Idea for Corps Commanders

[BrettPT]

OK last of my raves for now.

An idea canvassed previously I thought I would give another airing:

If your CC is 1 level higher than your opponent's he must deploy 4 units at a time rather than 3.
If your CC is 2 levels higher than your opponent's her must deploy 5 units at a time rather than 3.

Basically this is small attempt to re-balance the points cost of higher level CCs without changing the points.
It would not matter whether you are the defending or attacker, so the army initiative level would not come this.

It gives a grand-tactical advantage to better CCs. The ability to lay down your final units after seeing the enemy deployment is a significant advantage IMO - especially the ability to see where an enemy cavalry division is deployed before laying down troops to oppose them.

Still probably not enough to convince me to regularly field a L3 CC - which is good because we don't want to suddenly see a plethora of high level commanders becoming the norm. However together with the new rule allowing re-rolled rallies for exceptional CCs and perhaps some tweaks to place more stress on the number of available CPs (see post under CP availability & Generals) it may be enough to tempt me to field an exceptional CC from time to time.

Thoughts?

[Blathergut]

Exceptional are ridiculously priced. This is an easy enough rule to apply. It probably would just mean everyone would make sure the CC is skilled.

[deadtorius]

They certainly need some way to make them more attractive. When we started the game using the lists in the back of the book, I always took an Inspired CC, not anymore even if an Austrian list would allow it. Too many points not enough benefits. Restricting the CP's available might make a big difference to the game, but we shall see.

[hazelbark]

I think this could be a good change.

[Russ1664]

A very good concept for making higher cost Corps commanders more useful than they currently are, I would also agree that the top level commanders seem over priced. I would offer a variation on the original idea which is rather than depending on the difference between opposing Corps commanders it is based only on the competence of your own commander; again using as previously suggested method; placing 3 units for exceptional, 4 and for skilled and 5 for competent respectively?

For either method I'm also concerned this may just flip the advantage to the top end commanders which again reduces the choice/options for the players to have to make. So if either method is felt to be too unbalanced (play testing), then perhaps only the first round of deployment is dependent on the commanders level and each round thereafter reverts to 3 units at a time?


Russ

[BrettPT]

placing 3 units for exceptional, 4 for skilled and 5 for competent respectively?

Something like this would be a simpler (and therefore probably better) idea.

It is worth noting that if both players chose competant (or to a lesser extent skilled) CCs, this would increase the value of winning the initiative.
For instance:

Both players have 15 units led by a L1 CC. At the moment, the attacker gets to put down the last 3 units 'unopposed'. Under the version above, an attacker would be able to hold 5 units back until he sees all the enemy deployed.

I would prefer a '2 units for exceptional, 3 for skilled and 4 for competant' option to mitigate this effect.

Terry has commented previously that only deploying 2 units at a time might slow deployment. However I believe that L3 CCs under a scheme like the above would still be less common than L1 CCs. So any loss of deployment speed under a L3 CC would be more than compensated for by an increase in deployment speed (at 4 units each time) for armies under a L1 CC.

- although actually I suspect it would make negligable difference in deployment speed either way.

Cheers
Brett

[bahdahbum]

I would prefer a '2 units for exceptional, 3 for skilled and 4 for competant' option to mitigate this effect.

Me too

[deadtorius]

Sounds good, perhaps we can give it a try after Hot Lead, when it is just friendly game time and we can test these new radical theory's

[soylentgreeen202]

I might be misunderstanding something, but isn't each player supposed to be the corps commander of their army? It just seems kind of strange that this role is represented by both the human player's skill and a unit that you pay for on the field. I don't know much about this period, but from what I've been reading on Wikipedia it seems that the decisions made by the highest level commander is one of the most significant factors in deciding a battle. But from what I've been reading on these boards lower skilled cc's produce better results at tournaments. I guess my question is, why not just let the human player represent the "skill" of the CC and forget the units skill altogether? As long as the game mechanics are solid we can just pretend the CC representscommunication lines or something idk but you get the idea. What should instead be adjusted is armies like 1799 Russians in italy and switzerland who are FORCED to pay for the exceptional cc-something actually detrimental to that armies competitiveness. Why try to change the game mechanics, which could unbalance the game, just to force some confused design aspect to be more "important." I'd say just leave the game mechanics as they are for now until the metagame becomes more established, but in the mean time change the individual army lists so that more armies can be competitive.

