Notes on Yesterday's Rules - Combat

Yesterday's battle allowed me to experiment with rules for very quick play battles (I did not time it but I think it took less than half an hour). I'll be posting some notes about them.

Types
There are actually 2 types of combat - harassing and assault

• Harassing involves artillery (each infantry division is assumed to have attached artillery), long-range musketry, and skirmishing. Harassing fire can occur at ranges of 1 to 2 spaces.
• Assault involves a division launching an all-out attack on an adjacent enemy position. The goal is to cross bayonets, although it could devolve into close-range musketry.

Harassing fire is not going to break an enemy unit, but it will weaken the target. The commander will ultimately have to opt for an assault to rout out the enemy. An assaulting unit, however, is more likely to suffer casualties. In essence, assault is higher risk but higher reward.

Combat Resolution
Combat is based on the DBA system. I know I've written in the past that I don't like opposed die rolls for horse & musket era combat, primarily because they seem to abstract. However, given the scale of these rules (each unit = a division) then abstract feels right.

I changed the combat results. I did not like the "shoving match" feel of DBA. It just did not seem realistic for one unit to retreat, return to the fray and force its opponent to retreat, and back and forth. Retreating should be a serious, almost decisive, affair. Instead, a unit beaten in combat receives a morale marker. Morale markers make the unit harder to activate, more likely to get beaten in combat, and more likely to rout.

As I mentioned, harassing the enemy is lower risk. The attacker does not take a morale marker if it rolls lower than the enemy. However, there is no chance of forcing the defender to retreat or rout.

Assaults are riskier and deadlier. The attacker can suffer ill effects if the defender rolls higher. Yet an assault is necessary to take an enemy position. In an assault, a roll that doubles the opposition causes the loser to retreat one space. In addition, the retreating unit must make a morale roll to avoid a rout.

In general, I liked how this worked out. Harassing fire weakened enemy units, making them more brittle in later turns. Once an assault occurred, however, units remained locked in combat until a decisive result was reached. This just felt a little more realistic than a "shoving match."

Cavalry in Combat
For much of the horse & musket era, infantry was "Queen of the Battlefield" so I wanted to reflect that. This meant limiting the combat effectiveness of cavalry to a certain extent. I did this with a rule that forbade cavalry from assaulting infantry. However, cavalry can hang around the flanks, providing support to friendly infantry. And if a unit retreats with enemy cavalry on its flank, it is more likely to rout.

These rules did not really come into play in my sample battle because the cavalry divisions found themselves in a pitched melee on the flank throughout the entire battle.

Another feature is that cavalry cannot harass; it must assault if it wishes to engage in combat.

What About Artillery?
You may have noticed that I did not have any artillery units. As I mentioned, artillery is assumed to be parceled out and attached to the infantry. I am toying with rules for independent "grand batteries." They would have a range of 3, but once emplaced they cannot move.