Slitherine

One thing that occurred to me during the games is that Cohesion tests are totally negative. Nothing earth shattering I know but bear with me

A BG can go from fighting fit to broken in a Bound. It can never bolster/rally if it dropped a cohesion level in the previous bound and never without a General. Routing friends cause a test but beating a routing enemy never has a positive effect.

currently rules say cohesion levels approximate to 'good shape' , 'a little rattled' , 'close to breaking' and 'gone'

so we can have fragmented troops pursuing routers and so on.

My thought is why can't disrupted troops rally on a good CT dice throw prompted by a negative event (shooting/combat/ routing friends). The BG pulls together, rallys to the standard etc. why can't pursuers bump up a Cohesion level?

currently negative tests exist in a multitude, positive tests are very occasional.

Regards
Matt

For no reason other than to speed up resolution of the game. As (by design) deterioration of armies is cohesion driven rather than casualty driven in the rules, making it easier to rise up levels would slow the game down. We seem to have a good game length now.

rbodleyscott wrote:For no reason other than to speed up resolution of the game. As deterioration of armies is cohesion driven rather than casualty driven in the rules, making it too easy to rise up levels would slow the game down.

surely the reverse is true, a too rapid decline makes the game less about skill and more about who throws the better dice. Don't get me wrong I like the mechanism as its stands but I feel its too biased towards the negative. I'm not a math man but I beive that 7-8 are the likely results of 2 dice being thrown together and as CT pretty much have a minimum built in -1 you are more likely to fail than pass.

Regards
Matt

That is one of the aspects that change with practice. At start most of the fights I got into were -1 or -2 CT rolls, so equal fights were the lottery of who won the hit roll and then usually the quick descent in cohesion catastrophe. Now most of the fights I get into (including projectile exchanges) deliberately I have either a good POA advantage or/and an in-built +2 (general and support, or an IC, or general and superior status which plays out as more than +2) for CT. Because rolling CTs is the only sure thing in this game.

I have said it before, but my main quibble with the rules, and it has not changed, is that armies without a superior quality core are less fun for control freaks like me, although I suppose they are good for lovers of Russian Roulette. Average knights really turn me off.

Jos?©

Allowing recovery in all cohesion tests would be a bad step. At Leeds it was noticeable how difficult it was to break down superior troops led by an inspired commander. Such units re-roll so many dice in combat getting more hits on them is very difficult. Even when down to half strength, the re-roll on CT's and commander's bonus make it very difficult to do anything to them. If they were to recover quickly in combat then they would be well nigh invincible.

rogerg wrote:Allowing recovery in all cohesion tests would be a bad step. At Leeds it was noticeable how difficult it was to break down superior troops led by an inspired commander. Such units re-roll so many dice in combat getting more hits on them is very difficult. Even when down to half strength, the re-roll on CT's and commander's bonus make it very difficult to do anything to them. If they were to recover quickly in combat then they would be well nigh invincible.

or, looked at another way Superior troops are as good as they ae going to get already - but would it be more fun/better if average troops have the ability to turn into heroes if things start to go well for them...?