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Wednesday 10 December 2014

4-3-2 becomes 3-2-1

During the two recent play-test battles that I have fought, I used what has become my standard Strength Values for Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery units ... 4, 3, and 2 respectively. This is also the number of figures I used to represent each type of Unit in earlier battles.

On these two occasions I used Units that had three Infantry, two Cavalry, or two Artillery figures, and each 'hit' was marked on a Unit using small, transparent Roman Blind rings. I soon realised that I did not need as many figures in a Unit as it had Strength Value (which is what I had previously done); what I needed was one less figure than the Unit's Strength Value.

This can best be illustrated thus:

An Infantry Unit (Strength Value = 4).
An Infantry Unit after one 'hit' (Strength Value = 3).
An Infantry Unit after two 'hits' (Strength Value = 2).
An Infantry Unit after three 'hits' (Strength Value = 1).
The next hit will not need to be marked as the Unit's Strength Value will be reduced to 0 and the Unit will be removed.
The upshot of this is the fact that I can reduce the number of figures I need to represent Units from the former 4-3-2 ratios I previously used to 3-2-1. (I must admit that for aesthetic reasons the sight of a single figure crewing a piece of artillery does jar somewhat ... but I suppose that there is no reason why I could not increase the Strength Value of Artillery Units to 3, thus ensuring that Artillery Units will always have two figures.)

This is certainly something that I need to think about and – if possible – to play-test further.

2 comments:

  1. I've actually been going the other way and contemplating adding figures without changing how many 'hits' a unit could take. This is a reflection of 2 factors, 1 is the look of the units, the other is that I would like an excuse to use more of my toy!

    However, the work involved for no change in how the game plays has convinced to continue 'steady as she goes'

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  2. Ross Mac,

    I have been playing around with these Infantry/Cavalry/Artillery ratios for some time, and keep coming back to the 4-3-2 ratio. In fact I have wondered if the Artillery should be beefed up a bit to make the ratios 4-3-3 ... which would enable me to have two crew figures on each base.

    I have a Napoleonic version of the rules in mind ... and I am looking at two-figure bases, with 4 Infantry/3 Cavalry/1Artillery bases per unit because I think that it will look better.

    All the best,

    Bob

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