Slitherine

Currently playing the ambush mirror match scenario in the third round of the Medieval "White Christmas" Slitherine tournament, Swiss ambush vs. Burgundians.

It's not much of an ambush when the supposed victims can see their opponents coming from several hundred paces away (assuming one square = 60 paces), and it takes around 45 minutes of game time (assuming 15 minutes per turn) for the forces to even get into melee range. The Swiss aren't firing anti-tank missiles and calling in mortar and artillery fire on an unsuspecting Burgundian column...

Even the Burgundian morale checks when the Swiss main force appears doesn't appear to faze the Burgundians too much, my opponent remarked, "My guys don't seem too particularly surprised," and the same with my Burgundians.

The smallest size map possible with manual selection for "Ambush" is the default 28 x 32, is there any way this could be changed to a smaller map? If not, would it be possible to at least increase the chances of disruption, etc. with an extra -1 CT malus (unless that's already in there)?

Another possibility is for the ambushed force to be formed in a column of march, with cavalry at the front, infantry in the middle, and any artillery in the rear - then they would have to deploy from column into battle formation.

I've played several friendly games using the same forces and the ambush scenario, and with equal player skill levels, the Burgundians always win

The problem with making it a "true" ambush is that it would be so one-sided that the ambushers would always win, unless the disparity of forces was so massive that the game might not be fun to play.

It is more of an "ambush that was discovered slightly too early", to make it a more enjoyable game.

Understood, thanks for the explanation.

Further to this, I have had a look at the scores of the "Ambush" round in the recent tournament.

Of the 46 completed matches:

In 30 both games were won by the same player.

Of the 16 matches where the same side won both games:

10 were won by the Swiss.
6 were won by the Burgundians.

To me this suggests a fairly even matchup, if anything slightly favouring the Swiss.