A few questions after my first play

[Xerxes77]

First of all, be cautious about comparing much of anything in the NAP or M&P engines to the ACW engine.  The split between those two engines is very long standing (20+ years at this point), and while they have many similarities, the differences will always trip you up. 

Column is one of the huge issues there.  It really represents different things across the engines.  In NAP, it represents the classic Napoleonic Column of Attack, which is a wider, shorter formation, while in ACW it is Column of March, longer and narrower.  Thus, column is penalized in ACW in ways it's not in NAP. (Incidentally, that varies in M&P.  In REN, Rich doesn't penalize column in the same what that SYW does, but that's to represent the different tactical formations of the different time periods.)

I haven't played ACW in years, and not with EFOW, so I can't comment on that.

There isn't ever really a display of the immediate morale status of a unit, aside from the letter grade and possible yellow text.  You won't be able to see what modifiers will be applied to the next rout phase.  Probably would be nice, but this is actually the first time I've thought about it myself.

Thanks for your answer, Gary. I get what you say about comparing the different engines. I brought up the other game(*) because it sounds like the player asking the question noticed the same I did in ACW - an infantry unit in column formation (differences of what a "column" represents in the different eras/series notwithstanding) gets the Enfilade penalty applied correctly when it's fired upon, but the status does not "stick", i.e. its morale is not reduced for the next rout phase, while the wording in the manual suggests that it should. Units in Line formation do get the penalty + the morale reduction.

(*) turns out it wasn't M&P (sorry), but EAW's Campaign 1776, see post #3 here:
https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...?tid=74822

As for the morale status, I went looking for it in my game when I noticed the "Quality" text in one of my units was yellow, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Eventually I concluded the unit (in Line formation) must have taken fire from the flank or rear at some point, so I assumed the drop in morale was likely to be minor, but I would've appreciated if the game had simply given me that tiny piece of info.

(I'm probably spoiled by Squad Battles , which relies on color coding quite a bit and I find it to be very visual & practical. Using different colors instead of just yellow could be a simple way of representing the different drops in morale for ACW. Yellow could mean a loss of 1-2 points, orange 3-4, red 5-6+, etc. The player would still have to deduce what exactly caused the reduction, but at least he'd have a bit more information).