Roads, Roads...My Empire for a...

[Blathergut]

If you gain the initiative, do you automatically nab all possible roads in order to deny them to your opponent and restrict his LoC placement to the initial defender road running centre - centre?

[deadtorius]

Uh since I rarely get initiative I would have to say NO. Road hog.
Better question, if you have 3 roads and due to weird angles across the table and you can't get them all on table due to 12 MU restriction, do you have to just drop the last road or replace one on table to make room for the third road.

[KeefM]

Nah to roads . . . in my first few games I certainly held that view, but IMHO the reality is that you are better focused on grabbing terrain that suits your own game approach better . . . for my part, in my first 15 games ish I was a bit limited to playing with what was ready and available rather than being able to experiment widely . . . that 1812 French mix had 2 veteran horse artillery batteries and 2 veteran light infantry alongside 5 light cavalry units . . . but, through luck, I found that having plenty of terrain meant that I could dictate the game via my light infantry and horse batteries while avoiding a cavalry vs cavalry shoot-out with my light cav . . . taking a road was far less useful than taking as many big sized woods and steep hills as possible . . . in some of my later experiments using 6 regiments of cav (a mix light and heavy) or large artillery contingents, I find I am better to focus on taking two very small steep wooded hills (= 4 choices) reduces the terrain to give better options for cavalry and artillery action . . .

of course, sometimes, the terrain is simply too defender-friendly to be worth any sort of early attack at all, in which case a better approach may be to simply either offer a draw or settle in to shell away at one corner and await the defender to decide that sitting still and getting shelled is less preferable to coming out of their defensive position . . .

if I am defending then I set my free gentle hill well back inside my deployment zone anyway, so the cumplosory free road is still a pretty good place to set down my LoC as it will be directly behind that hill . . .

so, in my view, having extra roads won't make a blind bit of difference to those choices no matter where the opposing LoC is . . .

[BrettPT]

I'm a bit like Keith.

Early on I got interested in the possibilities of multiple LOC spots, but these days I view this as a pretty minor aspect of the game.
Much more important to focus on getting the sort of ground you want to fight on, rather than worrying about where the LOC might go.

[deadtorius]

Perhaps I am just unlucky with dice rolls, but I find it hard to get the terrain I want, or to keep it in my zone. I have found in the past that a clogged table often slows the French down. Playing 28mm on a 4' wide table probably makes our games different from what most of you end up with.

[Blathergut]

Hmmm...5' wide would make for some difference. We could change the "more than 8MU from" to include an extra "invisible" 6" on each side. That would push more stuff to the edges.

[Blathergut]

Likewise, I don't care much about terrain. I'd rather have none! It's such a toss-up, you can't plan on it. I suppose, take 3 hills, hoping one lands where you can use it. I'd rather my opponent picked the terrain and then I get to move it. Moving some trees onto his center hill last game really spiced things up.

[hazelbark]

Lots of power to having control on the road net.

They don't have to leave table.

So converge them about 14 MU in from table edge to main road. Each is a path for artillery to rapidly advance.

Transverse road from side edge to side edge to facilitate the rapid movement of your flank march.

Road crossing river to open up what was a secure flank.

Loan road wandering don board edge that arc into opponent LOC. light cavalry with a brigade commander on raiding mission.