Reply To: Rules that offer historically accurate movement rates – are there any?

[poniatowski]

@McLaddie…

It doesn’t happen often, but because of poor command roles and delays in getting and activating orders, a unit might have “engage” or charge as their order which, unless a leader is attached (btn or higher) to try and stop the order by taking direct control of the unit…. the unit will do as it is ordered. And sometimes, the Btn commander is needed elsewhere, a casualty.. somtheing… and cannot get there or perhaps the battle is so tight that the player does NOT want to risk attaching the commander and place his other units out of command as they will lose the modifier he provides… then the unit must commit to their orders.

I can honestly say, this has only ever happened a verly limited number of times during playtest and it was either because of tense battle where the commander was already attached to another unit or wounded. The result is the ordered unit fires at a unit to its front within range…

From my minds eye… when this did happen, it was in areas of heavy fighting where there would be so much smoke it is very possible that the commander issuing the orders saw something different or saw something wrong… it makes for a very good fog of war… an army commander has to plan things well in advance and if things develop wrongly in the field… well, it can be very bad.

I know it isn’t perfect, but it does really reflect the competance of the commanders at all levels….

For most games, we usually have one person be the over all army commander for each side with limited access to any troops except their own guard units…. you might think that is boreing, but you should see the frustration as the over all army commanders write orders and then are interpreted by the officers in the filed so to speak… the game isn’t “locked” in so much… the players controlling the lower command levels have some room for interpretation as long as it meets the definition of the order given.

Now, as for battles like Albuera, you can start the units off actually at whatever historical/interpreted field strength and morale the battle warranted… a unit running out of food would have a reduced field strength and morale…. so any records available or existing OOB could be used.

For example…. at Borodino, many Russian units were undersized on the field and some btns were actually closer to company strength than btn strength according to record. So you would have a btn called out in the OOB, but the amount of men in the field would be drastically off…

That is just noted on the set up sheet… a unit has a morale level, melee value and ranged value. Commanders have a command rating and a morale rating…. you can have a very charismatic leader with horrible tactical skills…. one rating affects order based abilities and the other is used solely for morale.

Hope this helps.