Recovery and Rally...a Campaign Design Process Update

 

I need to provide further explication of how I envision rallying and recovering from disorder will work.

 

Recovery

 

When a unit is disordered, it will recover from this state automatically, upon its next activation, if the following requirements are met.

 

• There are no enemy units in an adjacent square.
• The disordered unit was not the target of bombardment or ranged fire already in the same turn.
• The disordered unit has more than 1SP remaining to it.

As long as these conditions are each true, the disorder marker is removed and may conduct ranged combat but may not move during that same activation.

Alternatively, a leader may be activated to conduct a rally action, to attempt to remove the disorder status from a friendly unit.

Rally

Once a unit has lost two or more SP or a brigade element is suffering from disorder, a leader activation ( the unit’s brigadier or army commander) may be used to attempt a Rally action. When this occurs, the leader figure is moved to the same square as the testing unit and is temporarily attached (until either the leader or the unit activates next).

Next, a single die is rolled, applying any appropriate modifiers. If the result is 6 or more, then the test is passed and the results applied. If the result is 0 or less, the unit breaks and is removed from play.

A Rally may not be attempted if any enemy is adjacent to intended unit.

Modifiers: 

Recovery only

Testing unit is attempting to recover from disorder: +2 

Recovery and Rally

For each SP loss from testing unit’s starting Stamina: -1

If both the Brigadier and Army Commander are in the same square as testing unit: +1

Testing unit is in a square with friendly fortification terrain: +1

There are no enemy units visible to testing unit: +1

For attempts to Rally SP only.

Each shaken friendly unit in same or adjacent squares: -1

If no friendly unit in same or adjacent square: -1

For each non-shaken friendly unit in same or adjacent square: +1 (maximum of +3)

Take note, the conditions for recovering from disorder prevent units at 1SP (and therefore Shaken) from benefiting from automatic recovery. My thought behind this is that after such great mental stress of being under fire or in combat that casualties pile up, key NCOs and/or Officers are fallen, etc., that a unit will find it very difficult to re-organize itself.

Thus, the timely arrival of their brigadier or army commander will provide the necessary spark to get them on their mental feet once again, ideally.

The Rally Test is also intended to have a chance for units to break and be removed, replacing, in a way, the break tests that might otherwise occur in Hail Caesar, Black Powder, and so on.

I imagine that there's a risk to trying to keep brittle formations in combat longer than their mental state will normally allow, regardless of what officer is screaming at them to get back into the fight.