A new idea... I saw this somewhere on Consimworld (Out of the Wrapper or General discussion, by either Terdoslavich or Vasilakos): 'One of my lessons from my trips up 15 to Gettysburg is how a slight rise in ground can give one a great view of the surrounding country side. I think this effect has not been well portrayed instead we see that old defense shift used by many games. I imagine another approach would be to give the side with "terrain advantage" (in other words occupying the commanding heights) some benefit in iniative or command and control. ' I think this is an excellent idea, and I'm wondering how this could be made to work in Eylau. In particular, the Eagles of the Empire series has those separate rules for HQ's and Leaders. he HQ's range is dependent upon having the Chief of Staff present. How about: The leader's command range (which in the series is often as large as the HQ's, making the HQ into useless baggage) can only be used to apply to areas that are in LOS? (This would represent the fact that the HQ would be where couriers show up, whereas the leader, while having aides to send away, would not magnetically draw the couriers to him while he's away.) At Waterloo, one can expect the HQ to be fairly weak (since we have a bad chief of staff in Soult, no matter what his tactical rating is). So, if you have Nappy watching the Guards play with the Prussians in Plancenoit, Ney in the next valley is forced to rely on his initiative roll.) Concerning my Eylau article, I am currently asking Napoleonics experts in my vicinity about a particular problem, which I guess might include you as a noted and awaited if not quite delivered Napoleonics tactical designer. In addition you've also played Eylau which makes you almost uniquely qualified on this. To wit: I still have found it very hard to repeat Davout's drive in the game, and I wonder why that would be the case. One aspect that the series rules changed drastically in the edition that came with Eylau was to make Woods fairly defensible terrain against infantry attacks - 25% strength reduction for an attacker in assault. In the old rules the effect was instead halving the combat strength when firing out of the woods. As a result, in the new game, the terrain in front of Kutschitten on the Russian left (woods, then hill - "rise") is among the best defensive terrain found on the battlefield. Could it be that it would make more sense to assign an effect such as "defender's fire is halved" that would allow pressing the attack more effectively? More detailed games I've examined run the gauntlet from helping the defender (a shift against attackers) over no effect (no shift, or requiring anybody within to go to general order, which is kind of a disadvantage defending or attacking) to helping the attacker (a shift against a defender). CHV: I'm not sure I agree with it. The uses of terrain features like a slight rise seem to be that they "fix" a line in some way. Of course the attackers are tired and the defenders may feel they have superiority by the mere reason of height, but I don't see the advantages of a higher position solely being those of command. Certainly woods should be hard to take but not necessarily dangerous to assault (compared to say moving across a glacis) a mixture of both might work? Back to Perfidious Albion #102 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com