we found out that fields surrounded by hedges and manned by troops are serious obstacles despite being only uneven terrain.
IMO, the key is in the use of terrain. The fact that the Carthaginian accepted an almost open table may have been quite instrumental in their demise. Just having a small pach of bad terrain in the middle as a pivot could have greatly help them in chasing the LH and/or creating an option to threaten the flank of the enemy heavy cavalry if these wanted to advance too quickly.
If 800 points armies were able to cover the whole table with average foot, that would mean the end of most maneuvering and that would be a terrible thing as far as I am concerned.

[plewis66]

Sounds like good reasoning. And I've only played one battle so far, so I'll retract that statement, and reserve judgement till I have more experience.

[durrati]

Thought I would add my comments on this game - some to support what Tim said, some slightly differnet view.

Quick Set Up

Not impressed by the terrain bit really seemed to be to easy to get a 'formulaic' set up. Also, 'scouting' - lowest dice score loses feels wrong - this game highlighting it - an all LH army (with a couple of cav) are as good (or bad) at scouting as an all foot army. As the dice throw is for who takes first turn deployment, perhpas call it 'first deployment', rule. Minor point I suppose but calling it 'scouting' feels wrong.

As it was the first time we did it, can not really comment how much quicker the set up was, unless it is alot quicker is it really worth putting in fast set up section at all?

Shooting

Damage from shooting (at least for cohesion) is a function of how big the target unit is along with what depth it is deployed in. The bigger and deeper (as less enemy will be able to target it ) the unit the less likely it will take the 1 hit per 3 and suffer cohesion loss, whch seems wrong. Seems that there will be worked out the optimum size / unit depth to avoid being hurt from enemy shooting.

Skirmish shooting

Just to expand on a perceived problem. Understand that it might be good to not have the shooter have to much control over targeting but the problem that this game showed up was

1. All skirmishers, everyone lined up

2266
2266
7777

7s are shooting, so 1 shot at 2, 1 shot at 6, 2 shots in all.

2. All skirmishers, 2s and six move forward with the cheese board

_2266
_2266
7777

So 3 bases of 7 shoot at 2 for 1 shot, 1 base shoot at 7 for none, so total of 1 shot.

Hope the diagram comes out. The problem is, when advancing against shooting skirmishers all you have to do is be a bit ofset to cut there shooting by 50%, which seemed wrong and far to easy to exploit.

Expansion

Where it says can expand by 2, my question is

23
67

to

2673 - no problems.

Is it possible to do?

23
67

to

6723

Particulary important when 2 units are next to each other.

Slide

Being able to slide all the time seems wrong. Understand the need for it but some of the moving became a sliding contest to get into / out of matchups.

Army Size / Unit Size

Think that it is good that an army can not fill the table - means people can not protect flanks with artificial table edge (not both of them anyhow).

Unit size rules, when looked at winning / losing rules are a worry. Army design will probably evolve unit big powerful units to fight, along with tiny units hiding at the back (pref uphill an a wooded slope) to boost army size. Just seems wrong.

Role of Generals

Just dosn't seem very generalish. 2 main things to do with them - NKVD behind the line to persuade faltering routing units to return to the fight, might as well have as many crap ones as possible. Or, if it is a vital combat - stick a general in as it is a good boost, with a chance of loseing him - so again lots of cheap ones to take loses seems a good way to go.


Breaking Units

In the game, became apparent that one of the Carthage Cav units was going to get a spanking - bad, so the sensible move was to push it forward, bring its supports back so when it broke all friends were more than 3 inches away so did not have to test. When it was routing, it went right past its friends which just ignored it as they only test on 'break'. Perhaps change the rule to 'test if broken friends within 3 MUs' or some such.

'Poor Carthage'

Would not pay to much attention to Tim feeling sorry for himself getting a pasting from skirmish shooting.

