Assault Rule Discussion Part 2

[SGT Rice]

On the pro side ...

Let's face it, the old disrupt-surround-assault method of playing CS was pretty cheesy; it bore little resemblance to any of the history I've read. So I commend the efforts of the Volk who are willing to be the agents of change, to put new ideas out there trying to improve the historicity and simulation value of this great game.

In support of their efforts I would like to toss out a few thoughts:

All of the John Tiller games I'm familiar with (Civil War, Napoleonic, Panzer Campaigns) have three morale states; Normal, Disrupted and Broken. I submit that you can't get a decent model of battlefield morale without somehow introducing a 'Broken' morale state into CS, representing units that have pretty much lost the will to fight and are ripe for surrender to the first significant enemy force that closes with them.

The old assault rules tried to have it both ways; disrupted units could still move and shoot, but they were ready to surrender at the drop of a hat. Not good.

The new rules are a step in the right direction, but they don't really create a good mechanism for turning disrupted-but-still-fighting units into POW candidates. The current mechanism for reducing the morale of enemy units is to rack up multiple 'retreat' results with direct fire; if you can herd them around the map for four or five hexes then their morale should be low enough to allow an easy assault overrun.

I would suggest that unit morale should be reduced by one for:

losing a casualty point AND failing a morale check
every disrupt result
every retreat result
being in a low ammo state
being out of command range of a higher headquarters
being stacked with a leader who is eliminated

Leaders are different; their morale should be reduced by one for:

being out of command range of a higher headquarters
being part of a stack that's forced to retreat
being part of an entire stack of low ammo units
each unit in their hex that is eliminated.

Being surrounded should have a huge impact. If a unit is surrounded the morale penalty should be four points MINUS the following:

1/2 a point for the concealment value of all unoccupied adjacent hexes.

If a unit is reduced to zero morale then it should be unable to fire, should pay quadruple movement costs (even reducing it to zero movement) and its assault strength reduced by half (rounding down, potentially to zero). These changes would create a mechanism by which disrupted units deteriorate into 'broken' units that can be easily overrun.

The old 'ping-pong-retreat' result is another somewhat cheesy element of CS that needs to be addressed along with assaults. Retreats should be limited to one hex per turn (though multiple morale losses could still occur from multiple retreat results), units should never retreat to a lower concealment level hex in LOS of an enemy unit and armor units should maintain their facing when retreated.

My two cents; while I sympathize a lot with the critiques of the new rules, I'm ready to look ahead, offer ideas and feedback and hope for a better game to come.