Steve/Carl: The purpose of this article is dual. One is to address what we feel is a very important issue with the command control aspect of the game, concerning no-order status and consequences for failing defensive stoppage die rolls. The other portion of the article addresses more so-called chrome issues. While these are not as central, in our opinion, to the play of the game as the no-order and stoppage rules, they still represent smaller issues that do arise and one can address with little overall effect on the system.

Finally, we do not recommend all these changes, unless you are willing to accept a reduction in playability for simulation value. While we have found no playability reduction with our no-order and defensive stoppage changes, the other rules inherently do inhibit playability as the price of increased realism. The trick, of course, in game design is to keep it simple and still get the simulation right. Plaudits on this to Dean & Co.

While we both deeply enjoy the CWB game system, we have concluded that once having lead you to the precipice of disaster, the system lets you off too easily. Case in point: defensive stoppage and no-order status. Nothing could make this case more dramatically than an example of what we are describing, followed by a brief synopsis on causes and cures for it.

In a recent game of TATC, 11 Corps failed its defensive orders die roll, thereby placing it in no-orders status. The defensive stoppage rules are essentially the same as the ECR rules except the HQ must fall back 12 MPs. Units without HQs (e.g. independent brigades or units operating under divisional goals) retreat 12 MPs individually. Well in this case, of course, 11 Corps does have an HQ. In the actual event, the HQ retreated 12 MPs down the road, using off-road movement, which the ECR rules specifically permit.

However, it may then trace its command radius back down the road 8 MPs, using the road movement rate. The HQ having done this, no 11 Corps unit had to retreat an inch in Gettysburg. Then, in the Command Phase following the two allowed turns they could stay and fight, the HQ decided to retreat another 6 MPs. It did this using off-road movement and only minor realignment was required in the town. Finally, three command phases later, it had to retreat again with the remnant company or two remaining. The 11 Corps literally fought to the last man in a situation which the defensive orders rule was attempting to show that Howard regarded as untenable 2 1/2 hours before.

We came to believe the desired effect and the acquired effect were two different things. The problem is that when defensive failure occurs, the focus of the current rule is on the HQ's position rather than the units holding the position, and that units under no orders are cut an automatic two-turn grace period, after which a fairly inconsequential fallback and straggler check is required.

Since the general on the scene has decided the position is untenable, we feel the following would be the best solution. We have tested this and it works like a charm. When a player rolls a defensive failure, the HQ still falls back as before, but all units in that command must retreat, their full movement allowance, from the position they are defending. This also applies to units without HQ. Dismounted cavalry may give ground dismounted or mount up at the player's discretion. Normal retreat rules, including retreat fire, apply. A unit whose retreat is completely blocked by enemy units and/or impassable terrain surrenders.

Mark off all remaining boxes as permanent hits; any stragglers accrued beforehand are still recoverable. When a unit is under no-order status, rather than have the two-turn grace period, roll for stoppage every command phase but with a -1 modifier to the roll to reflect the fact that the commander has no definite orders to continue holding his current position and would not be as resolute as a result. This also eliminates the sometimes difficult task, in the larger battles, of remembering who was supposed to fall back which turn.

The progression for orders failure are now +1 for defense, 0 for attack, -1 for no orders. In case of a no-orders failure, the HQ falls back 6-12 MPs, but the units in the command must fall back per our defensive failure rule (i.e. their full movement allowance). We have found that this rule makes placement of the HQ more or less self-policing and somewhat superfluous, as it should be. We have found shot-up formations under no orders are driven quite easily, while fresh ones under no orders can still crystallize a defense but with far less certainty and much increased fog of war.

Please note that for a unit to roll for no-order stoppage the same rules apply as currently apply to defensive stoppage. (Only units under small arms fire are required to roll.) In the course of Steve's discussion with Dean on this, Dean suggested this alternate solution. Force an HQ on a road, to use the road movement rate in its retreat. However, on some of the battlefields in the system, this rule could result in HQs flying off the board a bit too frequently.

LOS Refinements

Steve: Here are some clarifications from Dean that came up in the course of conversation. As we know, the game treats slopes as upward curving, not wedding cake hills as in other systems. The algorithm shows trees adding one elevation to the level of their hex, but this does not mean they are treated as a hill level themselves when determining if someone can see up or down a hillside forest hex.

For example, in virtually all instances units fighting on the slopes of the Little and Big Round Tops must be adjacent to see each other, even though the algorithm would seem to indicate otherwise. The general rule of thumb is this: if you are in a woods hex and a higher elevated unit is trying to see you through an adjacent woods hex, he cannot unless he is in that adjacent hex himself. As always LOS is reciprocal. Use common sense where necessary.

Second, do not add an elevation to a hex with orchards in it for LOS purposes. While rules do say to do this, Dean indicated in his discussion with us that the orchard trees are too short to have the same effect in this regard as forest. They would still block same-level LOS, however.

