Striker 2 melee question

[Djct]

Hi all

In the TNE thread you can read a play report of playing through the TNE adventure "Early Fallen". We are having a good time.

As an experiment I used the Striker 2 rules to stage a battle which included some melee only cavalry. I only played one session with Striker 2 back in the day but it worked pretty well for us - though low morale destroyed whole companies quickly.

One question had to be house ruled and I have been unable to find the rule in the book subsequently. It is : who can fire on charging units? We ruled that this could only be those who qualified for opportunity fire, as movement has occurred in the other fire phases and the charging unit is then in contact and therefore you would be firing into a brawl with no way to differentiate enemy from friend.

This worked fine for us, but I wonder if I have missed a rule or misinterpreted the definition of fire phases.

In summary, I know it is not flavour of the month, but abstracting from TNE to Striker 2 was easy for my group to dal with, and it still retained the feel I wanted.

 

[jec10]

First, good on you for trying Striker 2. I think it is much maligned.

Secondly, you're correct that the rules are silent as to firing at stands in melee (i.e. in contact with enemy stands). In CDII (from which Striker 2 was partially derived) the rule was that stands could not be fired upon or fire themselves in what was called the close fire phase (the Striker 2 equivalent is the Final Fire Sub-Phase) if they were touching enemy stands. Opportunity and General Fire was still allowed.

 

[Djct]

Thanks that helps, and we were not too far off!

I think I will stick with the opportunity fire phase only for now. In the low tech and low troop quality battle we played then allowing stands to fire in the general fire phase (and then check for morale) would likely have meant that no one ever made close combat - negating the effectiveness of the cavalry units used.

 

[jec10]

Fair enough.

I think the design intent was that you only risk charging against troops that are pinned down (in Striker 2 terms: they have been forced back and pinned, either because of fire or a previous turn's morale result). If a stand is pinned the rule is you can only fire in the Final Fire Sub-Phase and so you wouldn't be allowed to fire at troops charging into melee with you at all.

The intent would be to encourage realistic tactics. Fire and movement. So in the case of your early tech battle, you might on turn one roll up a gatling gun or the like to a position where it is off to a flank and can rake an area of cover concealing some enemy troops. Then next turn you'd advance a stand or two as scouts to spot the enemy and or draw their fire. Then you'd let rip with your gatling gun. Hopefully you'd get enough hits to leave the enemy stands forced back and pinned at which point you'd charge and the enemy could not fire at your chargers with his pinned stands.

A bit more time consuming than your natural inclination to charge away as soon as you see the enemy - but realistic.

 

[Djct]

That's a good point. My players and I are schooled mostly in the 1980s Warhammer approach which involves lots of charges and is of course deeply unrealistic. So I would need them to have more understanding of the ramifications particularly in a critical role playing scenario as this was.

Maybe that cavalry charge will go down in the annals as a unique bit of heroism!

A further rules niggle occurred to me - if the combat continued to a next round with stands in the same unit, how does that play out? I essentially allowed that all stands were involved even if not in base to base contact and so could not move out or fire. They also did not count to the combat as not in base to base contact. On reflection this might not be right either!

None of this uncertainty was deadly as affected both sides equally.

 

[jec10]

I think if you have stands nearby but not in base-to-base contact then they're not in the melee and are free to act normally in the next gameturn regardless of the result of the melee. The morale phase has already passed, and so they aren't going to be impacted by losses in the melee.

Also, if the melee is a draw then you're going to have stands remaining in contact next turn.

They could all receive orders and move/fire next turn. Note the restrictions in 5.4 though - you can't move through an enemy stand's position. And you can't draw a LOS through your own stands so you can't fire through them at the enemy.

 

[Djct]

Thanks that clarifies a lot. I'll need to prep the players for this next time, as its a material difference to what we are used to!