1. We missed the 'can't drop 2 levels from shooting rule' which would make a differnece.
2. The skirmishers were superior bow LH - these are not cheap. Also most of his skirmishers were tucked out of the way in the wrong place and his cav had to fight my better quality cav - not my LH were they would have been useful.
3. Carthage had a mainly non shooting foot army - so it was a crap match up. If it had been more cav heavy he would have done alot better. I can also think of some match ups that ould have been bad for the Tatars - such is the fun of tournamnet ancient play.

[rbodleyscott]

Quick Set Up

Not impressed by the terrain bit really seemed to be to easy to get a 'formulaic' set up. Also, 'scouting' - lowest dice score loses feels wrong - this game highlighting it - an all LH army (with a couple of cav) are as good (or bad) at scouting as an all foot army. As the dice throw is for who takes first turn deployment, perhpas call it 'first deployment', rule. Minor point I suppose but calling it 'scouting' feels wrong.

As it was the first time we did it, can not really comment how much quicker the set up was, unless it is alot quicker is it really worth putting in fast set up section at all?

Perhaps the problem lies in it being called "Quick set-up" - it isn't meant to be quicker to perform, it is meant to be quicker to understand for beginners. It is not meant for experienced wargamers, who should use the full set-up.

Naturally it has flaws which are easy to exploit by experienced players - but it isn't meant for them. It is just for beginners so they can get some troops on the table and start playing.

Perhaps we need to call it something different, but I think it would be a mistake to call it "Simple Set-Up for Dummies" - which is why we called it "Quick Set-Up".

Any suggestions for something else to call it?

Shooting

Damage from shooting (at least for cohesion) is a function of how big the target unit is along with what depth it is deployed in. The bigger and deeper (as less enemy will be able to target it ) the unit the less likely it will take the 1 hit per 3 and suffer cohesion loss, whch seems wrong. Seems that there will be worked out the optimum size / unit depth to avoid being hurt from enemy shooting.

Depth does make a difference (as long as it is not more than 3 ranks) but overall size only makes a difference if the battle groups are not in a solid line. That is the reason for the very stringent target priority rules, so that solid lines of BGs can avoid being picked on.

Skirmish shooting

Just to expand on a perceived problem. Understand that it might be good to not have the shooter have to much control over targeting but the problem that this game showed up was

1. All skirmishers, everyone lined up

2266
2266
7777

7s are shooting, so 1 shot at 2, 1 shot at 6, 2 shots in all.

2. All skirmishers, 2s and six move forward with the cheese board

_2266
_2266
7777

So 3 bases of 7 shoot at 2 for 1 shot, 1 base shoot at 7 for none, so total of 1 shot.

If you want to have any effect, you need to use skirmishers 2 ranks deep. If they were 2 ranks deep in your examples, the first example would have 2 dice on each, the second would have 3 on one and 1 on the other.

Either side can manipulate the situation to this extent (but only because they are not facing a solid line of enemy). You have prevented the chance of a CT on one of your BGs but increased the chance of a CT on the other. You have also introduced the (small) chance of a base loss on one of your BGs, when there was no chance before. With the even split, you have a (lower) chance of inflicting 1HP3 on one unit, but have a chance of getting 1 HP3 on both. The overall chance of causing 1 cohesion test is similar - (or the same - I am not quite sure of the probability calculation for the 3 dice to score 2 hits). It is a trade-off - I don't see how it amounts to cheese. Overall, I would say that the position the targets have forced in fact favours the shooters.

Expansion

Where it says can expand by 2, my question is

23
67

to

2673 - no problems.

Is it possible to do?

23
67

to

6723

Particulary important when 2 units are next to each other.

This needs to be covered by a diagram, but the intention is yes if you mean 2367, no if you mean 6723. (ie. the existing front rank should not move, but you can expand 2 bases on one side).

Slide

Being able to slide all the time seems wrong. Understand the need for it but some of the moving became a sliding contest to get into / out of matchups.

This needs to be considered. What do others think?

Army Size / Unit Size

Think that it is good that an army can not fill the table - means people can not protect flanks with artificial table edge (not both of them anyhow).

Unit size rules, when looked at winning / losing rules are a worry. Army design will probably evolve unit big powerful units to fight, along with tiny units hiding at the back (pref uphill an a wooded slope) to boost army size. Just seems wrong.

