I've been thinking about how to include generalship and the like into battles. This is important for modelling Praxian-style battles, where the result of the fight can massively influenced by the manoeuvring of the sides before blows (or arrows) are exchanged. I could also see the same thing being used for trollkin horde diversionary attacks and similar situations.
To my mind, a battle between Praxians involves many minor attacks, feints, retreats, and skirmishes, covering a large amount of ground, before one side thinks they have an overwhelming advantage. At that point, a battle is forced and one side is defeated.
The question is how to represent this in the Hero Wars rules. I want the battle to be exciting and climatic, so that should be an extended contest. I also want the manoeuvring before to be exciting, so I'd also like that to be an extended contest. The question is how to link the two, so that the 'generalship' contest has a large, but not quite overwhelming, affect on the battle.
Simply using the stated outcome rules doesn't seem quite right, as most results are marginal or minor; this means that generalship has only a small effect. I thought about using the carryover rules, but that seemed over-complicated.
Then it struck me. I'm trying to get the better general to have an advantage in the battle. Degree of advantage is represented by APs. So the better general should have more APs in the battle. A quick bit of number-crunching and I ended up with:
Degree of Victory AP multiplier
Marginal x 1.5 Minor x 2 Major x 3 Complete x 4
(I thought it better to increase the victor's APs rather than decrease
the loser's, as I don't want to make the loser too conservative in their
bids in the contest.)
(And yes, I know there are other ways of doing this: using Generalship
to augment the combat ability, or treating Close Combat as the parting
shot in a contest of Generalships.)
Any comments?
Neil.
Neil Smith Honorary Life Member neil_at_... Swindon And District Wargamers http://home.freeuk.net/wimp/ http://www.sadwargamers.co.uk
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