Experimenting with my (beta-test) solitaire variant of Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, I was looking at an action which involved a dispute over a larger (multi-hex) town, and I found that the standard game doesn't cope with this very well.
The rules were written to cover the situation where a single-hex village or farm is attacked from open country, and it correctly gives a heavy weighting toward the defenders. Infantry defending a "town" hex suffer no disadvantage, while the infantry attackers themselves suffer a pretty severe 2-dice penalty. My problem is that, if you have a larger built-up area, consisting of a number of adjacent "town" hexes, then this is too harshly in favour of defenders, if you abide by the standard rules, and the action quickly resolves into a stalemate, since there will be a tendency not to risk an attack.
This is not a unique problem for CCN - I cannot recall using a ruleset which handled this comfortably. As ever, I have not thought everything through fully, but my first-cut effort at a tweak is that a village-hex-to-village-hex melee should involve a 2-dice reduction for the attackers (as published), and a 1-dice reduction for the defenders (if they get to fight back). I reason that guys who take the initiative and expose themselves by attacking will still gain some advantage from the cover they have available.
I'll do some more work on it, but I do think it needs a change.
Hi
ReplyDeleteThe stalemate syndrome is always a problem in all solo rulesets. In my case, it occurs when I lose interest in a battle!
The multihex (or multi building) towns must be biased towards the defenders when the attackers come from out of the town. However, once the attackers have won one building, the subsequent fights must be from buildinghex to buildinghex, with both sides having the same modifiers for the terrain (i.e. no advantage).
That's the way Lasalle works (or at least the way I play it!)
Best regards
Rafa
Thanks for that, Rafa. I have been pondering the CCN rules again, as published, and, if the defenders are also regarded as fighting "into a town hex" then they should get the 2 dice deduction, same as the attackers. Maybe same for both sides is the way to do it. Hold the tweak, Mabel. By extrapolation, you could handle an attack on a village hex from a neighbouring wood the same way.
ReplyDeleteWith luck, this town hex vs town hex style combat might handle what goes on in a besieged town after the invaders break in - always a dodgy bit in my rules.
Cheers
Tony