A Roundup of Thoughts and Observations (long)

[bddbrown]

I've had a little layoff from FoG since Leeds and recently come back to it. I had a chance to read through the new rules and peruse the army lists again with a view to BritCon. While reading a few thoughts occured to me about game balance and why i was considering some troop types and not others. I think the rules are working well, so well we seem to be understanding them without the need for diagrams, but here are a few areas that I think still need looking at.


Crossbowmen
Just played Richard Collins last week with 4 BGs of MF crossbowmen. My take on them would be that at the same points cost as Bow I would always want to take Bow given the choice. I think the Crossbowmen need to either be reduced by one point or made slightly more effective against foot.


Lancers (non-Knightly)
We don't seem to be seeing many non-knightly lancers on the table. Ok, a few companions and maybe a compulsory LH unit. I have definitely have not seen any unarmoured cavalry lancers. I think the cost of lancers should be reduced by a point to encourage more of them. However I think Heavily Armoured Knights are fine, so to compensate I would increase their cost by 1. Given that cavalry lancers are a good counter to bow armed cavalry, I would like to see a few more of them on the table to help counter the continued domination of bow armed cavalry armies.

This would also encourage players to take Armoured Knights and Cataphracts - again something I have not seen before.


Cataphracts
There do not seem to be any Cataphracts around these days. The move to 2 deep has I think basically made them too expensive. Reducing the cost of lancers would help, but I would consider reducing them by another point as well. Again this would help bring more balance to the armies seen on the table.


Superiors
It still seems to me that superiors are good value for money. I think we need to increase the cost across the board by another point (or in some way make them less powerful but I honesty cannot see this happening!). I still always want superior troops if I can get them.


Breaking Off
Richard and I had a strange situation in our last game where my knights were better off in melee than at impact, but had to break-off! This seems broken on two counts. The knights (and most mounted) should be better off at impact against foot and would therefore want to break-off so they can charge again - or breaking off should be a choice. Or both.


Flank Marches
This is the only place where you have to write down something at deployment. I would like to see the use of ambush markers to represent flank marches. That way there is no writing at all at deployment. The ambush mechanism works well and I think will work well for flank marches. It also gives the opportunity to put down a "fake" flank march. I would roll for this as normal and when it comes on reveal the troops coming on - either real or fake.


Death Roll
I think the current wording/process for Death Rolls could be improved. At the moment if you have Elephants taking 7 hits from a losing combat, the process as written means rolling two dice when none are required.

Current wording:
DEATH ROLL
Roll 1 dice for the battle group. (No re-rolls).
* Add +1 to the dice score if elephants, artillery or battle wagons.
* Add +2 to the dice score if the hits suffered were from shooting or the battle group won/drew a close combat.
If the score does not exceed the number of hits, remove a base.
If a base was removed, and there were more than 6 hits, deduct 6 from the hits and roll again for the remainder. (Use the same modifiers).

Proposed wording:
DEATH ROLL
The number of hits is modified by:
* Remove 1 hit if elephants, artillery or battle wagons.
* Remove 2 hits if the hits suffered were from shooting or the battle group won/drew a close combat.
If the number of hits exceeds 6, remove a base and reduce the number of hits by 6. Repeat this until there are less than 6 hits.
If there are any hits remaining, roll a dice. If the score does not exceed the number of hits, remove a base.
This wording I think just reflects the way people are playing it at the moment anyway. If a BG receives 6 hits from a lost combat, no one bothers to roll a dice. In all other circumstances only a single dice roll is made.

[olivier]

Crossbowmen
Just played Richard Collins last week with 4 BGs of MF crossbowmen. My take on them would be that at the same points cost as Bow I would always want to take Bow given the choice. I think the Crossbowmen need to either be reduced by one point or made slightly more effective against foot.

I agree with you, Crossbowmen are trashed by any other shooter . Poor genoese mercenaries.

Lancers (non-Knightly)
We don't seem to be seeing many non-knightly lancers on the table. Ok, a few companions and maybe a compulsory LH unit. I have definitely have not seen any unarmoured cavalry lancers. I think the cost of lancers should be reduced by a point to encourage more of them. However I think Heavily Armoured Knights are fine, so to compensate I would increase their cost by 1. Given that cavalry lancers are a good counter to bow armed cavalry, I would like to see a few more of them on the table to help counter the continued domination of bow armed cavalry armies.

