Slitherine

Here we go with another question from our first real battle and it concerns the effects of crossing and fighting across a hedgerow. I know that this has been mentioned here before but I still have a few questions.

We had the hedgerow, which is fairly substantial, classed as a linear obstacle.

On page 170 it says an obstacle is a 'linear hindrance to movement' but nowhere in the book could I find what are the actual effects on movement and how much of a hindrance it is.

At one point a player had his dragoons lining the hedgerow as did happen in the ECW. They were approached by a BG of Cavaliers. If the dragoons had been foot then they would have had a plus one in any combat for defending an obstacle, which is treated as FF, but as far as I see this does not apply to dragoons.

I know that the approaching Cavaliers would have to stop 1mu from the obstacle and would only move 1mu when charging so the dragoons would get off an extra shot at them as they approached but they would have a minus one POA for shooting at mounted, so they need a 5 or 6, and only having three bases would only get three dice so statistically they will probably only get one hit which is not enough to trigger a cohesion test so the extra shot is unlikely to be effective.

The dragoons can elect to stand but would get no benefit from the obstacle in impact and melee so will likely be beaten.

In our game the dragoon player reckoned this up and moved his dragoons back away from the hedgerow. The cavalier player then moved his BG straight over the hedgerow and as far as I read the rules he just moved full distance as he wasn't charging so that he was in charge range of the dragoons next turn. Next turn he declared his charge on the dragoons who now have to evade and were forced to evade off table and were lost.

The dragoon owning general- (the same one as in the village)- protested about this as he said - (and again I would agree)- that to force your way through a full blown English hedgerow, (which are fairly substantial obstacles not like little garden privets or jumps at a gymkhana), on a horse is not only difficult but near enough impossible.

Surely the hedgerow should have some reducing effect on movement especially for horse. After all it is described as a hindrance to movement.

So... To put my questions simply:

Does an obstacle actually have any effect on movement rates and should dragoons as well as foot get any combat bonus if they are defending one?

Thanks for the replies to my other queries and sorry for long windedness again!

Dragoons are foot so they get the+ for being shot at while defending an obstacle, rules not at hand but the old grey matter believes that under the obstacle FF rules there is no cost for going over them. That is how we have been playing it, if the Dragoons want to wait for the mounted to jump the hedge and then charge them from the back side that is their own business, but they did have the opportunity to bugger off when the mounted crossed over, gotten out of arc of charge or at least set up their evade towards wide open table space.

We did not want undefended field fortications to be cheesily used just to slow enemy down. The rules assume that turns are episodic, representing phases of the action rather than a fixed period of time. We deem that although an undefended fortification clearly would slow troops down a bit, this would be a relatively minor effect in the narrative of the battle if no enemy action was causing a cautious approach to the obstacle.

For simplicity's sake a linear obstacle is treated exactly the same as a field fortification.

To get the benefit of the fortification, the dragoons should have defended it. Far from getting no benefit from it in close combat, the following is the true situation: It counts as a field fortification, so the enemy cavalry attacking it do not use their "only in open terrain" combat factors (see the definition of "open terrain" in the glossary) - so nothing for fighting dragoons in the open. They do get their pistol POA but lancers etc. would not get a POA. The dragoons get +1 for defending a field fortification. So the dragoons would have been on a net 0 POA.

In retrospect we probably should have added defending fortifications to the list of things that render shot "Protected", which would have put the dragoons on a net + POA.

Ahh I can see my error now. For some reason I didn't realise that dragoons were classed as foot but thought that they were in a troop type all of their own, but there it is quite clearly on page 22!

So the dragoons would get the plus one for defending FF or obstacle making the factors equal and would have had the benefit of an extra close range shot at the approaching cavaliers.

I suppose that if we did want the hedgerows to be more substantial then if they were more than, say, 1mu wide we could treat them as a small strip of forest.

I know that they would then not be a legal terrain piece size but it would have the effect of slowing movement through it and if troops were waiting on the other side just out of contact with the hedgerow as attackers passed through it the attackers would be disordered and the defenders not.