Slitherine

I just played my first four games at Cold Wars. I had a wonderful time, all excellent games, and I think the game plays very, very well. The rulebook answered every question that players could come up with, and that by itself is a triumph.

I only saw one interaction that shocked the conscience. I saw artillery (not once but several times) see off charging battle groups in H-T-H. this puzzles me. Artillery rolls 2 dice at impact, so if you roll well, you can stay in. I'm under the impression that artillerists in the ancient and medieval worlds rarely stood to their guns, and that the number of actual "men" on an artillery base would be much smaller than the "men" on a Gallic warband base, for instance.

I felt that artillery should have lost 1 per 2 as per skirmishers. Perhaps there's a mechanic there I don't understand--I didn't have artillery myself, so I was never the man behind the dice in these instances. But the combination of even a little combat staying power with their decisive shooting made artillery a pretty good buy.

As I read the rules artillery may get the same dice as other troops but they have no POAs at impact and a - POA in melee.

This would mean that say protected offensive spearmen would be at + in the impact phase and ++ in the melee. I can't see artillery lasting too long on those terms.

Artillery get 2 dice in each phase but ...

1) they area POA down vs almost everything, and at times 2
2) they are average so no re-rolls
3) they only get +1 od death rolls so when they lose they usually evaporate

I have only seen artillery fend of troops in hth once in over 100 games. The scots common took 6 bases of them behing FF out in one test game i played. The shooting can be abit scary.

Was it played correctly on POAs. Should be 4 dice on 4s vs 4 on 5s. about 705 chance of losing. 1 on a death roll on average destroys the BG entirely.

Si

I knew it was dangerous to post! I wasn't behind the dice on either occasion. My question was--is there any reason to let them fight at all?

Yes they would generally put up a fight especially if well suported on each side. Also in game terms to do otherwise gives instant overlaps which is not a good thing - we tried it ad the top down feel was wrong.

Perhaps you could point the man behind the dice at this stream lest something was missed. They are certainly not the super troops you seem to imagine.

We allow foot to intepentrate them because they need protection so much!!

Si

That sounds totally reasonable. Hard thing to balance, I imagine.

Back to more playing. Thanks for the answers.