Slitherine

Has anybody considered that the rules were written inthis way in order to reduce the amount of terrain placed. The authors certainly knew it would.

philqw78 wrote:Has anybody considered that the rules were written inthis way in order to reduce the amount of terrain placed. The authors certainly knew it would.

If they have the issue is acknowledged and altered. RBS has already said on this list that in fog r roads are placed last. All we are really doing here is picking at an old scab.

I thought we were trying to confuse an old issue even further.....

petedalby wrote:I'm climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in November to raise money for Cancer Research UK. Please visit our Just Giving page if you wish to make a donation. Thanks for your support. http://www.justgiving.com/Paul-Jackson1.

Bet you couldn't get a road up that village or no village!!

Bet you couldn't get a road up that village or no village!!

I'll let you know Bob!

Surprised this thread got as many posts as it did. I was just having fun!

Since it's actually turned into a discussion and it's my thread I suppose I'll throw out my road idea.

My problem with roads is that if you don't have initiative and you take one, it's not really useful for anything. If you don't want terrain and your opponent has won initiative and boxed you into a corner where your two mandatory picks have to be terrain (possible in some options such as Hilly) then the road can take up one of those slots. But really, not useful for much else.

Making the road placed last in my opinion makes it even less useful. I've never seen anybody make a reasonable use out of the movement bonus in a game. I've done it once with a unit of LF for one move, ever, and I take roads a lot when I win initiative so that's one use out of maybe 30 games in which I've taken a road. The problem is because you have to be in column to get the bonus, the difficulty of getting into and out of column is not worth the extra 1" in many situations.

And, really, roads do go through terrain features. You cannot argue that they can not. You can't even argue that ancient cultures didn't do it because it was difficult (I've seen that argument here). I know the Arthashastra says the Mauryans did it in India, and if they could cut roads into the jungles of India I'm sure other cultures did it too.

So, after the long rant, this is what I'd do with roads:

When a road is placed, it can be placed over other terrain features, with some possible exceptions (Impassables, Marshes and Steep Hills maybe)

After the road is placed, other terrain cannot be placed on top of the road.

This allows a player with initiative to do the Byzantine Bowling Alley, and also allows a player without initiative to place a road through existing terrain to possibly create an avenue of attack. Makes it useful for the player without initiative without changing how it works for the player with initiative.

Maybe that makes roads more useful than is intended though. I dunno!