Slitherine

The current way the ambush system works, unless your army is a number of BGs multiplied by 4, or 4-1 (7, 8, 11, 12, 15, 16, 19, 20), it is possible to mathematically figure out if an ambush is real or not based on how many BGs are put on the table.

The result of this I feel is players rarely using ambushes (our group basically never ambushes ever), and I for one always try to make an army 15 BGs if possible, so that I can potentially threaten with an ambush marker.


Is there a reason why BGs taken for ambushes are sucked off the last quarter in deployment, and why the quarters are not simply readjusted to reflect the new number?

If the quarters were readjusted to reflect the new number, it would be impossible to tell whether or not an ambush marker was real regardless of BG numbers, unless you could eyeball count up the exact number of points on the table (much more difficult than simply counting BGs)

I am wondering what other people think of this.

I think the authors said way back the wanted to limit the gamey-ness of ambushes. How many battles had large scale ambushes short of the entire army surprising their opponents? Very few.

I am open to some improvement of the ambush system, but I don't think its really broken either.

I used a 2 BG ambush in the first game at the Teams. Opponent cam up with LF assuming it was LF or HF that couldn't catch him. I rolled long on the VMD and he lost 2 BGs.

Another one of my team mates baited someone with ambush markers, they misdeployed and his flank march was twice as effective.

First is often terrain and such makes ambushes and FMs less common. People get out of the habit of using them. Then when they could they simply don't out of habit.

Make up 3 cool ambush markers and put them out every game. One of these days it will be a good spot.

About the only change I can think of that is not worht much. Allow the player who loses PBI to put skirmishers or MF in ambush up toe 23 MU. I think the PBI may impact the ambush options too much.

I am all for ambushes not being particularly useful nor effective, but I would like to see some sort of system where you are not encouraged to have 12, 15 or 16 BGs, because 13-14 makes your ambushes less effective/easier to spot.

Seems there should be a way to keep them from being too useful without having this purely mathematical issue.

I understand what you are saying. I guess that part does not bother me much. But if slittherine rolled out of bed and reversed themselves it wouldn't bother me that way either.

I wouldn't worry about them. They happen so infrequently (at least in games here).