"Questions regarding [Brother Against Brother] rules" Topic

---I am playing rules for Amerian Civil War----

1.) So you assign clubs/spades to union squads and diamonds/hearts for rebs. Check. Now, do you use a full card deck and keep drawing 2 cards until the whole deck is drawn then the turn is over? Or do you only put the exact number of cards in a deck for how many overal squads there are?
2.) Say you draw 2 cards from the action deck and 1 is a spade (union) and 1 is a heart (reb). Which player gets to go first/perform action for there squad?

3.) Squads must have an NCO to move but does the squad with NCO have to have an officer order them to move or can they move freely w/just the NCO? I know they need an officer to order them to charge or retreat but just what about simple moving here and there?

4.) If a squad has to have an officer to move (which you roll dice and the NCO moves and the men are placed anywhere within 6 inchs of the NCO) what about if your not moving but repositioning? What I mean but that is say your squad is in an area and you want to move some of the privates around a bit as long as its within 6 inchs of the NCO, can you do that or do you need the officer to give those move orders too (being 6 inchs away from the NCO)?

5.) What do the 3 Event cards on the morale card sheets mean? There are 3; one with pic of revolutionary officer on horse, one with revolutionary officer charging, and one with dying revolutionary officer?

6.) I'll probably think of some more questions later. :)

1 Each squad is assigned a specific card. If you have three Union squads one might be assigned the ace of spades, the second the 2 of clubs and the third the 9 of spades. You only use the cards that are specifically assigned to the squads.

2 When you draw cards for opposite sides the first card drawn goes first.

3. Company officers are only necessary to order the charge. The section called "YOUR ORDERS, SIR" imply that a company officer must be in command range to order a unit, but the squad leader is the only figure necessary to move or fire a unit. A Company officer is necessary to charge.

4. You may reposition men freely during their activation. Company officers are only there to promote casualties and order charges and to become casualties themselves (not a good thing unless it is your opponents guy becoming the casualty).

5. The three event cards are provided for you to make up whatever oddity you feel may be necessary. For instance, you could decide that Event 1 means that a random squad leader succumbs to heat stroke and immediately remove him from play. Event two might mean a sudden downpour restricts visibility to 6 inches for the remainder of the game. Event 3 might mean night has fallen. You don't have to use the event cards.

What do you guys do to keep track of which pieces have moved and which haven't? I know the rules say to use cotton balls to see which ones have fired.

I think you are missing the point of the first answer. Squads are assigned a specific card before the game starts. They can only move when that specific card is drawn. One of the people I played with used washers to mount his troops and put a sticker with the card that belonged to that on the bottom of each figure so he would know which card each squad belonged to.

BAB isn't played like TSATF where you get to choose which unit to move when a red or black card is turned. The number of cards in the movement/action deck is equal to the number of squads on the table, and each card in the deck will only move one specific squad.

No squad should move/action twice in a turn since their card is in the discard pile after it is drawn.

Check out the BAB Yahoo Group link for a great set of Event cards that can be downloaded. We put the three cards from the games set in the Morale deck and if one is drawn we pull one of the Event cards from it's own deck. There are things like rain storm, low on ammo, heroics, and the like. One tip, though-- there are FAR too many Low on Ammo cards. Pull all but a couple from that set.

Another tip is we use a falling wounded figure on a different shaped base to mark units which have taken casualties and need to pull a Morale card on their next turn. It looks good and is easy to spot on the table.

ok some more questions after i just played my first game with girlfriend.

1.) The book says units moving through woods have a reduced visibility to 6inches so they can't see past that to shoot. What about if there in the woods and my squad is out of the woods but within range to shoot? So they can't shoot at me due to reduced visibility but i can shoot at them. What sense does that make?

2.) The book says officers move once per turn once one of your squads are activated. It doesn't say if your roll dice or what???? If sooo how many dice?