[KendallB]

True, the player does represent the commander but all Napoleonic rules give the player far more control over their army that their historical counterpart had. Giving the CinC a rating attempts to peg that back a bit.

[deadtorius]

The present system is much easier than having to issue a command then roll for how many hours it will take for the message to arrive/ survival of the messenger, not to mention factoring in his sense of direction to make sure he even headed in the right direction.
the command point system, costs included, seems much more simple indeed. Admittedly we may not be as great as the commanders whose names we borrow for our games, but the system seems to be working fine so far.

[KendallB]

I don't know, some of the great names we like to play could screw things up worse than we do!

[Sarmaticus]

I'm not a fan of rating the commander who's part is being played by the player. In defence of the system it can be said that a lot of the skill of a corps commander lay in his courage. stamina, eye for ground, eyesight in general and the quality and cooperation of his staff. One has only to see how often commanders simply forgot troops under their command and the scrapes their ADCs could get into.

[deadtorius]

I believe Nappy once said he would rather have a lucky commander than a good commander, that rules me out most of our games...

[deadtorius]

OK so back to the original intent of this post, making exceptional commanders more attractive or useful for their cost. While sanding drywall at work the other day and letting my mind wander I had an idea, what if an exceptional commander was allowed to rally in both players turns.

Nothing like Msr Exceptional general riding up to a wavering unit at the end of the opposing turn and rallying them back to disordered before letting their vile opponents get a 2 MU volley into them and breaking them during the next turns shooting phase.
Might be worth the extra cost or does it break the rules???
Any thoughts are appreciated.

[terrys]

Skilled commanders are reasonable value - Dc's less so than CC's
An allied command would benefit from a skilled DC or CC.
A command that plans to flank march certainly benefits.
A skilled DC is sometimes compulsary.

An exceptional commander is of less value:
He has 3 CPs - but most moves you don't require 3 CPs
He can now re-roll one failed recovery test within his range.
A CC has a higher rating when dicing for attacker/defender.

I agree that the CC is supposed to be respresenting the player - but the added points spent on skilled/exceptional CC's can be considered to be for better quality staff officers. The player can still easily make the wrong decisions regardless of quality of CC.

I quite like the idea of changing the number of units deployed by players based on the quality of the CC - certainly worth considering.
I'm struggling for an idea of how we can make exceptional DCs better value.......

[KeefM]

As a radical option, what about also considering the idea that expending 3 CPs from a general could allow a unit to automatically pass a CMT without rolling (or potentially even a non-rallying CT) but only if their army and/or divisional commander was exceptional? Doing this would make exceptional CCs much much more attractive (and possibly even exceptional DCs).

In respect to deployment considerations, and to keep the game speed up, you might require an army to deploy 1 extra unit in each deployment block (going from 3 units to 4 units) if the opposing CC was exceptional. That way, an exceptional CC losing the inititive would still add considerable advantage, but if both were exceptional than parity would be retained with both deploying 3 units at a time.

Equally (or instead) you could allow a tied initiative score to be awarded to the CC with the higher rating, or in the event of both CC beings the same, it then being awarded to an army containing an exceptional DC; otherwise still remaining a tie and thus re-rolled.

And/or, even more simply, allow an exceptional CC/DC to be in effect a level 4 commander - adding 4 to the initiative roll and having 4 CPs.

[Rekila]

Well ,Exceptional commanders should be charismatic at no extra cost!

[Damianhunter]

Or allow an exceptional CC to reroll a failed CMT like they can for a failed recovery test.

[terrys]

Well ,Exceptional commanders should be charismatic at no extra cost!

A CC would be required to 'join' a unit - which doesn't happen very often in my games.
It would certainly add value to an exceptional DC.

Or allow an exceptional CC to reroll a failed CMT like they can for a failed recovery test.

A CC can only make a CMT roll if he is leading a unit - so pretty rare really.



An option would be to add an extra 1 to an armies initiative for eash exceptioal conmmander used (either DC or CC)