When I can take them in a list I always do it. They are great for bullying missile mounted or protect flank of knight ( in case of Sergeant). I think they are not underevaluated.

Flank Marches
This is the only place where you have to write down something at deployment. I would like to see the use of ambush markers to represent flank marches. That way there is no writing at all at deployment. The ambush mechanism works well and I think will work well for flank marches. It also gives the opportunity to put down a "fake" flank march. I would roll for this as normal and when it comes on reveal the troops coming on - either real or fake.

Elegant solution I like it very much!

Olivier

[dvorkin]

Breaking Off
Richard and I had a strange situation in our last game where my knights were better off in melee than at impact, but had to break-off! This seems broken on two counts. The knights (and most mounted) should be better off at impact against foot and would therefore want to break-off so they can charge again - or breaking off should be a choice. Or both.

I would proposed that mounted have to pass CMT if they want to stay in melee.

[jfnavarro]

Flank Marches
This is the only place where you have to write down something at deployment. I would like to see the use of ambush markers to represent flank marches. That way there is no writing at all at deployment. The ambush mechanism works well and I think will work well for flank marches. It also gives the opportunity to put down a "fake" flank march. I would roll for this as normal and when it comes on reveal the troops coming on - either real or fake.

I remind you that jre wrote down about this subjet on november 13, after one of our initial games :

Finally, rather than using an extra sheet just to note possible flank marches, we consider the same base system used for Ambushes could be used to note flank marches, adding a "counter" rather than an external sheet.

Shall wrote :
An interesting idea thanks. We'll mull that one over.

Nobody make any more comments about our proposal.

J.F. Navarro

[olivier]

PostPosted: 08 Jul 2007 16:34 Post subject:
Flank Marches
This is the only place where you have to write down something at deployment. I would like to see the use of ambush markers to represent flank marches. That way there is no writing at all at deployment. The ambush mechanism works well and I think will work well for flank marches. It also gives the opportunity to put down a "fake" flank march. I would roll for this as normal and when it comes on reveal the troops coming on - either real or fake.


I remind you that jre wrote down about this subjet on november 13, after one of our initial games :

Finally, rather than using an extra sheet just to note possible flank marches, we consider the same base system used for Ambushes could be used to note flank marches, adding a "counter" rather than an external sheet.

Shall wrote :
An interesting idea thanks. We'll mull that one over.



Nobody make any more comments about our proposal.

I dont see this post .
Neverless, it' s always a good idea!

[shall]

Great detailed feedback as ever thanks.........in Almohad country on an arabic keyboard so bear with me...........checking out locations for the Fog of War movie!!!!

Crossbowmen
Just played Richard Collins last week with 4 BGs of MF crossbowmen. My take on them would be that at the same points cost as Bow I would always want to take Bow given the choice. I think the Crossbowmen need to either be reduced by one point or made slightly more effective against foot.

They are a bit weak in head to head but we are assured they are supposed to be. A medieveal army gets its HArm tough guys and its Xbows are there to deal with such types but are rather vulnerable to nomal bows. Is this not a resonable balance voerall - we risk making medievams a bit too good if we imporve them perhaps. So you would rather hav XBw if you know you are fighting heavily armoured opponents perhaps?

Lancers (non-Knightly)
We don't seem to be seeing many non-knightly lancers on the table. Ok, a few companions and maybe a compulsory LH unit. I have definitely have not seen any unarmoured cavalry lancers. I think the cost of lancers should be reduced by a point to encourage more of them. However I think Heavily Armoured Knights are fine, so to compensate I would increase their cost by 1. Given that cavalry lancers are a good counter to bow armed cavalry, I would like to see a few more of them on the table to help counter the continued domination of bow armed cavalry armies.

We have seen a fair few lancer units out there - Terry put the unarmoured lancer cavalary to good use against me once. Not averse to dropping the, a point if the consensus is that it need it. But I suspect it ,ay need launch and real zworld testing over a year or two to refine the details of the points to that degree.

Cataphracts
There do not seem to be any Cataphracts around these days. The move to 2 deep has I think basically made them too expensive. Reducing the cost of lancers would help, but I would consider reducing them by another point as well. Again this would help bring more balance to the armies seen on the table.

I found 18 done in 6s for Parthians to be rather good.

