A few more Black Powder questions

[Heimdall]

We played our first game on Monday night and in the inevitable defeat of the British by the victorious Sudanese hordes a few questions came up.

1. In hand-to-hand combat if the victor has received casualties that take them above their Stamina value what happens to them. Do they need to take a break test or as they won the hand-to-hand they just remove the extra casualties?
2. There is no reduction in the firing ability of troops if they move, we just wondered why not?
3. Artillery have a -1 factor for shooting at over half range but there isn’t an equivalent factor for infantry firing, which seems a bit harsh for the poor gunners. Again, any reason why not?

I liked the way the game went and the rules were easy to get to grips with. It took a bit of time for some people to realise that they had to state "exactly" what they wanted to do, but once they did it went well.

One tip, stay away from British Hussars, 'cos they are nasty in a fight! Shoot the donkey-wallopers instead of stabbing them.

regards
Jason

[Rich Jones]

Hi

Can only help with the first as can only guess on the 'why' questions ...

If a unit hits its stamina value but wins the combat it doesn't have to take a test HOWEVER if it is a draw and a unit has hit it then it must take one. In our games this has sometimes resulted with both sides breaking ... last night it happened in the last combat of the game and managed to break my army; had such great fun I didn't even care :-)

[Aradyon]

As to the second questions. I obviously can't say why, for the authors but I can give plausible reasons for this.

2) It is not a micro-game, and consider that in the age of the musket, specific aiming was generally secondary to volume/direction of fire, and in many cases impossible, so it does not make the weapon any more or less likely to hit, if the unit moved, and then blazed into smoke. In micro-intensive games, with rifles, this penalty does make sense, because your not sending 700 shotsat the enemy at a time, so your shots have to be aimed. Also, we can just say that units halt to fire, generally, and are practiced at doing so.

3) This is again, similar to the first previous case. In musket warfare, a weapon had a maximum range, and troops simply filled that area with lead. It was never specific enough, or far away enough, for individual aiming to have much affect, and so, the standard shooting for troops is always at similar odds, unless they are very close, in which case more shots will contact, though the aiming will not be any better. This is not the case for artillery. Artillery shoot slower, and require greater aiming. They also have greater deviation because they are firing much further than a musket, and the result is that the micro-adjustment of the cannon, has a large affect at that range, especially since there aren't nearly as many cannon. So, there is a reduction for artillery, as they are much more of an 'aimed' weapon than muskets. Of course once rifles started to really come into play, it could be worth making house fules which do penalise infantry at maximum range. With muskets, though, it really isn't necessary, because one person, isn't strafing another.