break the square

i read the recent FAQ for this card but I must ask if you must play it before the square rolls its dice to see if it bounces the cavalry or if you can wait and play it after the defender die roll?

Immediate before the cavalry rolls their dice, so you wait, until the Infantry rolled their first die, then you may play the card.

I have to say I have concerns about this card. Squares didn't break too often, Garcia Hernandez being a rare example.
Guess we will see how it goes, but 2 cards in a deck of 50 seems to me that it will be too frequent, and ergo make squaring up an even more critical decision that it already is.

It wont show up too often, since going too deeply into the tactician deck seems unlikely in games unless they are very protracted affairs. I could see it being 1/50 cards though instead of 2/50. its dangerous enough going into square. Gamewise though, it is a neat card.

Despite the title of 'break the square' I choose to look at it as a combination of breaking the square and/or a failed or partially completed square before the cav hit it.

Right now, with the "basic deck/rules" I find cavalry are already too powerful against squares. Squares were broken only a handful of times in the entire period. For the rest, they broke before, or whilst attempting to form square. Currently, with the 1 die vs 1 die ruling, unless the infantry can roll a flag they will kill on a 33% chance (cav/sabre), whilst the cavalry kill on a 67% chance (inf x2/sabre/flag). Seems to me to be way too high kill rate against the square. Most of the time, the horsemen simply milled around, and the infantry were out of reach to be sabred by their attackers. Woe betide a square of 2 blocks which forms against a 4-5 block cavalry unit.

We found this a problem and changed the rule so that cavalry only kill infantry in a square on a sabre roll. This has made squares much harder to beat with cavalry alone and we are more likely to move artillery/infantry in to kill the square pinned by the cavalry - combined arms in action.

Hi Simon
Makes excellent sense. Whether a kill on a sabre roll, or a kill on an inf roll, it's definitely an improvement historically.

One thing I've learnt though is not to expect CCN to be a true simulation. I tend to think of it as a GAME rather than a simulation. For example, I can't get my head around how units can advance, and then fire without being first fired upon as they advance. I keep forgetting I can do this, since there are few Napoleonic wargames out there which would allow this. But it does work in the game/balance sense. Very often, the overall "feel" of the battle is maintained, although the details are not always ideal. As a result, I play CCN as a GAME (like chess), and leave the simulation part to games such as La Bataille. For this reason, I prefer not to add more layers of rules, such as the tactical cards, which I don't think are necessary to what already is a great game.

The other thing which CCN generally does is create balanced, and therefore often, ahistorical scenarios. It was rare that actions would be balanced. I've just played Gamonal twice and it's already unbalanced in favour of the French, but historically the Spanish were even worse than portrayed in the scenario - half the infantry were militia, and they had less cavalry. But they've been beefed up a little and it means they can make some sort of defence during the game. I think that increasing reliance on objective hexes, tactical withdrawals, etc, are a better way of dealing with these sorts of situations, rather than balancing the units and relying on simple unit elimination, and I've been pleased to see such changes as the system's evolved. But in the end, as I said, I see this more as a game than trying to portray specific actions highly accurately.

I would think that maybe hit as usual on the turn the square forms to represent the failure to form and after that just sabres.

Phill

A couple of things.

Maybe a better title for the "Break the Square" card would be "Broken Square," This would represent not only those few times when the square was actually broken, but when the square failed form properly as well.

I might be in a minority here, but I think the existing square rules handicap cavalry a quite a bit (as they should). I find the real advantage in attacking infantry with cavalry is to remove a command card from my opponent's hand when he goes into square, not in destroying the infantry unit with the cavalry. Getting the infantry into square makes a nice juicy target for a follow-up infantry melee attack, too. It's pretty rare for infantry to stand and not form square, and definitely a dance with the devil for them to take that chance. Unless, of course, they have a First Strike card (I hate those!).

Once in square, repeatedly atttackng the square with cavalry seems to be a long, drawn-out affair that usually leaves the cavalry unit seriously depleted by the time the infantry unit is eliminated. And if the infantry has an attached leader, it's pretty much pointless to keep attacking a square with cavalry, IMHO.

Grondeaux wrote: Once in square, repeatedly atttackng the square with cavalry seems to be a long, drawn-out affair that usually leaves the cavalry unit seriously depleted by the time the infantry unit is eliminated. And if the infantry has an attached leader, it's pretty much pointless to keep attacking a square with cavalry, IMHO.

And there's the point - you don't have to attack the square for the cavalry to be effective.