"rank and file rules" Topic

hi fellas just starting to play these rules and have a question re occupying buildings. We have scoured the book but we feel the mechanics of occupying said buildings is a bit vague. can someone help out. Is there a limit as to how many troops can occupy building, can you fire all troops from one side of a building or must it be split. Any clarification will improve our games so here's hoping. Ta.

I just looked through the rules and you're right, they're vague. These are not a detailed and well-tested set of rules, they're simple and fast and expect players to come to friendly agreements about the things left unsaid.

Since units are supposed to represent battalions/regiments, there is no way to get an entire unit into a single building, so the meaning of "buildings" should really be interpreted to mean a bunch of them in a clump, such as a town, village or other built up area. Some ideas off the top of my head to handle them:

• Treat the area covered with buildings as an area terrain feature; the unit must be able to fit itself physically inside the area to benefit from it; crossing it halves movement, while inside units get the "buildings" benefits all over the morale and combat charts. This is my default gaming mechanism, and I use felt or some other flat piece to define the built-up area, and move the buildings out of the way when the troops move in.
  
• Divide towns into areas that are about the size of an infantry square or attack column and declare that each section can hold one unit, moving in or out is a half move, and to "occupy" the town the unit must have all stands inside.
  
• Borrow rules from some other simple horse & musket game you like.
  

Experiment and write up what you do. Rank & File is a great core for bolting on house rules.

- Ix

Concur with Ix that Rank and File "is a great core for bolting on house rules." We use modified R&F to play SYW. It is appropriately "shooty" and the mechanic of just adding another D6 for battalion guns is brilliant. Our most major mod was to graft on a set of C&C rules.

Interestingly, we've had less luck adapting them for AWI – I feel because of the disparate unit sizes, but I haven't given up yet!

I'd love to see your C3 rules. I've plinked around at writing my own for a few different periods, but nothing I've playtested. I like to see what other people come up with.

- Ix

I'm glad its not just me, we had another game the other night and we just agreed that a unit inside a building could not fire all bases from one side. we just split it two ways. Simple maybe not to sophisticated but it allowed us to carry on with the game.

Here they are in a nutshell (note as far as the distances go, we play 25/28mm SYW):

CinC is automatically In Command; Subordinate Leaders within Command Span of unattached, In Command, superior leaders in their Chain of Command are In Command.

CinC Command Span: 36"; Sub. Leader Command Span: 24"; Tactical Radius (radius that leaders affect troops) for all leaders: 12".

Tactical Radius is affected by terrain and LOS; Command Span is affected by terrain, but not LOS.

Units attached to a, or within Tactical Radius of any unattached, In Command Leader in their Chain of Command, are In Command.

Out of Command Leaders roll 2D6 >= 8 (+ Leader Bonus; may be re-rolled), and Independent Units must roll Morale (with mods), to be In Command.

Out of Command units only move 1/2; may not Charge except Cavalry to Counter-Charge.

So essentially it is a quick Napoleon's Battles-like top-down system that doesn't require anything like written orders. You just need to ascertain In Command status before movement, and identify/mark those units that are out of command.

One other thing: we moved the Initiative Phase to the very beginning of the turn. The winner of the Initiative decides (separately) who declares charges first, who moves first, and who attaches/detaches leaders first.

I can't stand ambiguity, and it made my skin crawl when I read in the rules in the description of the Charge Phase: "Once made charge declarations may not be cancelled but it is OK for players to 'wait and see' whether the enemy is charging before declaring their own charges, so these do not have to be declared in any particular order."