yammahoper -> RE: Committing The Guard? (7/25/2004 11:27:39 PM)
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I often commit the guard when playing. I always look at the battle table and see if a shift on the morale column will insure a break or if a descent roll will if I should commit the guard. Also, on rounds I know I am going to break, I have also commited the guard hoping to break my enemy too. EiA battle table is a cross index. On one side of the index is five rows for "casualties". On the other side is five rows for "morale". If a fight starts on the 2-3 table, you go to row number 2 on the casualty side and row number 3 on the moral side. Attacks are rolled on a d6 and can result from -1 to +7. Now, imagoine you are the Russian fighting the Turk and all you face are fudal corps, which all have a 2.0 morale. You choose Assualt and the Turk choose Outflank. The first day of battle you fight on the 2-3 table as the russian, while the Turk fights on the 2-1. Looking at the 2-3, you notice that you will do 2.0 morale damage to the turk if you roll a five or better. However, the 2-5 table does 2.1 morale dage on a THREE or better on a d6. Often, the turk has big numbers, and to make matters worse, if he successfully outflanks you, he will roll on the 4-4 table for the next two days of battle and you will be on the 3-1 table. If this occurs and you roll average, you will loose the fight and face pursuit by a lot of fudal cav. Knowing this, you may opt to commit the guard for a two colum shift on the first day, risking the battle in an all or nothing gambit. If you roll well, great, but if you fail you will be torn up by cav pursuit...on the other hand, since you auto break, you do not have to face those two days on the 4-4 table! Guard commitment can be done for lots of reasons. In the above example, if the outflanking force had very little or no cav, commiting the guard is an even better gamble as it guarentees you will save 8 to 15 factors (or more as troops used to outflank are doubled in number for figuring casualties suffered!) in troops should you be outflanked. One of the very real weaknesses of the Brits, Spanish and Turk is they cannot commit guard, a fact that has haunted me many times playing the Brits. yamma
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