3.) The THWACK card that says officer shot all squads in your company may not move. Does that mean for one turn,action phase, or until a new officer is appointed?????

4.) How far must a figure be from say a tree or fence for it to be considered "cover" for it???? 1 inch?

5.) The rules also say you can't initinally shoot a officer or NCO. They only die when the Thwack cards kill them. So even if an NCO and say 1 private are in distance to my guys and the rest of the squad isn't I cant kill the NCO if i roll the according dice? So the NCO just gets a invincible type ordeal?? Seems kinda dumb, now I can see not be allowed to target him out of the whole squad first but if he is with 1 other private and I have 8 men shooting at both of them I am not allowed to kill the NCO?

Also one more thing regarding 4.) say a figure or some figures are not in cover but behind it from the line of sight from my men. Example
1=enemy men
*=Trees
2=My men

1 1 1 1 1

************
***************

2 2 2 2 2

Ok my men are the 2's and I want to shoot the 1's and am in range, right. So even though the 1's aren't in the woods for cover they are literally behind it from the angle my men woudl shoot. So that would obstruct my firing so does that effect anything?????

There is literally way too many unanwsered questions in this book. While fun we just found ourselfs guessing at what to do for alot of things.

1. If the squad is more than 6" in the woods, a squad outside the woods can't see them, and they can't see the squad outside. If less than 6" they can both see each other and fire at each other. In this case I would give each squad the benefit of light cover. In answer to the question of firing thru wooded areas that are less than six inches wide, that is a judgement call you will have to make. You can allow it or not depending on how dense you believe the underbrush to be. If it's an orchard or woodlot, I would allow it with the benefit of soft cover to both squads. If it is a wooded area with undergrowth, I wouldn't allow it. My usual rule about woods are that you can't see into or out of them unless you are on the edge. Most woods have dense growth along the edge where weeds, small trees and bushes grow, making visibility impossible.

2. The officer moves on the die roll of the unit he chooses to move with.

3. If a squad leader is thwacked, his squad can't move until a new squad leader is appointed. If a company commander is thwacked, no squad can move until a new company officer arrives. You roll a d10 at the start of each new turn. On a 0,1,2 a new company officer arrives and is placed with whichever squad of yours is active. At that point all squads can move. Note that the loss of a company commander or squad leader doesn't keep you from retreating to cover if the squad is in the open and is fired on if you draw an "immediate retreat" card. It does mean that you will not "charge the nearest enemy" if you draw that card. You simply stand in place in that case.

4. This is up to you. I personally won't give a cover benefit for individual trees. I consider them there for "looks". I only give cover for designated woods areas and then only for figures actually in the cover. If a portion of the squad is outside the woods, all hits are placed on them, using the best die rolls first.

A ten man squad in the open fires on a ten man squad with 7 men in the woods and 3 men outside. The firing squad rolls as follows. 0,1,3,3,3,5,7,8,4,5. The 0,1,3 are placed on the three men in the open. The other two 3's miss as the rest of the unit is in soft cover. For a bloodier game, you could have placed all the 3's on the three men in the open, and the 0,1 on the men in cover. The choice of how to handle it is up to you. Just be consistent about it thru the game.

5. That's correct, you can only kill a squad leader on a thwack card. Squad leader figures are more representative of command control than an actual person. Their location determines the location of everyone else in the squad.

I agree that there are many unanswered questions in the rules. But with a little bit of thought you can come up with a satisfactory answer, and you must have done alright, because you said it was a fun game. And fun is what wargaming is about. And you played it with your girlfriend. That doesn't happen very often in historical miniature gaming. She's a keeper.

Ok so an officer moves in the 6inch radius of any active squad for that turn? Or does he literally move the amount of inches that 1 active squad NCO rolled and you measure his movement from his current possition?

Also, if my oponets men are not in the woods but on the other side of it and my men are on the opposite side of the woods but not in it either. Like in my diagram^^. Both are within range to fire, but logically some tires are in their way and obstructing view would you apply soft cover for both? Based on line of sight right?