Superiors
It still seems to me that superiors are good value for money. I think we need to increase the cost across the board by another point (or in some way make them less powerful but I honesty cannot see this happening!). I still always want superior troops if I can get them.

12s of average MF warband with a general give superiors a bit of a headache for the points. I am also starting to find poor troops ion decent sized blocks to be useful. I do think one trend is that one changes one view as one learns more. In the early days , before mastering tactics and alnovure, one gets more head on fights where sup is a vaey big + it is only after lots of games you find out how to make full use of larger quantities of pôor troops. I find the balance pretty good qt present but only time will tell.

Breaking Off
Richard and I had a strange situation in our last game where my knights were better off in melee than at impact, but had to break-off! This seems broken on two counts. The knights (and most mounted) should be better off at impact against foot and would therefore want to break-off so they can charge again - or breaking off should be a choice. Or both.

Can I re-express......they are safer in melee but more dangerous at impact. If they win an impact round they get a -1 on opposing CTs and then get a Melee chance to sweep all before them IN THE SAME turn. Hence they would go away and try to realise their real Mission of a big burst through.

Flank Marches
This is the only place where you have to write down something at deployment. I would like to see the use of ambush markers to represent flank marches. That way there is no writing at all at deployment. The ambush mechanism works well and I think will work well for flank marches. It also gives the opportunity to put down a "fake" flank march. I would roll for this as normal and when it comes on reveal the troops coming on - either real or fake.

Yes I liked this idea and after a brief chat amongst the writers we forgot it We didn't settle on inlcuidn git quickly qn i forget why. I will come bqck when hopme next week.

Death Roll
I think the current wording/process for Death Rolls could be improved. At the moment if you have Elephants taking 7 hits from a losing combat, the process as written means rolling two dice when none are required.

Current wording:
DEATH ROLL
Roll 1 dice for the battle group. (No re-rolls).
* Add +1 to the dice score if elephants, artillery or battle wagons.
* Add +2 to the dice score if the hits suffered were from shooting or the battle group won/drew a close combat.
If the score does not exceed the number of hits, remove a base.
If a base was removed, and there were more than 6 hits, deduct 6 from the hits and roll again for the remainder. (Use the same modifiers).

Proposed wording:
DEATH ROLL
The number of hits is modified by:
* Remove 1 hit if elephants, artillery or battle wagons.
* Remove 2 hits if the hits suffered were from shooting or the battle group won/drew a close combat.
If the number of hits exceeds 6, remove a base and reduce the number of hits by 6. Repeat this until there are less than 6 hits.
If there are any hits remaining, roll a dice. If the score does not exceed the number of hits, remove a base.
This wording I think just reflects the way people are playing it at the moment anyway. If a BG receives 6 hits from a lost combat, no one bothers to roll a dice. In all other circumstances only a single dice roll is made.

I see what you mean but actuqlly you have just changed the rules.

Lets say the elephants lost 7 from SHOOTING. What you do is roll a dice and add 3. So you get a 5 becoming 8 and don't loose a base from this. You then have a carryover of 2 but do not need to roll as you didn't lose a base from the first roll. So no losses even though 7 hits this way - not & off automatically and then residuals.

In combat there is no need to roll the first dice qs you cqnnot beqt q è qnd no need to roll thre second nd qs you cqn't fqil to get 2. So if 8 hits you would not rooll the first qnd lose qnother bse on a 1 on the second roll.

With the current wording ze are expceting people to only roll dice when there is qny potentiql loss. Perhqps we should say so.

Good to have you back

Si

[bddbrown]

Great detailed feedback as ever thanks.........in Almohad country on an arabic keyboard so bear with me...........checking out locations for the Fog of War movie!!!!

Sounds like fun!

Crossbowmen
Just played Richard Collins last week with 4 BGs of MF crossbowmen. My take on them would be that at the same points cost as Bow I would always want to take Bow given the choice. I think the Crossbowmen need to either be reduced by one point or made slightly more effective against foot.

They are a bit weak in head to head but we are assured they are supposed to be. A medieveal army gets its HArm tough guys and its Xbows are there to deal with such types but are rather vulnerable to nomal bows. Is this not a resonable balance voerall - we risk making medievams a bit too good if we imporve them perhaps. So you would rather hav XBw if you know you are fighting heavily armoured opponents perhaps?

