It was Saturday afternoon when the battle resumed. It didn't take long for the skirmishing to turn to massed musketry at close range.
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| At first the Republican army appeared like a mighty wave rolling in to smash a seawall. |
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| The torrent of fire from the Redcoats didn't seem to bother the Greycoats at all. |
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| But the Republic's troops must have been rattled and fired over the heads of the redcoats on the hill, or into the hillside. Soon the battered attackers were streaming back done the hill, covered by their cavalry supports. |
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The game went quickly, with a decisive end, one side breaking with 2 turns to go out of 15. (It was a One Hour Wargame scenario.) However, the game lasted way longer than it should have for such a simple scenario with few units and some simple rules and the rate at which stands were removed just didn't look/feel right. Having a look at what stats I could find for War of 1812 battle casualties, my rules seem to allow units to take many more casualties than is right, despite my claims that my "hits" include fatigue, fear, ammo shortages and so on.
The One Hour Wargame way is to track hits on a unit without weakening its fighting ability until it collects 15 hits and then suddenly disappears. That doesn't 'feel' right to me either so I've been pondering other options. One idea I'm thinking about is to have a higher number of hits before a stand is removed BUT force the unit to retire when it has lost 1/2 of its stands, OR maybe just take a morale test each time it loses a stand, with penalties for each stand lost.
It'll need more thought. Comments and suggestions are welcome.
I don't know enough about the history to know what would make historical sense. So I'd probably go with that "felt" right and made the game fun, whatever that is. :)
ReplyDeleteWell, in the end, that's what it's about. I'll try to keep it in mind.
DeleteI play a lot of One Hour Wargames variants and I usually have some sort of disorder mechanism as losses mount, either a morale test preventing advances or whatever, or a casualty level at which the unit becomes less effective (typically halved firepower). I usually also have some sort of option to reorganise.
ReplyDeleteThanks, good to hear other approaches.
DeleteHello Ross, we had a similar situation with our ancients rules (derived from Harry Pearson's set in issue 1 of Battlegames magazine from some years ago) about units being at full effect until they had lost all of their 'hits' and then were permanently routed. We added a modifier into the close combat for 'Unit with fewer Hits than opponent' -- but did not find a way to do the same with the shooting ... I don't know if a similar factor might help here, or if more drastic changes ?
ReplyDeleteNick
Thanks for the reply. I have vague memories of trying Harry's rules when the issue came out when my blog was just an infant.
DeleteOne of my problems, that I hadn't thought about till now, is that in the battles in the wars that inspire my 'imaginary wars, there were often winners and losers but very few routs. I hadn't thought about that.
(But I'm thinking about it now!)