"Pikeman's Lament Dragoon House Rules - 2 " Topic

As the bug seemed to steal my first post's thunder I thought I would try again:

Since I want to be able to use my Warlord Games Dragoon horse holders I decided to modify how Dragoons work slightly in Pikeman's Lament. I gave Dragoons two different movement stats and two different firing stats as well as a new special rule to reflect mounted versus dismounted.

Dragoons | Attack 7+, Move 5+, Shoot 6+, Morale 5+, Stamina 3, POINTS 4, Attack value 5+, Defence value 6, Shoot value/Range 5+/18" (DMTD) : 7+/8" (MTD), Maximum Movement 12"(mtd) /6" (dmtd), Special Rules: Skirmish (7+ & -1 shoot) / Evade / Mtd Slow Reload (Mounted Slow Reload represents the difficulty of reloading while moving mounted. For this special rule, Mounted Dragoons can only fire every other turn if they moved immediately after shooting. If they don't move they fire as normal for mounted.)

I have tried it once in a game and if forces you to use dragoons as mobile infantry if you want them to be effective which is how they were used in this period. I need to try a few more games to get the rough spots worked out but so far I like it.

I'd like to hear thoughts from other Pikeman's Lament players; especially with recommendations as to how to improve the feel of dragoons.

I like it, when they go dismounted do you reduce the number of figures in the unit?

I like the idea too, haven't played dragoons yet (may be a while before I get them painted) but in principle it sounds good.

Mounted Dragoons are 6 figures so I keep dismounted to 6 figures: 5 firing and 1 horse holder (I really like the Warlord Games figures) but you can try it any way you like. I count the horse holders as one of the unit but I like the figure so I place it out there. Since the number of dice aren't reduce until the unit reaches half strength, I figure this works. Of course I am open to suggestions.

Is there an activation required to mount/dismount ?

I only played dragoons one time but I don't see that anything is broken in the rules (my dice rolling was another matter). They explicitly say in the book that you can use horse holders as figures

John

I knew I had the Warlord horse holder in my wish list for a reason!

jwebster – Dismounting/Mounting is part of their movement so therefore they need to be activated to claim which they are and then just swap out the figures.

Also, I'm not saying the rules are broken as such; in fact I really like them without any modifications. I just find that dragoons in the game don't look right having a mixed unit of mounted and dismounted figures. I really like the idea of using horse holder figures and dismounted dragoon figures when they are dismounted and mounted figure when they are mounted. I have found however, with the modifications to the dragoons, in the games I've play tested them, the players are more likely to use dragoons as highly mobile infantry as opposed to fast shooty donkey wallopers. Meaning they mount, run to the flank, dismount and shoot, trying to create as much havoc as possible.

Seems like a little much. On the shooting value you have a 7+/8", but how do you get to 7 on a d6? The slow fire also seems punitive.

We also experimented with a mtd vs dismounted, ended up trying a couple of games with a -1 to move and skirmish when dismounted, -1 to shooting when mounted. Still seemed too much.

Good catch on the shooting values; I may have copied that down wrong from the notes. In the two games we've tested this, dragoons were pretty ineffectual mounted but fast. When the dismounted they were a right pain in the backside for their opponent. In both games the players that had dragoons ran them to get on either the flank or rear of their opponent where they dismounted and started to create problems.

We'll try a game removing the slow reload while mounted special rule and see how that goes.

Do let us know.

This seems like a good idea. I was always chapped by the idea of losing 25% effectiveness to "horse holding" in other rules.

Play the dragoons as per written rules. Unnecessary complication in my view to mess about with mounting/ dismounting etc. Pikeman's Lament is a nice simple rule set, so why overcomplicate? Plenty of complex ECW rules around if that's your thing.

steamingdave47, thanks for the comments and I appreciate your point of view but you'll forgive me if I disagree. The modifications that I have been play testing have not adversely impacted the simplicity of the rules when testing them and, in the opinion of myself and the two other players who play tested with me, made Dragoons 'feel' more accurate. However, I want to get other opinions as to how to improve on the feel of Dragoons in the game.

So once again I restate my original intent in my post: I'd like to hear thoughts from other Pikeman's Lament players with recommendations as to how to improve the feel of dragoons.