I agree with what you are saying. However the points system is supposed to bring balance to the troop types. Crossbowmen just seem a little too weak to be classed as the same points as Bowmen.

Lancers (non-Knightly)
We don't seem to be seeing many non-knightly lancers on the table. Ok, a few companions and maybe a compulsory LH unit. I have definitely have not seen any unarmoured cavalry lancers. I think the cost of lancers should be reduced by a point to encourage more of them. However I think Heavily Armoured Knights are fine, so to compensate I would increase their cost by 1. Given that cavalry lancers are a good counter to bow armed cavalry, I would like to see a few more of them on the table to help counter the continued domination of bow armed cavalry armies.

We have seen a fair few lancer units out there - Terry put the unarmoured lancer cavalary to good use against me once. Not averse to dropping the, a point if the consensus is that it need it. But I suspect it ,ay need launch and real zworld testing over a year or two to refine the details of the points to that degree.

Fair enough. The real problem with lancers for me is that they are shock troops so offer a lot less flexibility than say equivalent bow armed cavalry. Hence you tend to se a lot less of them around - especially for competition minded folk.

Cataphracts
There do not seem to be any Cataphracts around these days. The move to 2 deep has I think basically made them too expensive. Reducing the cost of lancers would help, but I would consider reducing them by another point as well. Again this would help bring more balance to the armies seen on the table.

I found 18 done in 6s for Parthians to be rather good.

I'm not saying they are not good. I am saying they are too expensive for what they are. How many people took cataphracts to Usk, Leeds or Rollcall? How many are planning on taking them to BritCon. The proof with all of these things is how many do you see on the table and how well they do when they are on the table. Personally I wuld be happy to see 18 on the table - that is equivalent to 9 Heavily Armoured Knights (well enaly I realise there are other factors in play) and much better value - much better value indeed.

Superiors
It still seems to me that superiors are good value for money. I think we need to increase the cost across the board by another point (or in some way make them less powerful but I honesty cannot see this happening!). I still always want superior troops if I can get them.

12s of average MF warband with a general give superiors a bit of a headache for the points. I am also starting to find poor troops ion decent sized blocks to be useful. I do think one trend is that one changes one view as one learns more. In the early days , before mastering tactics and alnovure, one gets more head on fights where sup is a vaey big + it is only after lots of games you find out how to make full use of larger quantities of pôor troops. I find the balance pretty good qt present but only time will tell.

Indeed. These are just observations. Again you don't see too many big Average armies doing well at competitions at the moment. We don't have a huge pool of results to draw on yet, but BritCon should be interesting. Maybe someone should be looking to analyse the results.

Breaking Off
Richard and I had a strange situation in our last game where my knights were better off in melee than at impact, but had to break-off! This seems broken on two counts. The knights (and most mounted) should be better off at impact against foot and would therefore want to break-off so they can charge again - or breaking off should be a choice. Or both.

Can I re-express......they are safer in melee but more dangerous at impact. If they win an impact round they get a -1 on opposing CTs and then get a Melee chance to sweep all before them IN THE SAME turn. Hence they would go away and try to realise their real Mission of a big burst through.

But the factors just don't agree with this. I would much prefer a + POA than a -1 on the CT (which only has a 50% in an even fight of being invoked anyway). The advantage lies with staying in melee and if this was the case then they would not have used break-offs as a tactic. Put it another way, if you give players the choice then it sorts out any argument over which is best. You would break-off, I would not.

However, I would also re-iterate. This was a historical tactic so there was probably something in it. Impact needs to be better than melee for this to make any sense.

Flank Marches
This is the only place where you have to write down something at deployment. I would like to see the use of ambush markers to represent flank marches. That way there is no writing at all at deployment. The ambush mechanism works well and I think will work well for flank marches. It also gives the opportunity to put down a "fake" flank march. I would roll for this as normal and when it comes on reveal the troops coming on - either real or fake.

Yes I liked this idea and after a brief chat amongst the writers we forgot it We didn't settle on inlcuidn git quickly qn i forget why. I will come bqck when hopme next week.

Cool. What do other people think - assuming anyone has managed to keep reading this far...

Death Roll
I think the current wording/process for Death Rolls could be improved. At the moment if you have Elephants taking 7 hits from a losing combat, the process as written means rolling two dice when none are required.

