Black Powder rules clarification

[Rod MacArthur]

Hi all,

I am new to this forum and have recently started wargaming again, after a gap of several years, although I have never stopped expanding my Napoleonic wargames armies. My local wargame club, Tunbridge Wells Wargame Society ran a Hail Caesar game (Crusaders v Saracens) a couple of weeks ago, which I enjoyed participating in and I am joining in my first game of Black Powder (Seven Year's War French v Austrians) in a couple of weeks time.

I have copies of both rulebooks and am very much in favour of the ethos of these rules. What turned me off wargaming back in the 1990s was when I was umpiring the Napoleonic tournaments at Colours in Reading for several years and some of the competitors were more interested in very aggressive petty gamesmanship, with no spirit of give and take, regardless of historical accuracy or even enjoyability.

I am concentrating on trying to fully understand the Black Powder rules before my first game, by reading the rulebook from cover to cover a few times and doing some solo play testing of my own (based on Packenham's 3rd Division attacking Thombieres 7th Division at Salamanca - which I have all the units for).

I do have a couple of queries, so here goes:

a. P 47 says that shooting "to hit" modifiers include -1 for shooters being either shaken, or disordered or both. If the shooters are both shaken and disordered Is this just one -1 or a cumulative total of -2? The same question applies to hand to hand combat modifiers on P 65.

b. Am I correct in understanding (from P 72) that artillery who are required to take a Break Test as a result of Hand-to-Hand combat will always break and be destroyed (not much point throwing the dice then!)

c. Hills are not mentioned as a separate category in the Terrain section (P 36 - 38), so would appear to create no movement penalty as such (unless part of them is defined as rough ground or impassable). As I understand it hills do however affect visability (as per P 40) and allow artillery (but not other troops) to engage in overhead fire as per P 54. Am I correct in my assumptions.

Rod

[Big Al]

Hi Rod

To answer your questions

1) The key is the use of the word "or". So the -1 is not cumulative, it is just applied once for any or all of those conditions.

2) Same again in hand to hand.

3) Unfortunately, this is the trade off with artillery. It is very fragile when contacted, but it is a pig to get close enough to do the damage!

Hope all this helps

Al

[Rod MacArthur]

Hi Al,

Many thanks.

Rod

[Big Al]

Any time.

I didn't realise that I hadn't answered your point C. Yes you are correct in your assumption.

Cheers

Al

[Last Hussar]

Of course there is nothing stopping you defining a hill in any way you wish (ie no charge bonus when charging up hill etc)

[Rod MacArthur]

Yes, the option of agreeing a local rule of "no charge bonus when charging uphill" makes a lot of sense to me.

Rod