devonrex - Nov 2, 2004 9:20 am (#622 Total: 624)   
   
Jim Miller    
 
Rules Tinkering

A shortcoming I find with the present rules is that, without getting a
double initiative, there is no way for a player to effectively "drive
home" an attack. As noted in earlier postings, I've experienced Day 1
games where the CSA player, cursed with unlucky initiative rolls, was
essentially powerless to prevent the USA player from simply withdrawing
one hex per turn towards the fishhook position over the span of several
hours with suffering any damage. In such a situation, the only
opportunity left to the CSA player to inflict damage is to spend
precious Command on less effective long range artillery fire. 

The argument that this accurately simulates the fighting withdrawal of
the North on the First Day at Gettysburg is nonsense, especially
considering that there is no "fighting." Opposing battle lines in the
ACW did not march across the battlefield in lock step for hours on end
without engaging in fire combat. Another argument was that the USA
player can't use this "refuse combat" withdrawal tactic for too long as
he will assuredly lose the game. But that's beside the point which is
that it doesn't simulate an ACW battle. 

The converse side to this issue is that a double initiative can result
in one player being able to fire twice at his opponent during which the
opponent has no opportunity to inflict any damage in return. 

I tried a more conventional turn sequence of Movement, Defender Fire,
Attacker Fire, and Melee in a couple of games and was encouraged by the
results. Note that the "conventional" turn sequence effectively doubles
the number of fire combats that are possible in a turn, and unless
"free" Defender Fire is allowed, will chew up precious Command steps at
an even faster rate. 

Additional rules changes I implemented were: no Fire penalties for
Stream, River and Bridge/Ford hexsides, a –1 penalty for firing uphill
across a Hill hexside, long range artillery must target the closest
enemy units (prevents sniping behind-the-lines HQs), and adjacent
artillery may be selectively targeted in Fire combat (a suggestion I
received from Tom Dalgliesh). I also gave Reynolds a bonus step at the
start of the game, but he could only be rebuilt to a 2. 

Jim Miller