Current wording:
DEATH ROLL
Roll 1 dice for the battle group. (No re-rolls).
* Add +1 to the dice score if elephants, artillery or battle wagons.
* Add +2 to the dice score if the hits suffered were from shooting or the battle group won/drew a close combat.
If the score does not exceed the number of hits, remove a base.
If a base was removed, and there were more than 6 hits, deduct 6 from the hits and roll again for the remainder. (Use the same modifiers).

Proposed wording:
DEATH ROLL
The number of hits is modified by:
* Remove 1 hit if elephants, artillery or battle wagons.
* Remove 2 hits if the hits suffered were from shooting or the battle group won/drew a close combat.
If the number of hits exceeds 6, remove a base and reduce the number of hits by 6. Repeat this until there are less than 6 hits.
If there are any hits remaining, roll a dice. If the score does not exceed the number of hits, remove a base.
This wording I think just reflects the way people are playing it at the moment anyway. If a BG receives 6 hits from a lost combat, no one bothers to roll a dice. In all other circumstances only a single dice roll is made.

I see what you mean but actuqlly you have just changed the rules.

Lets say the elephants lost 7 from SHOOTING. What you do is roll a dice and add 3. So you get a 5 becoming 8 and don't loose a base from this. You then have a carryover of 2 but do not need to roll as you didn't lose a base from the first roll. So no losses even though 7 hits this way - not & off automatically and then residuals.

In combat there is no need to roll the first dice qs you cqnnot beqt q è qnd no need to roll thre second nd qs you cqn't fqil to get 2. So if 8 hits you would not rooll the first qnd lose qnother bse on a 1 on the second roll.

With the current wording ze are expceting people to only roll dice when there is qny potentiql loss. Perhqps we should say so.

Good to have you back

Si

Hmm. I cannot see the point about changing the rules, but your arabic keyboard went a little mad at the end. All kudos to you for trying to type with it! Not a big deal in any case, I just felt there was a slightly better way of wording the mechanism.

[sagji]

Crossbowmen
Just played Richard Collins last week with 4 BGs of MF crossbowmen. My take on them would be that at the same points cost as Bow I would always want to take Bow given the choice. I think the Crossbowmen need to either be reduced by one point or made slightly more effective against foot.

I suspect that making the x-bow 1 cheaper would then leave them better than Bow.

Lancers (non-Knightly)
We don't seem to be seeing many non-knightly lancers on the table. Ok, a few companions and maybe a compulsory LH unit. I have definitely have not seen any unarmoured cavalry lancers. I think the cost of lancers should be reduced by a point to encourage more of them. However I think Heavily Armoured Knights are fine, so to compensate I would increase their cost by 1. Given that cavalry lancers are a good counter to bow armed cavalry, I would like to see a few more of them on the table to help counter the continued domination of bow armed cavalry armies.

I don't think you can reduce the cost of lance by 1. Possibly a better solution is to reduce the cost a cavalry & LH by 1 and increase the cost of mounted bow/x-bow by 1.

Death Roll
I think the current wording/process for Death Rolls could be improved. At the moment if you have Elephants taking 7 hits from a losing combat, the process as written means rolling two dice when none are required.

Current wording:
DEATH ROLL
Roll 1 dice for the battle group. (No re-rolls).
* Add +1 to the dice score if elephants, artillery or battle wagons.
* Add +2 to the dice score if the hits suffered were from shooting or the battle group won/drew a close combat.
If the score does not exceed the number of hits, remove a base.
If a base was removed, and there were more than 6 hits, deduct 6 from the hits and roll again for the remainder. (Use the same modifiers).

Proposed wording:
DEATH ROLL
The number of hits is modified by:
* Remove 1 hit if elephants, artillery or battle wagons.
* Remove 2 hits if the hits suffered were from shooting or the battle group won/drew a close combat.
If the number of hits exceeds 6, remove a base and reduce the number of hits by 6. Repeat this until there are less than 6 hits.
If there are any hits remaining, roll a dice. If the score does not exceed the number of hits, remove a base.
This wording I think just reflects the way people are playing it at the moment anyway. If a BG receives 6 hits from a lost combat, no one bothers to roll a dice. In all other circumstances only a single dice roll is made.

This should be "if the number of hits is at least 6 remove a base" - on your current wording you have to roll for 6 hits. I would also word it as "it there is at least 1 hit remaining, roll a die ..."

