I have a large library of wargame books. Not rules, but books on wargames which may have rules in them but are also about the hobby. The Moreschauser- Featherstone type. I use these and other things as tools in game design, frequently asking "how did XXXX handle this, or did he at all?
I was reading in Featherstone's War Games because I was wondering about his move sequence which is basically both sides roll die, high scorer moves first. By the way, he doesn't. We'll get to the implications, but in the book while for the Ancient Rules it says the above, high scorer moves first, and low scorer fires first. In actual fact in the demonstration game "Battle of Trimsos" the high roller chooses which one he wants.
Further, there is no real order of action in the game, save that if you read carefully in the demonstration game, you realize it is.
Toss dice, high score chooses if he wishes to move first of fire first.
Move first moves
Move second moves
Move second fires on First mover and scores casualties BEFORE first mover does.
Move firster now fires back with reduced numbers.
Melees.
It also says that moving into "immediate contact", (no definition) causes a melee, but it does NOT say that bringing an enemy into immediate contact "locks" him and prevents him from moving.
Thus you could have a unit come into immediate contact, but then have it broken when move second moves back out of contact.
There is a seeming "governor" on this in that the rules say that to move forward the officers and standard bearers must be in the front of the unit, but if they aren't going to move forward, they can be in the rear of the unit and protected from fire. However few units on the game have such officers and standard bearers, and even if they did this would not prevent them from simply moving away from an enemy advancing.
This doesn't work out too bad in the ancient battle were few units have the ability to fire but it becomes more problematic in his Musket Rules where everyone gets to fire and perhaps melee.
But to return, the basic system is interesting but problematic. It would seem that you NEVER wanted to move first, always getting thereby the ability to see what the enemy was doing and react to it, AND you fired first, always extracting casualties first.
Wait till I get to Moreschauser!