A question came up in our last game. If a unit is retreated by fire, may it be targeted again in the same Fire Phase? No, the rule states the same hex may not be targeted twice, neither could the same unit, even if in different hexes.

The Great Debate

Steve: One topic that continually arises is the casualty tables being too bloody and troops getting no benefit from woods as regards protection from incoming fire. After researching these two topics, I have concluded that the former is a correct assessment but for the wrong reasons, and the latter complaint is wrong. Dean's explanation regarding it bore up well under research. The reason the Fire Combat Table is too bloody is because there is no rule to cover the troops going prone is a firefight. Going prone in the Civil War? Yes. Recommended reading is Paddy Griffith's Battle Tactics of the Civil War and John Hennesie's Return to Bull Run. Brawner's Farm and going prone are covered in these two works.

Rules to reflect this follow. Please note that these are chrome, and will have an adverse effect on playability, unlike the rules which preceded this.

First: You may order troops prone at any time. Only infantry and dismounted cavalry may do so. When prone, they fire with a one column shift to the left to their fire. Second: When infantry or dismounted cavalry receive fire from adjacent enemy units, they must take a special morale check after the combat results are applied. If they pass BL or NE, there is no effect. However, if the effect is SH, DG, or rout, they involuntarily go prone. This is the only adverse effect to failing this morale check.

A unit leaves prone status by no longer being in small arms range of enemy units, or by successfully rolling BL or NE as a special roll in the rally phase. A third method is if a prone unit rolls a BL result during a normal morale check caused by enemy fire. A prone unit may not move, but may change facing. Also, D and E class units never go prone involuntarily, nor does any unit that was just fired on in Close Combat.

The net result is that green troops simply did not know enough to go prone, although they were far more likely to break and run under fire. More seasoned troops would fall prone hoping to reduce their chances of becoming casualties, but really only succeeded in reducing their cohesion and rate of fire.

A simpler means of reflecting this is to use the KTX markers mentioned in Operations magazine. After the first time a unit fires, it receives a marker and the prone penalty to its fire only. This marker can be removed only when the unit can fulfill the restrictions of straggler recovery, and all its stragglers have been recovered. Also use these markers to reflect units being prone in the previous rule.

Carl: My take on this is slightly different. While I agree the combat tables themselves are too bloody, I am not convinced that the command rules and random events tables do not regulate this to some extent. For instance, I have 4 games currently in progress: three TATC and one August Fury. One TATC is a blood bath beyond belief, with both sides currently at 37,000 permanent casualties by 10:00 a.m. of 2 July. The second is at 17,000 by the same point, while the third has a total of 100 casualties by 12:00 pm of 1 July with precious little more expected before roughly 4:00 pm! The August Fury game has 11,000 casualties at 2:30 pm of the second day.

The reason for these discrepancies were random events and the stoppage rules. While I feel there is a problem with the Fire Combat Table, I also feel that a great deal more games and final results need to be in before acquiring a reasonable data base.

Is there a solution for the problem? I favor a simple readjustment of the fire point determination chart, as opposed to reworking the Fire Combat Table. It would entail something along the lines of the table on the left.

Artillery I would leave the same except to extend the 1/2 firepower rule to 3+ hexes. This I say, because it is too easy to use artillery in an offensive capacity against infantry from 3 hexes. The chance of a 5 gun point unit inflicting hits at 3 hexes on infantry is well over 50% each shot, with no possibility of response from infantry. Usually when casualties to the infantry climbed this high the infantry was also close enough to have something to say back, i.e. a two hex range.

I would recommend no change to the + weapons, as they were indeed quite nasty. As with all such drastic changes, considerable playtesting would be required to determine if relatively consistent historical casualties get run up. [Ed. note: This change to the Fire Point Determination Chart is drastic indeed. Consider your style of play to help decide whether to use it. My sense is that very high casualty rates--say double the historical casualties--happen when players adopt the typical wargaming practice of pushing units to their maximum performance each turn.

In this case casualties can go way up for short periods, but the effects of unit wreckage on morale and stoppage rolls tend to regulate casualties in the long run. Still, your style of play matters a good deal. If you get into "fair" firefights and push your troops till they crumble, you'll see casualties that are very high by historical standards.]

Concealment

Steve: Units in a forest hex may conceal themselves from non-adjacent enemy units for firing and spotting purposes. Place a SH marker under the unit to reflect its lack of cohesion in the woods. This effect remains until the unit is voluntarily rallied by the owning player or the unit is retreated out of the hex as a result of combat. While concealed, units may fire at--and be fired upon by--adjacent enemy units only. If you are using the prone option, the concealed unit is also considered prone.

If after all this you still want to fight in the woods, here is another rule to reflect the problems of doing so. Place a DG marker under the unit. You now can claim protective benefit from the woods you are in: the fire value of all incoming fire is halved before being resolved.

