Austrian and Russian command penalties

[arcole]

In Clash of Eagles, both the Russian and Austrian brigade commanders get some serious command penalties.

The exact phrasing is “Austrian and Russian brigade commanders were not used to manoeuvring brigade-size formations and lacked the very experienced staff that the French army possessed, resulting in a lack of inter-unit cooperation.”

Do people feel this should continue to be applied in 1813/14? The mention of the lack of experienced staff seems a bit strange given  none of the other armies get penalised!

If would help if there were other BP books available, especially as both nations played a major role in the wars but I will have to keep hoping!

Secondary question, has anyone tried alternatives to teh CoE rules for this?

[Nat]

For both its easy to make it a none entity rule… As the rule only affects battalions of different regiments (or cavalry regiments*)

The russians can take a brigade of 1 regiment… that may or may not have multiple battalions,  The one brigade where you need multiple battalions from different regiments is the grenadier brigade which effectively ignores this rule as well.

Cavalry can get round it by spliting the single regiment down in to two small units… they are still the same regiment for the purpose of brigade orders..

without double checking I think the austrians are the same.

[arcole]

Hi Nat,

The Austrians can field a brigade with one regiment. However, doing that does not really save anything as 2 regiments still need 2 command rolls whether they are in the same or different brigades. You also have the probem that any artillery battery will need a sperate command roll to move.

I have played around with small cavalry abteilungs, but they are a bit fragile having only 2 stamina.

[Nat]

(disclaimer… not got my Russians on the table yet)

yeah fair point on the Artillery front…
As a Russian I want multiple small bdes for the breakpoint and the fact that half of my Bde commanders have to be SR7.  So multiple bdes of 1 regiment works better for me (again in theory)

However, dont forget that BP is a framework rule system, so if you think something should be changed then so long as your opponents think the same change it.

[arcole]

That is why I asked the question – to see if anyone else has tried anything different. One idea that I have been thinking on is SR -1 if ordering 2 regiments, SR-2 is ordering 4 or more regiments

[Lochmoigh]

Do you mostly field Large units or do you use standard size? Reason I ask is I am about to start a campaign, and the GM is limiting me to one battalion at large. I am starting to wonder if I need to even play if I cam going to have a harder time with Maneuver and same sized units to get shot up.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Lochmoigh.

[arcole]

At the moment I have 10 painted battalions. Of these only 2 are large. Maneuvering has not been an issue as there is no command penalty for being large. Also, when in attack column the large battalion has the same frontage as the standard size battalion (3 wide/3 deep vs 3 wide/2 deep). The extra firepower of the large battalion in line is pretty good too.

[Author]

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