"Cover that moves?" Topic

Obviously, static cover always provides cover as long as any fire comes from a direction that 'moves through' the covering item, say a stack of sacks and boxes.

But what about cover that might move? A horses or horses, a herd of cattle, a wagon, or a train – how to handle these in a game? I'm guessing there has to be a rule that defines at what point the move begins and ends versus when firing occurs.

And I'm not thinking in terms of slow as molasses one-on-one skirmish games where an hour of play results in a few seconds of 'real time.' Rather, I'm thinking in terms of a sustained action like a gang robs a bank and flees into the street to find some poor shots but rankled civilians trying to stop them.

Your thoughts on this? Especially how to define an item as momentarily static but possibly moving.

Unless you are doing prorated movement and opportunity fire, you need to say that if a target ends its turn in cover, it is in cover (or whatever your rule is). The GM can call special rules for one-off events such as, there is a heard of goats running down the street, all targets get a savings throw, or minus X% to hit this turn, etc.

An interesting question – but how would you handle
a moving cover, such as a Comanche's horse, the
rider being hidden on the off-side ?

Oh, live a little! Do that pack mule from The Train Robbers--cover that moves and is also loaded with high explosive. Cover with a blast template adds a little something to the "critical hit" rolls.

Explosive pack mule, like it. The movie wasn't so great, okay only. Something to add to the mix.

When the shooter is ready to fire, the bank robber rolls a d6: 1 to 3 and he's in cover behind his horse, 4 to 6 and the shooter happens to have a clean shot.

Clean, easy, quick and free. What's not to like?

To my question into perspective: I worked this weekend on my 15 mm Old West Trains, getting some paint on top of the primer coat so, while not finished, good enough to put into a game. In some games these will be static pieces and obviously offer a cover benefit. Then I started thinking how to handle it if the trains move. (Yes, I said trains. And, yes, that is an intentional use of the plural.)

And that led me to start thinking of how to handle wagons and such. They, too, might be static in a game or they might move during the course of the game.

And that led to thoughts of a herd of cattle heading down mainstream and how to handle that as cover.

Which finally led to thinking how to handle a horse being used as cover. Stryderg's solution is pretty simple – and I always like simple. Though in his case I'd make 1 to 4 in cover and 5 or 6 to hit and if the robber is a wily sort or the shoot not so hot maybe only a 6 to hit.

Those other situations might be a tad more complex – or maybe just as simple.

Using Rules with No Name we included bystander and animal cards in the deck. When these cards were drawn they were left face up and could be used by the next player whose card was drawn to move the relevant figures. So if were lucky and wanted your character to hide behind the local saloon owner you could move them to block other figures' lines of sight, or you could just run your enemies over with stampeding cattle.

To clarify, I meant to add a d6 roll. That roll determines if the defender has cover or not. Then the shooter rolls to hit as normal either with or without a cover penalty.

I did this with an Antelope herd in one of my Africa games. Units were allowed to "herd" a group of antelope stands in front of them to block los It worked pretty well. Of course the "herding" unit couldn't fire through them either and had to wait for the antelopes to wander off when they stopped driving them.

Cover means that no part of your body can be hit by enemy fire. So in order to receive full cover, the person cannot expose themselves I. Order to return fire. For a person to fire, he must expose himself so he becomes partially in cover.
So is your person moving himself or only the cover?
If your person is moving then he will have a reduced chance to hit and to be hit.