However, your outgoing fire is halved, and if you go prone your fire still has the -1 column shift. You can rally a unit in a woods line hex from concealment by placing an SH marker under it, thereby losing its woods protective benefit. If you are using this rule in conjunction with the concealment rule, mark the concealed unit DG, not SH. Please note that the +2 column shift against a DG target does not apply to a unit using woods protection unless the unit became DG through normal means. Units in woods that are not part of a tree line would be DG automatically.

[Ed. note: I would not try to combine these rules with the Wilderness terrain effects in Bloody Roads South.]

City Fighting

Steve: These rules apply only to a unit in a city, firing at a unit also in a city. There are four possible infantry formations in a city: line, entrenched, battle column and road column [Ed note: For road column, see the optional rule in series rule 12.2]. Units in road column or entrenched perform as always. Units in line may only fire C strength from a hex. Units in battle column, which means a column but with the whole brigade concentrated in one hex, has the same facing as a unit in line, can fire no more than B fire from its hex and still takes the +2 shift against it when fired upon. However, it does not suffer the -6 penalty for being shot on its morale checks.

What this translates into is lines breaking up into small formations and skirmishing in towns whereas columns maintain their concentration better, while making better targets. Also, units should not be able to move in line through a town freely. Any unit in line that moves 2 hexes through a town or enters one town hex this turn from outside the town without starting adjacent to the hex is SH. If the unit goes one hex further into the town that turn, it becomes DG. No unit may go 4 hexes through a town in line without losing all cohesion and routing. This rule also applies to retreats. Any unit forced to retreat in a town drops one morale level to the worse for each town hex it retreats into while in line.

Committing Wrecked Units to Offensive Orders

Carl: As we all know, the Civil War was fought in campaigns, not single all-or-nothing battles. The battles were merely the culminations of the campaigns. All generals had to concern themselves with tomorrow. We, as gamers, do not. As a result, once a unit was wrecked in actual combat, commanding generals virtually invariably refused to commit them to anything more strenuous than defensive work. This resulted in the phenomenon of battles being fought out, and sometimes both sides moving on as if by mutual consent.

To reflect this, allow no wrecked division to be part of offensive orders for its Corps, or to be given offensive divisional goals. The same goes for brigades eligible for divisional goals. Fresh troops will become even more precious as a result of this rule. Steve alternatively suggests assigning a victory point penalty for units so committed to an attack. However, I oppose this on the grounds that I have not yet seen one instance of it being done!

The Big Powwow Problem

Carl: The army commander having IPV powwows with his subordinates is still a problem despite some interesting rules offered within these pages which make doing so somewhat more difficult. [Ed. note: see Ops 15, 17, and 19 in particular] I would like to toss in my two cents' worth on this one.

As mentioned in other articles in the magazine, army commanders rarely went careening around in battlefield in search of their subordinates. Just as unlikely was a major conference being called in the middle of a battle. The corps commanders had better things to do, such as look to the concerns of their corps.

Try this to reflect this reality. For a subordinate to attend a conference with the army commander, he must first roll initiative. All anti-initiative and loose cannon rules apply. If the army commander wishes, he can summon his corps commanders to a conference. He must do this via the normal order sending procedure, and such orders must be rolled for acceptance in the normal way, and count against the orders cost charts the same as any other orders would. Also, while the corps commander is not either with a unit of his corps or his corps HQ, treat all stoppage rolls as if that corps commander has become a casualty. If he is already a casualty and the replacement wanders off, apply a -1 to the stoppage rolls while the replacement is not stacked with either a unit of the corps or corps HQ.

OK, maybe I will send the army commander to the corps commanders instead. To do this you must roll initiative for the army commander. No anti-initiative would apply, but a loose cannon roll may; in that case, the army commander cannot roll initiative for this purpose for a number of turns equal to a two-dice (2-12) roll. Use this in conjunction with the "Which Way Did They Go?" (Ops 15) rules by Dave Powell to get the optimum results.

Please note that the above rules do not apply at night, as that is when most such conferences were held. However, Dave Powell's rule should, I believe, be used regardless of time of day or night. Also, an army commander who is moving onto the board for the first time may stack freely with one of his corps commanders, once, without rolling initiative. Once the army commander has his HQ go stationary for the first time in a game, he will have to roll initiative to go visiting thereafter. To summon the other corps commanders to him, he always has to order them to the conference, or they have to roll initiative. This exception allows an army commander who just arrived on the field to have a chat with one of his commanders to try to get some fix on what is going on, but once he establishes HQ, he will tend to stay put. The net effect of these rules is to promote more reliance on written orders.

Steve: Lastly, my research indicates that only the first Union Cavalry Division has sufficient breechloaders to be a + weapon unit in NBPtD. Rosecrans kept requesting them but they did not arrive until after the battle.

Carl/Steve: We hope this will add a little more flavor to your gaming. Some of these rules will detract from playability while others will not. We hope you will enjoy them.