[donm]

Indeed. These are just observations. Again you don't see too many big Average armies doing well at competitions at the moment. We don't have a huge pool of results to draw on yet, but BritCon should be interesting. Maybe someone should be looking to analyse the results.

Bruce,

In my 14 BG Macedonian army at Roll Call I only had one unit of 4 elements of Elite Agema and one unit of 4 elements of Superior Companions. It didn't cause me too many problem as I came joint second.

If I was to field the army again I would replace the Elite Agema with Superior pikemen. 1, because the Elite lancers were just not worth the points and 2, the only way to get anymore pikemen is to have them Superior.

I don't have a problem with average troops, I do think however that cavalry lancers are not alot of good.

Will try a Selucid army soon as I actually think that cataphracts may be a good counter to shooting cavalry.

Don

[whitehorses]

Crossbowmen
Just played Richard Collins last week with 4 BGs of MF crossbowmen. My take on them would be that at the same points cost as Bow I would always want to take Bow given the choice. I think the Crossbowmen need to either be reduced by one point or made slightly more effective against foot.

I suspect that making the x-bow 1 cheaper would then leave them better than Bow.

Why are Crossbowmen disadvantaged against Heavy & Medium Foot anyway?

Makes sense that they're naff against Mounted & skirmishers, seeing as they fire too slow, but they should be better than Bowmen(excepting Longbowmen - Crecy anyone? ) against Medium Foot & Heavy Foot with the penetration of the bolt beating the faster shooting of the Bowmen, particularly armoured & Heavy armour.
The Italians would surely not have been so popular as mercenaries if Crossbowmen were as pants at shooting as the modifiers imply.

Cheers,
Jer

[hammy]

Why are Crossbowmen disadvantaged against Heavy & Medium Foot anyway?

Makes sense that they're naff against Mounted & skirmishers, seeing as they fire too slow, but they should be better than Bowmen(excepting Longbowmen - Crecy anyone? ) against Medium Foot & Heavy Foot with the penetration of the bolt beating the faster shooting of the Bowmen, particularly armoured & Heavy armour.
The Italians would surely not have been so popular as mercenaries if Crossbowmen were as pants at shooting as the modifiers imply.

I believe the idea is that the crossbows have less shots but are affected less by armour.

Crossbow are worse than bow against poorly protected targets where the lower rate of fire is significant, the same as bow against armoured targets so less shots with more effect per shot and better than bow against heavily armoured targets.

If you look at medieval armies there are lots of armoured and heavily armoured troops. In this type of environment then crossbows are actually really rather good.

They are only worse than bow against protected and unprotected foot and non skirmishing protected and unprotected mounted (which is something that you rarely see on the battlefield).

I think they are worth the same points (or near enough) as bow.

Hammy

BTW, I also think Lancers have their uses and my current army of choice has only 3 BG's out of 16 that are superiors and most of it's BG's are 6's and 8's not 4's. I am after all a rebel....

[shall]

However, I would also re-iterate. This was a historical tactic so there was probably something in it. Impact needs to be better than melee for this to make any sense.

I can see it feels a bit odd but the issue of whether they are better in melee or impact doesn't exist as we don't give the option to stay in - so its a false comparison.

Given historical evidence of behaviour if we were to allow them to stay in vs steady troops we would give them all a POA - for 2nd round in melee as spetn mounted getting swamped. So the attractiveness of the idea is based on us alliwing further melee at initial melee factors which we wouldn't as its not realistic.

The approach therefore has been - for right or wrong - to remove the option as npo-one really would want it and then calibrate impact and melee separately adn togethet to w<ork as a whole. Hope that makes sense.

This should be "if the number of hits is at least 6 remove a base" - on your current wording you have to roll for 6 hits. I would also word it as "it there is at least 1 hit remaining, roll a die ..."

To try a second atttempt from Arabia...........the above is NOT how it works. It works as written.

So if you get 6 hits on an EL you don't remove a base auto,atically - you roll as a 6 will save it with the +1; If you suffer 8 hits from shooting on a BWg you do NOT remove one and take off six and roll again. You roll because a 6 +1 for Bwg +2 for shooting = 9 = more thqn 8 = no loss. You then do not roll for the other 3 at all. If you fail then you would technically roll for the other 3 but wouldn't lose a second due to the +3. All we expect then is for people not to waste valuable wrist energy on irrelevant rolls within that.

