Okay lots of rules and tables in this one - I'm not sure if that means I'll have more or less to say. Lets start with Terrain then.
Okay there are two sections here on Terrain, the flow is a bit weird in this section - but I believe this is placed here as it relates to the next section “Movement” and hopefully we learn more about Terrain later. The part that makes the flow weird is a section on randomly selecting Terrain for a battle. Anyway, onto my thoughts.
As I mentioned theres a section on Terrains Effects Upon Movement, mostly about whether or not you can make a charge move, how much your speed is reduced and what units can actually pass through. All good stuff, the rules make sense and they'd lead to interesting decisions on the battlefield. It is a bit limited; however, I imagine you could match a piece of terrain to something that was similar or make some minor adjustments. For example, a cliff isn't listed here - but I suppose you could rule it like a River - requiring you to halt before and after climbing (instead of fording).
Then we get a section on random determination of terrain - effectively get a bunch of 3x5 index cards. Write some various terrain types down and take turns drawing and placing them. I assume you draw the card and then place a physical terrain piece rather than the index card, as Rivers don't really work with out starting and ending off the board (or coming from a mountain, flowing into a body of water). For the purposes of this read through (looking at it as a precursor to DnD) its not terribly interesting - though its a nice reminder to use terrain in your wilderness encounters rather than fighting on an infinite featureless plain. The index card system is likely too slow to do at the table - unless you're actually playing out a larger battle as is intended here.
Okay then onto Movement, which makes sense - its the first step of initiative which we'd just covered.
Okay first up is a big table of movement rates (and also missile range). The first thing of note here is the various troop types, we see things like Armoured and Heavy Foot, Longbowmen and Landsknechte. At this point we don't know what these mean other than they have different movement rates, charge rates, sometimes get a bonus for being on roads and sometimes have a missile range.
I wonder about the realisim of some of these movement rates, catapults strike me as off moving at the same rate as Armoured Foot and then even faster on Road - I'm no historian so maybe that is accurate.
There are some notes pertaining to some of the missile ranges when these are for thrown weapons, or are less than stated for specific types of the listed troop. Catapults and Cannons have different rules - so we get a hint at whats to come.
Given we're looking at a game where movement rates are important I'll make a note to come back to this when we get into DnD proper.
We also get some rules for movement costs for changing Formation and Facing. No obvious effect listed yet for formation, though its nice to note that turning is obviously different to moving - and so the above rates are for moving in a straight line.
There's a note about increasing the penalties for trained troops and reducing them for Landsknechte (I have to assume these are 'higher' quality soldiers than the others listed). So another thing to look out for as we continue, is troop quality elaborated on.
And then Fatigue. If a unit continously moves, or some combination of moving, charging and meleeing they become fatigue causing them to fight and defend worse (with an example showing us that there is some hierarchy for Armoured and Heavy foot used to determine their fighting capability). It also lowers morale, but not just the score also the die rolls. This strikes me as a bit odd, giving a penalty to the same thing twice, instead of reducing the score by 2 - noting this down for when we get to Morale.
Terrain can cause more fatigue (marching uphill for example), and Troop quality can help (assuming Landsknechte is a standin for quality troops). Simply not moving for a turn cures Fatigue.
Now the interesting thing to note in this section is that you are fatigued after moving for 5 consecutive TURNS, OR for Meleeing 3 ROUNDS. Following on from the noted difference in wording in the initiative section, we see a difference here again. I'll add that to the notes. Now I don't know if you can stay in melee between turns or rounds if they're the same thing, but if they are the same then the stipulation that not moving cures fatigue would mean that you could never become fatigued from consecutive melees, or at worst you'd be fatigued for one turn/round of melee but the next you'd be fine again even if you continued to fight. This might be worthless because I'm talking about something we haven't read the rules for yet.
And that wraps up movement, so we move onto Missile Fire
And BAM! Tables! Who needs explanation when you can lead with a table.
