Having spoken to other gamers at length, I feel its time to address the balance, i.e. Rapid Fire doesn't allow us to enter into close combat.

Various methods have been tried - the key to is something fast, that is not going to encourage everyone to get into a melee situation that they'll win every time.

My own idea is that carrying on from the rule on page 20 -- house to house fighting. Amend so that when a company is in base to base contact with another company, it may choose to enter a close combat round. If both companys are in the open take the amount of figures and add the result of a 1D6.

If the defender is in soft cover add a 1d8.
If the defender is in hard cover add a 1d10.
If the attacker is mounted cavalry (cannot attack infantry in hard cover) add a 1d10.

N.B - if both are cavalry both use a 1d10. The loser takes a morale test but with an additional -2 for losing the melee.