Hope that makes sense.

We don't have a huge pool of results to draw on yet, but BritCon should be interesting. Maybe someone should be looking to analyse the results.

That would be me then - fair does

[bddbrown]

However, I would also re-iterate. This was a historical tactic so there was probably something in it. Impact needs to be better than melee for this to make any sense.

I can see it feels a bit odd but the issue of whether they are better in melee or impact doesn't exist as we don't give the option to stay in - so its a false comparison.

Given historical evidence of behaviour if we were to allow them to stay in vs steady troops we would give them all a POA - for 2nd round in melee as spetn mounted getting swamped. So the attractiveness of the idea is based on us alliwing further melee at initial melee factors which we wouldn't as its not realistic.

The approach therefore has been - for right or wrong - to remove the option as npo-one really would want it and then calibrate impact and melee separately adn togethet to w<ork as a whole. Hope that makes sense.

I think we're over complicating this whole argument. Mounted with an advantage in melee are forced by the rules to break-off. This makes no sense.

[rbodleyscott]

However, I would also re-iterate. This was a historical tactic so there was probably something in it. Impact needs to be better than melee for this to make any sense.

I can see it feels a bit odd but the issue of whether they are better in melee or impact doesn't exist as we don't give the option to stay in - so its a false comparison.

Given historical evidence of behaviour if we were to allow them to stay in vs steady troops we would give them all a POA - for 2nd round in melee as spetn mounted getting swamped. So the attractiveness of the idea is based on us alliwing further melee at initial melee factors which we wouldn't as its not realistic.

The approach therefore has been - for right or wrong - to remove the option as npo-one really would want it and then calibrate impact and melee separately adn togethet to w<ork as a whole. Hope that makes sense.

I think we're over complicating this whole argument. Mounted with an advantage in melee are forced by the rules to break-off. This makes no sense.

As Simon pointed out, they only have an advantage in melee because the (current) rules give them an advantage in melee. If the rules (instead of making them break off) gave them a negative POA in subsequent rounds of melee, they wouldn't have an advantage any more. (In which case it would no longer be "unrealistic" for them to break off).

In short it is pointless to argue that the (current) rule re breaking off is unrealistic on the grounds that another (current) rule would give them an advantage if they didn't break off. In fact they don't have any advantage in a second round of melee because the rules don't allow them a second round of melee because they have to break off! Both items are just rules and neither rule has to be the way it currently is - however, it is the effect that matters, not the details of how it is achieved.

Our view of the history is that breaking off is the historically realistic behaviour, and whatever the effect of other rules would be if they didn't break off (and the other rules remained unchanged) doesn't change the fact that breaking off is the historically realistic behaviour.

Moreover, several historical interactions (e.g. mounted troops vs medium foot archers) are dependent on the compulsory break off to produce the right historical results and balance, POAs notwithstanding.

[bddbrown]

I can see it feels a bit odd but the issue of whether they are better in melee or impact doesn't exist as we don't give the option to stay in - so its a false comparison.

Given historical evidence of behaviour if we were to allow them to stay in vs steady troops we would give them all a POA - for 2nd round in melee as spetn mounted getting swamped. So the attractiveness of the idea is based on us alliwing further melee at initial melee factors which we wouldn't as its not realistic.

The approach therefore has been - for right or wrong - to remove the option as npo-one really would want it and then calibrate impact and melee separately adn togethet to w<ork as a whole. Hope that makes sense.

I think we're over complicating this whole argument. Mounted with an advantage in melee are forced by the rules to break-off. This makes no sense.

As Simon pointed out, they only have an advantage in melee because the (current) rules give them an advantage in melee. If the rules (instead of making them break off) gave them a negative POA in subsequent rounds of melee, they wouldn't have an advantage any more. (In which case it would no longer be "unrealistic" for them to break off).

In short it is pointless to argue that the (current) rule re breaking off is unrealistic on the grounds that another (current) rule would give them an advantage if they didn't break off. In fact they don't have any advantage in a second round of melee because the rules don't allow them a second round of melee because they have to break off! Both items are just rules and neither rule has to be the way it currently is - however, it is the effect that matters, not the details of how it is achieved.

