Slitherine

If anyone has any creative house rules please post them here.

I especially would like to come up w/ a house rule for push backs/ fall backs in close combat. This would extend the length of battles slightly and give the game a more realistic flavor I feel.

Thanks for any input.

Huaxtec15mm wrote:If anyone has any creative house rules please post them here.

I especially would like to come up w/ a house rule for push backs/ fall backs in close combat. This would extend the length of battles slightly and give the game a more realistic flavor I feel.

Thanks for any input.

There were rules for push backs in the early beta phase of the game but they are far from simple to implement. I am not sure why you think that push backs would increase the length of battles though.

The problem with push backs and follow ups is that they get very complex when multiple BGs are engaged and are quite fidly to actually do on the table.

The quesiton is how far back do you want a push back?

You could do a house rule where a BG that loses falls back one Base depth.

Then you step forward relevant enemny BGs to stay in contact.

To my mind this gets you nothing but a little visual gratification.

Issues:
1) Do mounted ever step back? Since they break off do you have them step back?
2) penalty for stepped back if blocked? If you have any kind of penalty it will quicken defeats not slow them.
3) If fighting in two direction what happens?
4) What happens if a BG in two directions both wins (meaning one oppoennt lost) and loses?
5) What happens if a BG will get split by one foe standing and the other foe being pushed back?

perhaps it would be best to rule that houses should be placed on your camps base. that seems to avoid all that push back stuff now doesn't it?

How to increase the length of infantry slog-type combats was an issue that came up (for me) playing the Chalons refight at the BHGS Challenge.

Having thought about it, my suggestions (not tried or tested mind you) would be to try and stay within the current rules, but just bend them rather than look for new mechanics. This coudl involve for example

* Let generals rally any/all BG's in the battle line they are with (rather than just rallying those BGs they are physically with)
* Let BGs be rallied in the turn they drop cohesion

Both of these will prolong infantry combats by shifting the balance towards breaking from deaths rather than breaking from cohesion failures. You could also add +1 to all death rolls for losers of combats (and make winners on +3 rather than +2?).

For pushbacks, the big challenge is to maintain contact between BGs in multiple linked melees. Other rulesets do this by working out the aggregate results for the entire multi-unit melee, and having the losing side ALL fall back and the winners ALL pursue - but you may need to leave a lot of dice on table!

In this situation, I suspect giving the winners an extra POA in the next round of combat might be a bit too much of an advantage, but you could give all the units on the "winning" side either a +1/+2 in any cohesion tests any of them might have to take that turn, or alternatively/as well allow units to rally even if they don't have a general with them, or to rally if they dropped cohesion that turn. You'd have to ignore this mechanic in situations where a unit in an existing melee then suffered a new round of impact, but overall it would also make it more useful to throw new units into an existing melee to tip the balance in your favour.

If you are playing a scenario, it should be OK to just shuffle any units behind out of the way I guess without any specially worded rules.

Tim

Si and Terry are in our club so we have lots of house rules. Normally they are written in the rule book and contradict what those two say is the case

if you wanted a rule to lengthen foot combats you could allow foot a break off move as a breather.

I think such suggestions need to bear in mind the fact that if you make foot vs. foot combat more sluggish then mounted battles on the flanks would be more decisive. I would restrict it to battles with no mounted troops.

madaxeman wrote:How to increase the length of infantry slog-type combats was an issue that came up (for me) playing the Chalons refight at the BHGS Challenge.

IMO this is not historical. Units broke due to morale, and then in most cases got the greatest amount of casualties (I mean they got a lot of casualties during rout). Again IMO there is not needing to lengthen foot combat, but just in case to shorten cavalry combat.

marioslaz wrote:IMO this is not historical. Units broke due to morale, and then in most cases got the greatest amount of casualties (I mean they got a lot of casualties during rout). Again IMO there is not needing to lengthen foot combat, but just in case to shorten cavalry combat.

I agree/understand that most casulaties are caused in rout and pursuit, however I'm sure that none got decided because of dice, or adding coloured markers next to the men, or by taking away big groups of men all with their feet tied to rectangular bits of cardboard - so I always understood that the CT mechanism and the casualty mechanisms both work together to simulate loss of morale and some casulaties, which together leads eventually to one side breaking.

I think the thing that is fairly clear is that if you want to simulate a battle where the winner of a decisive fight on the (cavalry) wings gets to redeploy troops to influence the (infantry) fight in the center you do need to lengthen infantry combats, or shorten cavalry combats At the moment, all combats take around the same length of time, so I have found this sort of overall effect hard to achieve without resorting to delaying combat in the middle until both wings are engaged.

One answer is to speed up cavalry combat, but if you speed up some of the existing mechanisms in cavalry combats my guess would be that it might turn them into a bit of a lottery, as they already pretty quick - therefore I made suggestions on how to lengthen infantry combats, and also how to squeeze a push-back mechanism into the existing rules.

I can see there is really no need for either of these things, but if someone really wants to have them, these are just my ideas to try.

madaxeman wrote:One answer is to speed up cavalry combat, but if you speed up some of the existing mechanisms in cavalry combats my guess would be that it might turn them into a bit of a lottery, as they already pretty quick - therefore I made suggestions on how to lengthen infantry combats, and also how to squeeze a push-back mechanism into the existing rules.

Another option is to get to close combat with cavalry before than that of infantry. This also is enough historical. Fight on wings ended earlier because it also started earlier, and this in particular by those armies who relied on good cavalry. I think to Alexander's armies, to Carthaginian's armies, and so on. You can delay foot advance to give your cavalry some turns of fight before foot enter in melee. Remember also in FOG pursuit is usually not very long and when your units end pursuit are immediately ready to engage enemy without needing of reforming.