Interestingly this table doesn't use the previously seen “Troop Types” and instead shows 3 different levels of armour. We'll see if that's explain or linked later. But effectively you roll a d6 and check the number of figures firing, against the targets armour type which gives you the casualties. If a group has more than the max listed, they are split into two even groups. If you are firing at the same target this can only be done if you actually exceed the limit, which implies you can split your fire up between targets I suppose.
Different ranged weapons have different rates of fire, and rules for how and when you can move and fire. For example a Heavy Crossbow only fires once every other turn, and is required to reload inbetween - but cannot do this if they moved over half their movement unless they won initiative. That half move, initiative rule sort of applies to all ranged weapons it seems. And then our archers can fire a second time per turn if they are completely stationary and aren't melee'd - implying this occurs at the end of the turn.
And then we get our first question answered, what is “Split-move and Fire” and “Pass-through Fire”.
Split-move and Fire:
Specifically horse archers may move up to one half their movement, then fire, and then finish out the rest of their movement (not exceeding half). They may be fired upon by opponent missile fire during their firing pause.
Pass-through Fire:
This is presumably what allows that return fire. A stationary archer may fire at an enemy unit at the half-move portion of the turn - including if a group is charging the firer.
There are some notes about how many ranks can fire - I'll note that down to see if we find out about formation and number of ranks etc.
Also theres some notes about Throwing weapons, they can always target a charging unit - I assume this is noted because some charging squads would still be out of range at the half way mark when Pass-through fire would occur.
Cover adds some more detail beyond just movement penalties to some terrain - You half hits if you're in “soft” cover, overhead cover blocks indirect fire - which would otherwise ignore cover. Though indirect fire comes with some constraints, half range and interestingly the target defends as one higher armour class, 1/2 armoured would go to full armoured - but notably if you're already in the top bracket you become invulnerable. Also particularly heavy cover like an arrow slit or moveable manlet would make the target invulnerable. This is interesting to note as its only a matter of time before a party decides to walk through the dungeon behind something like that.
Catapults work as you might expect, they have a minimum and maximum range and kill everything in an area around where they impact (hard to survive a rock being dropped on your head).
There's two interesting things here, you have to guess your aim - declaring the range and how far left or right you want to shoot. We get an optional rule to roll two dice to determine if there's an under or over aim as well.
And then there's the number of crew, which I think seems a bit off. Is the crew at the 1:20 scale? Because a full crew is 4 - so 80men? That seems high to me - but again I'm not historian.
And then we get into gunpowder weapons, which come in two types: Because I can't pronounce the word the first type is long guns, and then cannons are the second.
Long guns just kill the target if you hit, which is based on accuracy at certain ranges rather than the armour class of the target. For ROF they shoot like a crossbow. There is a bonus you can get to your accuracy if there's something sturdy to balance the weapon on as well.
Then we have cannons: Light, Heavy and Bombards each increasing in range. ROF is the same as previously described for Catapults.
Now working out how to shoot these is pretty tricky so there's some diagrams and an example of firing provided. But basically you have a long stick with coloured sections (alternating white and black) which start long and shorten as they get to the end. And then there's another shorter stick with range markers on them. The long stick is placed in front of the cannon, a die is rolled and it is moved forward to the mark on the shorter measuring stick. Then all units that are on a certain colour (determined before firing) are killed by the cannon ball - this is to simulate the cannon ball bouncing as it goes.
Terrain stops the cannon ball early, including trees though cannon fire into woods is permitted - I'm not sure how to square those two rules.
Bombards work slightly differently to the cannons, they allow you to fire like a cannon (direct and bouncing) or like a catapult (indirect)
There's a few notes in the catapult and bombard section about sieges, basically telling us to refer to that section when aiming at a structure - so a hint of what is to come.
Okay next week we'll read the Melee and Morale sections starting on page 14 and ending on page 18 at the “Historical Characteristics” heading.
We learnt what “Split-move and fire” and “Pass-through fire” is!
This section has given us further questions for some topics rather than provided clarity - Morale and the Melee debate specifically. So what new questions are there: