Terrain Effects

Hi Steve, there don’t seem to be any HC ‘experts’ around so I will have a go 😀

The rules provide some suggested rules for a few terrain types and encourage players to adapt these as they see fit. (see page 38)

For Woods (including forests I assume), normal troops are unable to enter this terrain at all. So the advantage that open order troops get is that they can move through Woods, and therefore harass the formed troops from Woods without being able to be caught.

The other example type of terrain is ‘Rough’. In this terrain formed troops can only move one move each turn, and mounted troops are slowed to 6”, the same move as foot. So the advantage of the light troops here is they can manoeuvre more easily.

Overall the HC system, seems to me, to expect open order troops to harass formed troops, and be an annoyance, perhaps wear them down with shooting etc. In general, formed units are expected to fight in the open, and rely on skirmishers or other light troops in open order, to contest difficult terrain.

What sort of troop interactions are you trying to recreate that you are having a problem with?

Ah yes. I had forgotten about that bit in the rules. I think my group has chosen not to adopt that option, hence the confusion. (i.e. We don’t allow normal formed troops to do this.) I suppose if you do follow this option then normal formed troops have to spend a turn to go in to open order, and the same when the come out of the wood, which will slow them down. Once in open order I think the biggest disadvantage to all troops is that you can’t receive support. So you will end up with just a muddle of troops fighting in the woods as “individuals”. I think you can argue that a well equipped and trained legionary on his own in a wood, is still more than a match for a single Ancient German on his own in a wood.

I think Teutoburg requires some special setup as I would interpret it as an ambush. When we’ve done this game we have the Romans in march column along a road / track with lots of baggage. The track leads through wooded areas. The rules already suggest you can allow formed troops to be set in ambush in the edge of woods and we have used this, having some rule for springing the ambush with German warbands in the wood’s edges.

Thinking about allowing Legions to fight in woods it would be interesting to remove their Elite and Drilled specials when in open order in the woods. Perhaps this would even things up? Perhaps also penalise the pilum in woods?

It will be interesting to see what they say.

I am still not sure about an innate disadvantage of heavy troops, man for man in bad terrain. If there were 8 germans in a wood, and I sent 8 legionary to deal with them, then I would expect the legionary to win, or at least chase off the germans. If the germans had missile weapons then there is a risk of being shot I suppose. I would have thought the point of this is that you would rather not send your prime troops to deal with a minor annoyance (hence auxiliaries) and the biggest danger is that the 8 germans might be a cover for another 100 germans hiding in the wood – that would be very bad for the 8 legionary!

I would see command being the vital thing in poor terrain. It is more difficult to get chaps to do something when you can’t see them all so easily and they can’t see their officers or hear orders. This would apply to germans or legionary blundering around in a wood. I think germans in an ambush situation is a different situation however.