We are trying to keep the defeat conditions as simple as possible. The availability of small cheap units is limited in army lists. We have not yet decided whether a more complex system is required.

One option open to us is not to have complex tournament defeat conditions in the rule book, but to have a tournament web page listing additional rules for tournaments if these are thought necessary.

Our feeling is that this sort of stuff is not needed for the average punter, and may be off-putting for new entrants to the hobby.

Role of Generals

Just dosn't seem very generalish. 2 main things to do with them - NKVD behind the line to persuade faltering routing units to return to the fight, might as well have as many crap ones as possible. Or, if it is a vital combat - stick a general in as it is a good boost, with a chance of loseing him - so again lots of cheap ones to take loses seems a good way to go.

Well I guess you either like this concept or you don't.

Breaking Units

In the game, became apparent that one of the Carthage Cav units was going to get a spanking - bad, so the sensible move was to push it forward, bring its supports back so when it broke all friends were more than 3 inches away so did not have to test. When it was routing, it went right past its friends which just ignored it as they only test on 'break'. Perhaps change the rule to 'test if broken friends within 3 MUs' or some such.

Yes, we don't like the artificiality of moving units out of rout range, but it is hard to see how to avoid it. We originally had in the rules what you propose, but changed it to "on break" to reduce the number of tests, and to make rear supports work as advertised in the Strategikon. Anyway making it "seeing rout within 3MUs" doesn't in fact solve the problem of troops moving out of the "rout seeing" zone, it just increases the size of the zone.

[jdm]

Richard the version nos are not out of sync between testers and us

Regards
JDM

[durrati]

Quick Set Up


Perhaps we need to call it something different, but I think it would be a mistake to call it "Simple Set-Up for Dummies" - which is why we called it "Quick Set-Up".

Any suggestions for something else to call it?

Ah I see, was quickly reading them to get the set up done. Have now gone back and read the section properly and this is explained in the intro to it. Note to self, read section fully and properly before commenting........



Depth does make a difference (as long as it is not more than 3 ranks) but overall size only makes a difference if the battle groups are not in a solid line. That is the reason for the very stringent target priority rules, so that solid lines of BGs can avoid being picked on.

Yes, all this follows. Keep a solid line and you should be safe enough, fair enough I soppose.


If you want to have any effect, you need to use skirmishers 2 ranks deep. If they were 2 ranks deep in your examples, the first example would have 2 dice on each, the second would have 3 on one and 1 on the other.

Again makes sense - I deployed mainly in a single rank and after the first couple of turns tried to get everyone into 2 ranks. SO, problems with my deployment rather than the rules. Ah, the rules may change but I stay the same..........




We are trying to keep the defeat conditions as simple as possible. The availability of small cheap units is limited in army lists. We have not yet decided whether a more complex system is required.

This may be as you say be an army list problem, as long as you can only buy cheap troops in large units should not be to much of a problem. Will need the lists to be tightly edited though or you may end up with a few lists slipping through that have a decent amount of small cheap units which will be unbalancing and leading them to be unwarrented tigers.

Role of Generals


Well I guess you either like this concept or you don't.

Indeed. For me though it feels wrong - general jumping from one disordered unit to the next. How about as a suggestion, the general does not have to be with the unit it just has to be within command radius and he can try and rally one unit a turn. Which would mean that he does not have to go rushing around so much and also give Inspired commanders a big advantage over TCs as they can rally units at a longer range. At the moment ICs just do not seem that much better than TCs.

Breaking Units


Yes, we don't like the artificiality of moving units out of rout range, but it is hard to see how to avoid it. We originally had in the rules what you propose, but changed it to "on break" to reduce the number of tests, and to make rear supports work as advertised in the Strategikon. Anyway making it "seeing rout within 3MUs" doesn't in fact solve the problem of troops moving out of the "rout seeing" zone, it just increases the size of the zone.