Our view of the history is that breaking off is the historically realistic behaviour, and whatever the effect of other rules would be if they didn't break off (and the other rules remained unchanged) doesn't change the fact that breaking off is the historically realistic behaviour.

Moreover, several historical interactions (e.g. mounted troops vs medium foot archers) are dependent on the compulsory break off to produce the right historical results and balance, POAs notwithstanding.

I take your point Richard. As a historical tactic I presume it was done because it made sense, i.e. there was advantage in breaking off. I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that if there was no advantage or even disadvantage in breaking off then historically they would not have.

Therefore we need to find an interaction of rules that makes breaking off advantageous and maintains the historical precident. I don't think break-off is the problem, it works well as a mechanism. The problem area is probably that some mounted interactions with foot seem incorrectly advantageous in the melee phase rather than the impact phase.

If you're willing to entertain further discussion on this (I really don't want to let it lie ) then I would be happy to put together an analysis of problem interactions.

[rbodleyscott]

If you're willing to entertain further discussion on this then I would be happy to put together an analysis of problem interactions.

We aren't really in the market for a major shake-up of the combat system at this stage.

[lawrenceg]

I take your point Richard. As a historical tactic I presume it was done because it made sense, i.e. there was advantage in breaking off. I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that if there was no advantage or even disadvantage in breaking off then historically they would not have.

Therefore we need to find an interaction of rules that makes breaking off advantageous and maintains the historical precident. I don't think break-off is the problem, it works well as a mechanism. The problem area is probably that some mounted interactions with foot seem incorrectly advantageous in the melee phase rather than the impact phase.

If you're willing to entertain further discussion on this (I really don't want to let it lie ) then I would be happy to put together an analysis of problem interactions.

The POA are not indicators of who has the upper hand in melee (or combat). They are a method of arriving at probabilities for various possible combat results.

For foot vs foot or mtd vs mtd the possible results are:
Someone broken
One or both sides cohesion loss and keep fighting
No cohesion loss and keep fighting

For foot vs mounted the possible results are:
Someone broken
Both sides cohesion loss and keep fighting
Foot cohesion loss and keep fighting
Foot no cohesion loss, mounted cohesion loss and break off
No cohesion loss and mounted break off

These are based on the authors' perception of historically possible combat results. If mounted always broke off then there must have been a reason for it and it is simpler just to enforce it than to introduce a rule that merely incentivises it.


One could change the rules to allow the option for mounted to do something that they historically never did and penalise them for it, such as:

• The complicated solution:
  Melee POA for steady foot fighting mounted that started this turn in combat with them: ++ regardless of other factors (rather a lot to fit into one line of the table)
  
  Slightly simpler:
  In the JAP, all mounted that should have broken off but didn't: drop 2 chesion levels.

But it's simplest just to leave things as they are.

At the moment we do have the cheese of using another BG to trap your mounted against enemy foot to prevent them from breaking off. This has been pointed out some time ago and IIRC the authors considered it to carry sufficient additional risk to the perpetrator that it would not need addressing. If enough people do it at BRITCON that may change.

Subsequent edit: I didn't remember correctly, this issue has been addressed. The mounted troops drop a cohesion level if they can't break off.

[rbodleyscott]

At the moment we do have the cheese of using another BG to trap your mounted against enemy foot to prevent them from breaking off. This has been pointed out some time ago and IIRC the authors considered it to carry sufficient additional risk to the perpetrator that it would not need addressing. If enough people do it at BRITCON that may change.

In fact this potential cheese has already been addressed:

If, as a result, a battle group that should break off is unable to move back at least 1MU, it drops a cohesion level, the break off is cancelled, and the melee continues next turn.

[petedalby]

rules wrote:
If, as a result, a battle group that should break off is unable to move back at least 1MU, it drops a cohesion level, the break off is cancelled, and the melee continues next turn.

I'd missed this change Richard.

Will there be a new version of the rules published prior to Britcon or is that unrealistic?

Pete

[rbodleyscott]

Will there be a new version of the rules published prior to Britcon or is that unrealistic?

As far as I know there will not be a new version issued before Britcon. Britcon will be played under 6.0 plus the changes listed in the "Changes from 6.0" thread at the time of the tournament.

Inevitably a set of rules that is under beta testing is something of a moving target. However, rest assured that if there are any further changes prior to Britcon they are likely only to be clarifications of the current intended meaning and not changes to the actual rules.