Is the Magic Terrain broken and/or boring??

[craig.w]

But yes, not having it would make shooty cavalry armies life a bit more difficult. How much I am not sure.

I would, however, suggest that if the game needs an (IMO) dubious terrain type to balance shooty cavalry (allowing for the design desire to have them tough to play) then the game has something a bit wrong with the way it represents shooty cavalry.

I'm not sure there is a problem with shooty cavalry - but we are playing on a small board and they run away very easily. Also for the armies heavy with skirmishing cavalry, they lost half their cantabrian, so their firepower was reduced.

[Simon Meg-Meister]

But yes, not having it would make shooty cavalry armies life a bit more difficult. How much I am not sure.

I would, however, suggest that if the game needs an (IMO) dubious terrain type to balance shooty cavalry (allowing for the design desire to have them tough to play) then the game has something a bit wrong with the way it represents shooty cavalry.

Well it doesn't need it so much as I have sought to balance them with it in.
So am a bit concerned at taking it out.

S

[Simon Meg-Meister]

Thanks Craig.

Coasts and riverbank (its both) were pretty common anchor points for battles.
I guess it has risen a bit because we now have to stay in the C zone.
But it does mean we can put theose nice MeG costlines down .... :-)

The way to shift cav. infantry balance is really simple.
Its the deployment distances.
Make it 8MU from centre and cav a bit easier as more space, drop it to 4MU and tougher.

S

[Dru]

As the guy who raised the thread, I'd be cautious about removing it, actually, as the game works fairly well.

It's just that it's so boringly predictable that a cav army only chooses that same terrain, in the biggest size it can get.

And I have, to date, only played foot slogger armies - and that is my preferred armies - so even I don't want a change to the mechanics as due to the game design balancing it all out. 

What I am really interested in, is considering down the track how to stop it being spammed. How do we get more variety of terrain and force the cav armies to be more invested in the PBS rather than by default not caring very much and just holding best cards for scouting. (Maybe max 1 'magic terrain' per person, or something). Definitely needs consideration before anything done.

[accard]

If you want to force more variety you could perhaps choose your terrain type (eg rough) but then role a dice to see exactly which type of  piece you receive.
But someone would have to design a number of tables for each territory type. It might be a bit complex to figure out.

[Simon Meg-Meister]

We need to KISS to keep set up speed high.
I have to say I haven't found it a huge issue.
Maybe we can start to report back games where it is and then consider options.

S

[stuuk]

Also for the armies heavy with skirmishing cavalry, they lost half their cantabrian, so their firepower was reduced.

This was the big 2019 change for me in terms of skirmisher firepower - not the terrain.
Loss of green dice is a big deal.


The oddness of this terrain piece is unique to this set of rules, so unless it's really necessary I would remove it as people will not understand what it means (hence this thread).
The basic cavalry 'known' in any age is that they don't fight well in terrain. Every wargamer knows this to be the case from many years of rules drilling that in to us.

[badhabum]

There is another discussion about : should the knights be close cavalry ...if we go that way - and it should be discussed in the right discussion  not here - that will change many things as close order cavalry will not like "uneven terrain" .

[Onurbm]

About magic terrain , just go real life, practice actual horse ridding and discover :

The training ground ( "le manege in french" ) is pretty fine place for the horses,  but pretty nice opportunity, in wet weather,  too to  slip and end on one's ass ( infantry in trouble ) .... with dirty pants and boots ... just do it ... I did !

magic ground exists ... i practiced it :-)

[craig.w]

About magic terrain , just go real life, practice actual horse ridding and discover :

The training ground ( "le manege in french" ) is pretty fine place for the horses,  but pretty nice opportunity, in wet weather,  too to  slip and end on one's ass ( infantry in trouble ) .... with dirty pants and boots ... just do it ... I did !

magic ground exists ... i practiced it :-)

Yes, there seems to be an idea that somehow horses can't cope in terrain that's not billiard table smooth. Sorry, but this isn't true. Like Onurbm, I've ridden horses and this idea that they can't handle terrain, fall over at the drop of a hat, break legs and riders die all the time is just not true. Horses are pretty sure footed in places where a pike phalanx wouldn't be too happy. Sure you occasionally come a cropper, but so do people running who pull hamstring or trip over. It just doesn't happen that often.

[nikgaukroger]

Yes, there seems to be an idea that somehow horses can't cope in terrain that's not billiard table smooth. Sorry, but this isn't true.

Same true of "close formation" infantry.

Question really is back to the issue of: can they hold the line ... within that Toto track is the answer somewhere.


Si

[badhabum]

I think we must make a difference between a formed unit of a few hundred people and a lonesome cow boy ..

Keeping people in line is not easy and I practiced in mock battles oh hundreds of people, the biggest involving 5000 "players" .

Now I remember reading somewhere that even a phalanx could be pretty successfull in bad terrain as long as it went forward .

So all what we think we know might not be what really happened