Yes, fair point. I suppose if your opponent is puting units in a position where there are more than 3 MUs of any support on anything like a regular basis means he is going to lose anyhow, so perhaps not so much of a problem.

[rbodleyscott]

Role of Generals

Well I guess you either like this concept or you don't.

Indeed. For me though it feels wrong - general jumping from one disordered unit to the next. How about as a suggestion, the general does not have to be with the unit it just has to be within command radius and he can try and rally one unit a turn. Which would mean that he does not have to go rushing around so much and also give Inspired commanders a big advantage over TCs as they can rally units at a longer range. At the moment ICs just do not seem that much better than TCs.

Yes, that would be an alternative possibility. However, my impression is that Caesar, Sulla and other Roman generals (for example) really did ride over to wavering units to bolster their morale. (I could cite you examples from the sources if it wasn't past my bed-time.) This seems eminently reasonable to me - Sending a messenger, blowing a trumpet, or waving a standard from a safe distance seem unlikely to be very morale boosting.

OK, here is a quote from Appian, about the Battle of Orchomenus (Pontics vs Romans):

"The Romans fought badly because they were in terror of the enemy's cavalry. Sulla rode hither and thither a long time, encouraging and threatening his men. Failing to rally them even in this way, he leaped from his horse, seized a standard, ran out between the two armies with his shield-bearers, exclaiming, "If you are ever asked, Romans, where you abandoned Sulla, your own general, say that it was when he was fighting at the Battle of Orchomenus." When the officers saw his peril they darted from their own ranks to his aid, and the troops, moved by a sense of shame, followed and drove the enemy back in their turn. This was the beginning of the victory. Sulla again leaped upon his horse and rode amongst his troops, praising them and encouraging them until the victory was complete."

Need I say more?

(and of course, ICs get an extra +1 on the cohesion test to rally. In practice this makes a huge difference as the CT system seems to be very finely balanced)

[plewis66]

I think there are two aspects to that quote.

The first is that he was riding hither and thither - the mechanism employed in AoW, but the other is that, this having failed he seems to have managed to inspire the entire army in one go without being close to any single unit, which is the suggested mechanism.

Maybe you could do something like, 'Once per game, an IC can attempt to rally all BG's within his command radius', representing the kind of last-ditch effort demonstrated here by Sulla.

[rbodleyscott]

I think there are two aspects to that quote.

The first is that he was riding hither and thither - the mechanism employed in AoW, but the other is that, this having failed he seems to have managed to inspire the entire army in one go without being close to any single unit, which is the suggested mechanism.

Maybe you could do something like, 'Once per game, an IC can attempt to rally all BG's within his command radius', representing the kind of last-ditch effort demonstrated here by Sulla.

Interesting idea, but it only worked because he put himself at risk, so there would have to be an element of risk to the IC.

[plewis66]

Possibly then something like:

'Once per game, an IC in front line combat can attempt to rally all friendly BG's within his command radius, but if he does so, he fails his death roll on a 10 in that turn.'

[donm]

There is also no real sense that they are "commanding" anything at all... which in turn doesn't lead to the sensation of commands a la "Craterus commanded the right wing, and was pushing forwards, whilst Steganos' troops in the centre became bogged down....".

One possibility is to only allow troops to move/charge/etc when they are in the control distance of a general. If outside this they should pass a CMT to perform a limited number of actions. This may also go some way to solve my on going problem with Allied troops.

Don M

[donm]

Unit size rules, when looked at winning / losing rules are a worry. Army design will probably evolve unit big powerful units to fight, along with tiny units hiding at the back (pref uphill an a wooded slope) to boost army size. Just seems wrong.

If you only have powerful units to fight. what role do you propose for the supporting troops that are compulsory in many armies?

What about hordes, they certainly have no major combat role?

Don M

[donm]

'Once per game, an IC in front line combat can attempt to rally all friendly BG's within his command radius, but if he does so, he fails his death roll on a 10 in that turn.'

Having spent half an hour yesterday reading the so called finished set of DBMM, this looks very DBMM ish.

Something that I think should be avoided at ALL COSTS.

Don M