Morale and Leadership

Part 3

by T.L. Gore


Part 1
Part 2

So now we have diced for our leaders quality. He can be anywhere from excellent to abysmal with appropriate pluses or minuses to a unit's morale. The question now has to be asked: how much influence will this have? Basically, we've divided up a unit's morale into five contributing factors: training, quality, physical condition, mental condition, and leadership quality. Each of these factors is worth one-fifth of a units total moral, with variable factors influencing physical and mental condition. Leadership remains constant unless the leader is killed or separated from his command. Let's look at an example of what we have,

A unit of 12 Norman knights, feudal (semi-regular) veteran, partially mailed cavalry armed with lance, sword and shield with a rash leader have orders to attack enemy to front. Next to then, with the same orders is a unit of Breton knights, feudal warrior class leather armoured cavalry armed with light spears sword and shield with an abysmal leader. On sighting enemy and coming in charge reach of same, the Normans will almost always become frenzied with its rash leader charging immediately towards its foe. Their morale will be overly-confident (goaded on by their crazed leader charging ahead) and they will probably severly maul anyone unfortunate enough to be in the way. The bad thing is, though, that they'll have a rough time stopping once put into motion and will continue attacking, pursuing, etc, until leaving the table or forced to rout! Their rash leader adds a plus two to all morale tests, always or until killed.

The Bretons however have an abysmal leader who always deducts two from his unit's morale. He may not even move towards the enemy much less charge, As stated in the last installment, leaders are assigned by the players to his units, therefore, it's better to use better leaders in the attack and put the worst ones in the woods or in cover to balance out their poor effect on the troops.

In summary then, we roll a 1d10 for each leader. (one per Unit)

    9-10: Excellent -- plus or minus 2
    7-8: Rash -- plus 2
    5-6: Average -- plus or minus one
    3-4: Cautious -- 0 or minus 2
    1,2: Abysmal -- minus 2.


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© Copyright 1986 by Terry Gore
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