Battle Cry rules with C&C Napoleonics adaptions

These are a set of replacement rules for Battle Cry 150, adapting several elements of Commands & Colors Napoleonics into the Battle Cry system. The concept is to use the BC150 game components (cards, units, terrain) with modified rules to enhance the game experience in a historical kind of way.

This set is a draft version for comment (and any playtesting appreciated).






For experienced Battle Cry players, the main changes start around Page 8. For those experienced in C&C Napoleonics as well, there will be a great deal of familiar material here.

My experiences have been that the power of the defender is significantly enhanced, and attacking becomes a good deal more use of concealing terrain and thoughtful approach. OTOH, initial softening of the defenders does pay off.

In comparison with C&C Napoleonics, infantry ranges are a little longer, artillery a little better. Cavalry is far less powerful, with no charges, or additional combat. On the plus side, there are no infantry squares. Retire & Reform allows cavalry to quickly retreat from melee, but I'm recommending using the Optional Dismounted cavalry ranged fire to give rather weak cavalry more of a role.

The other optional rule is using Fight Back cards in an additional capacity as First Strike cards in melee combat. Fight Back cards are otherwise useful in making a Fight Back return of fire versus ranged attack.

So we gave these rules a playtest of Pickett's Charge today, resulting in a 7-6 Confederate win after what was a fairly historical opening of a Bombardment, several turns of Confederate softening the centre, and preparing cards for a Centre drive (with the Union positioning the flanks), followed by a Rebel Forced march up the centre. Armistead even died, though just on the Rebel side of the fence. This charge ultimately failed, and the Union was up 5-2 and counterattacking at one point.

Remarkably, the Rebels regathered, and with some good cards, and poor Union dice, Pickett made his 2nd charge that went over the fence and squeezed out an improbable victory.

More to the point of the playtest, I was happy how the Fence, Woods and Homestead terrain worked out, and the power of the Artillery seemed about right. Nothing seemed to break rule wise, so I'm looking for stress tests now.

Hi Mark,

Great work and well done. My group has been waffling abut adding many of these things to battle cry and this would make it easy to make the change.

A few comments and typos i noticed that could help make it even better.

p8 under units in battle the 3rd bullet point is the old "always at full strength" rule

p8 under artillery it only mentions the hill bonus for HA

p15 last paragraph mentions First Strike instead of Fight Back

Under terrain, Orchards, Hills, and fFelds all have cut and paste references to other terrain types.

Is there a reason for the difference in Woods and Homesteads different "battle out when moving in" penalty? It seems like they could be the same to me.

Phill

Thanks for the good work as editor here Phil, nothing like a fresh set of eyes to see the errors.

I've incorporated your specific points into the attached revision.
Most are simple fixes, but the Artillery on a Hill rules I've put all into the Hill terrain rule.
Something to note is that I've not made Horse Artillery any different if it moves. It always shoots 4-3-2-1 (except on a Hill 4-3-2-1-1) even if it moves. Probably a very minor distinction, but an inconsistency with the CCN rules.
Anyway, if you could look at those revised sections again please, pages 8 & 17

With regards to the differences between Battle on Entry & Battle Out for Woods and Homesteads, to an extent these derive from the original BattleCry rules. The BC and CCN rules diverge a bit here, so the aim was to keep the original intent of the BC effect within the 'CCN' system. Woods in particular I playtested quite a bit, since entering cover and battling as well was an advantage. It still is, but the battling is slightly limited.

I feel a passionate attraction to

Looks good.

Couple of thoughts/questions:

You lose the distinction for troops battling out of Towns vs Homesteads. It seemed in BC150 that towns were intended to be almost as disruptive to defenders as to attacker, but you have made the penalty the same as for the Homestead?

Similarly (and I know you sort of addressed it already), but did you playtest simply keeping the terrain penalties the same for woods, homesteads, and towns as default BC150? (i.e. -2 die for infantry moving into woods, -1 die for artillery on homesteads, -2 die for artillery on towns and -1 die for infantry and cavalry on towns)? What about the results lead to to suggest the current version?

Also, did I miss it, or did you omit the penalty for ranged fire while moving that is in CCA and CCN?

