Some of the chaps and I have been playing a Might and Reason campaign, the Kolin 1757 Kleiner Feldzug scenario that's provided in the rules. We have two battles to resolve from the early stages of the campaign, and Josh the Library and I (standing in for Chris B, the Austrian player) p[layed one of them last night. A report, sadly sans photographs, can be found here.
We're picking up the rules slowly (this is the ?third? game we've played recently--I played M&R some years ago). Thinking about it this morning, I recognised that we were not doing all the things with Command Dice we could (in especial, not re-rolling Attack Tests or Combat Rolls), and I forgot about Attack Tests and the Volley Rule for the first few turns of the game.
People in the club seem to have gotten very excited about the idea of starting a 6mm War of the Spanish Succession collection. Newest Josh has some beautifully painted figures he is rebasing; I'm pulling out the figures I got secondhand on a whim last year, and Frank is ordering up some Baccus. NJ and I also have 15mm troops for the Williamite War in Ireland that we are planning to use M&R to fight, and I will be working on 15mm SYW troops to replace the 6mms of mine that we're using right now to get started with.
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4 comments:
I also have some 15mm SYW Austrian and Prussians, not sure of numbers since it's been so long since I had them out. I liked M&R when we tried it a couple of years ago.
Phil
More rules potentially forgettable are Exceptional SUbordinates may reroll one die in the Control Segment and any Force Commander may reroll a failed Recovery Test once per pulse in his force if in command. There's a lot to this game and I love it!
I really like M&R except the close combat rules. Unless I am wrong in a combat between two fresh heavy cavalry units it is impossible for the attacking unit to get a decisive victory and their chance of suffering casualties, even if they win, makes it amlost certain that cavalry contests will grind into a battle of attrition.
Eric,
It depends on the cavalry involved (British Guards Cavalry against French line horse, for instance, have a small chance of breaking them outright: 8+6 to 6+1), but most initial contact by fresh cavalry against fresh cavalry, yes, is not going to be conclusive.
Nor should it be. In no historical period that I'm aware of do fresh troops regularly achieve decisive victories over fresh troops of the same calibre and class.
Let's be clear. A decisive victory in close combat in M&R is a total defeat and overthrow of the enemy. The defeated unit cease to exist (in game terms--it can regroup as a cadre after the battle for campaign purposes). Most initial contacts are going to result in a victory for one side or the other, just not an overwhelming one.
And most 18th century cavalry actions are just that--a series of charges by one force or another or both until they have no fresh reserves to put into action and until one side or the other is ready to break. At which point you get that decisive action where one side's SP + D6 + mods is double that of the other. The losing force dissipates; the winner may take another loss (or not) and comes to rest in control of the area.
Neither Frederick nor Schwerin, in our subsequent battle, felt that the cavalry action was unrealistically long and drawn out! And neither Arenberg nor Browne were able to spin out the flank combat for nearly as long as they would have liked.
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