We've always played that the officer can move on any activation of your troops, and he rolls for his own movement. The number of dice he rolls is the same as either infantry on foot or mounted troops depending on his means of locomotion. He is an individual model and you measure movement from where he was to where you want him to be, just like a squad NCO.

Most wargames I have ever played count a stand of woods as something that blocks line of sight and hence shooting as well. You can only shoot/be shot at if you are IN the woods.

I agree with everything Mikhail has stated except:
"2 When you draw cards for opposite sides the first card drawn goes first."

That is an accepted house rule to use, but the rules actually state on page 13, last paragraph, "If a target squad is activated at the same time it is fired upon and is in the process of moving, the may move half their distance before the firing squad rolls it's dice." Which says to me that the two cards pulled move/fire simultaneously, and only adjust that at all if the two are directly affecting each other in some way. This makes the game move MUCH faster and in a more dynamic fashion. We have players roll off if there is any disagreement as to what happens when. But that too is a house rule.

Nazrat is right about a squad being fired on. That may or may not happen a lot. The use of the first card drawn to determine who goes first should be applied when two squads want to move and the movement would conflict.

As for the movement of the company officer, that was how the designer did it in the game I played at Little Wars when the rules were released. The company officer chose which squad he would move with, then moved the same number of inches they rolled up. I also recall using the order the cards were drawn in when two units fired on each other. I got roundly trounced when my card came up second. A Union squad had decamped from a cornfield directly in front of my line behind the fence the previous turn. Their card came up along with mine, but was drawn first. They did three casualties on me and I returned the favor with only 6 men firing. On the following activation I drew the retreat card. I remember being told by the designer that there was no such thing as simultaneous.

Nazrat is right about the convention of not allowing troops on opposite sides of woods to fire at each other. A further useful convention is to not allow units in the woods to fire out unless they are on the edge of the woods. I make up a "woods edge" terrain piece by cutting an irregular shape out of Foamies and gluing chunks of Woodland Scenics to it along with sticks and the odd rock. If you are in the woods and touching it you can fire out. If fired on you gain the light cover advantage. Again though, that is something you can decide for yourself. If you decide to allow it I would give both squads the benefit of soft cover.

Hi everyone;
I and 3 friends just played BAB last night at Renaissance Games in Fallston Maryland and had a great time.
This was our first game and of course we had a few questions.
Pretty much every question we had is answered in this thread.
if we couldn't find an answer in the book, we made a quick house rule on it, i.e. first card drawn resolves their action first.
Thanks to all of you for the questions and answers and thanks to TMP for keeping these threads alive:-)
Good Gaming;
Joep

General comment about BAB. It's a simple set of rules, but even still, you may find that from time to time you will encounter a situation that isn't covered by the rules. I recommend that you just use your judgement. You and your opponent should come to an agreement on it, and that becomes your own "house rule" for that situation.

Personally, I modify the heck out of them. For example, for larger games where there are multiple players with their own commands, rather than using a card to activate a single squad at a time, each card activates the "first squad" of each formation/command.

5.) The rules also say you can't initinally shoot a officer or NCO. They only die when the Thwack cards kill them. So even if an NCO and say 1 private are in distance to my guys and the rest of the squad isn't I cant kill the NCO if i roll the according dice? So the NCO just gets a invincible type ordeal?? Seems kinda dumb, now I can see not be allowed to target him out of the whole squad first but if he is with 1 other private and I have 8 men shooting at both of them I am not allowed to kill the NCO?

The answer to this is quite simple, and is contained in the rules. If a squad is down to one man, which will usually be the NCO (though not always) the model is removed. The idea is that if there are two guys remaining, one will be "promoted" instantly to be the NCO, and you only experience a leadership vacuum (and resulting morale check) when you get the 'Squad Leader Shot' card.