"Altar of Freedom - more questions" Topic

When artillery/cavalry evades close combat, does the attacker halt where contact would have been made or do they advance and take the ground?

Likewise, when a brigade breaks their enemy in close combat, do they halt at the point of contact or advance?

Is any overhead fire allowed?

I'm getting ready for a second game. Thanks for any help.

Good luck on your second game. I've only played once so my answers are based on that and reading the rules a few times.

1. Per the evading rules in page 18, the attacker halts at the point where contact would have been made. In game play, it may make sense to advance the unit to contact and then roll to see if the artillery or cavalry unit evades.

2. I guess it depends on how the unit breaks. If the close combat result causes fatigue and the unit goes over the break point then the winning unit can advance. However, if the result is "6+ Losing unit breaks" then in that specific result the winning unit does not advance (but also takes fatigue).

3. Only artillery may fire over a friendly unit if the artillery battery is on higher elevation. However, the rules don't specify a minimum distance. I would play it that the target has to be twice the distance between the blocking unit and artillery.

Yup, all answers given are correct!

We had a second game, Rebs won again. I'm going out of town for a long weekend tomorrow so the AAR will be delayed.

We suspect that once the rebel player has played this once he will pile up in front of the bridge and hold on. If McClernand is late showing up it's a hard row to hoe. Unless we are doing something wrong. Two rebel units broke – one rallied – and one Union unit broke.

Hi – We played our first game last night and had a great time! One big question tho' as the rules were unclear on a major point.

When a brigade closes into close combat is the enemy infantry brigade allowed to fire after movement is completed? Is the charging brigade allowed to fire before close combat?

Any clarification would be helpful!

Thanks!

I was just reading some other posts and I now think that the rules are meant to NOT allow a brigade that has been contacted in close combat to fire as units in close combat can not be fired on….and I am assuming that includes the unit that was contacted.

I guess our group feels that in the Civil War units on defense had an edge over the attackers unless the defense was softened up. In our first game the defenders had artillery and supporting units while the attacker had the same…and the attacker just blew the defense away and kept rolling. No one playing felt right about how it played out. Now..we do grant that this was our first game and we need to play more. The game designers have obviously put alot of time into playtesting so I am sure over time we will see how it should work. Just want to make sure we are doing it right before we press ahead.

thanks,
Mark