NimitsTexan wrote: You lose the distinction for troops battling out of Towns vs Homesteads. It seemed in BC150 that towns were intended to be almost as disruptive to defenders as to attacker, but you have made the penalty the same as for the Homestead?

I made BC Towns the same as CCN towns, mostly for regularity. Who needs yet another rule irregularity for confusion.
Homesteads aren't in CCN. So I matched the BC effect as much as possible.

NimitsTexan wrote: Similarly (and I know you sort of addressed it already), but did you playtest simply keeping the terrain penalties the same for woods, homesteads, and towns as default BC150? (i.e. -2 die for infantry moving into woods, -1 die for artillery on homesteads, -2 die for artillery on towns and -1 die for infantry and cavalry on towns)? What about the results lead to to suggest the current version?

Not really. I did experiment with a few people's variants, but this variant was just a wholesale transfer of the CCN rules to the BC components. So if it transferred easily, I left it alone unless it was clearly inappropriate (e.g. forming squares). It was only when there was no CCN precedent that I had to try and capture the BC origins (Homesteads, Orchards, Fields, Fences, Entrenchments).

NimitsTexan wrote: Also, did I miss it, or did you omit the penalty for ranged fire while moving that is in CCA and CCN?

The penalty for moving infantry fire is dice per figure is halved, then rounded up. I'll check to see that this is included in the rules, but I feel sure it went in being a core rule of CCN.

So again, acknowledging that it is easier to critique someone else's work than do it yourself, my (admittedly untested) concept would be to have:

Homestead (which I agree are not quite analogous to a CCN town):

-1 infantry/cavalry moving in and battling
-1 artillery firing out
-1 Battle in

Town
-1 infantry/cavalry battle out
-1 artillery battle out
-2 battle in

Forest
-2 infantry moving in and battling (i.e. "melee" only)
-1 battling in

Having infantry basically only being able to "melee" when moving into woods meets, IMO, the design intent of BC150 (where in the original rules, 4 range infantry is reduced by 2 hexes to a max range of two for that turn).

The towns in BC150 are, IMO, supposed to represent something more substantial/urban that the towns in CCN, while the homesteads are generally used, in the scenarios we have, to represent single buildings or farm complexes.

I would also recommend

1) Eliminating cavalry Retire and Reform (ACW cavalry typically was not able to "skedaddle" out of trouble they way cavalry had in earlier conflicts).

2) Eliminate combined arms (the "artillery attack" was not that common in the ACW, or generally used very effectively, and never with cavalry; the CCN rulebook specifically lists this as a "Napoleonic" rule).

3) Allowing ranged fire to target leaders (Many ACW leaders were hit at long range, and anyway, is not that rule added to CC:N GMT?).

In terms of the terrain, I reasonably happy with the existing rules, they have been playtested, and I don't really believe American towns are any different to European towns, other than possibly being more wooden in America.

Homesteads are treated as 'light' towns

Forest moving in gets a -1, and halved if ranged fire. There is also a limit of 2 range when moving in. This makes it pretty close to original BC. American infantry get treated as semi-light in that regard.

1) Eliminating cavalry Retire and Reform (ACW cavalry typically was not able to "skedaddle" out of trouble they way cavalry had in earlier conflicts).

This make cavalry very brittle, and from my reading, cavalry very frequently dismounted to shoot, and then mounted to retreat before 'infantry' could get to them.

2) Eliminate combined arms (the "artillery attack" was not that common in the ACW, or generally used very effectively, and never with cavalry; the CCN rulebook specifically lists this as a "Napoleonic" rule).

This I do tend to agree with. I retained combined arms from the CCN rules for simplicity, but whether it has ACW character is debatable. I can't think of any offensive example, but The Angle at Gettysburg is an example of defensive combined arms. I'll definitely consider this as a revision. Anyone else have any thoughts or examples?

3) Allowing ranged fire to target leaders (Many ACW leaders were hit at long range, and anyway, is not that rule added to CC:N GMT?).

They weren't at the time the rules were converted, but as of Exp. 5 they are part of CCN. That is leaders alone, attached leaders were already subject to leader loss. I intend to refresh the BC rules (CCN conversion) with the Exp. 5 mods, including the Tactics cards at the next reasonable opportunity.

Thanks for your very good work Mark.