Re: [SG] Unit Cohesion

On Sat, 22 Sep 2001 10:06:56 +0000, "Richard Kirke"
<richardkirke@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>What a good way of looking at SGII! It makes all those "don't be too
picky 
>about ranges" etc. coments make a bit of sense, If you measure all
ranges to 
>the unit leader, and only use figures for the type of cover they are
in, 
>then you have a way to mark anything and also you can tell which one is
the 
>commander (people have a problem reading the badges of rank I paint on
my 
>New Isrealis).

This, funny enough, is how I play it in demo games. It's an option on my
SG2
web site page. I use the squad leader to indicate the centre of the
squad, and
all measurements/rulings are based on the location of the squad leader.
The
squad leader becomes the centre of the squad, in essence.

When playing it with more experienced players, though, there are reasons
you
may not want to do this. Artillery comes to mind, as it has a blast
radius.
When facing artillery, the position of the squad leader within the squad
becomes more of an issue. If you drop an artiller shell on the centre of
a
squad, the squad leader will always be in the blast radius. If you want
to
protect your squad against artillery, you can string it out in a line.
Putting
the squad leader at either end of the line means that there's less of a
chance
of having the SL _and_ a bunch of guys within the blast radius. (There
is the
counter argument that it increases the probability of a squad's loss of
integrity.)

There are four main advantages of the "SL as squad centre" idea:
- Some folks find the stringing out of figures a little bit munchkinny,
in
which case using the SL as the squad centre seems more "realistic". 
- This method is faster in play. Once a player understands that all he
has to
do is measure and move the one figure, and the rest of the figure's
position
doesn't matter, game play speeds up (especially for newbies).
- This method results, in my opinion, in better aesthetics, especially
in
25mm. If you want your squad in a tight circular or oval formation on
the edge
of woods -- as an example -- you pretty much have to put figures out
front of
the woods. With this system, you put the SL on the wood edge, and then
place
the other figures so they look good.
- This method makes the game easier to play when opponents are packed in
close, particularly in close combat. This can actually negate the point
about
aesthetics, but it keeps things less confusing. I've had big close
combats
where I've left the SLs on the board and pulled all the other figures
off the
board, or over to a bare area. The close combat takes place where
everyone can
easily mark figures dead or wounded, while the squad positions are
unaffected.
At the end of close combat, the figures are moved to their SLs. 

The way I handle close combat is measuring SL to SL to see if the close
combatting squad can reach the other. If the attacking squad's combat
move is
within this range, the close combat takes place and the figures are
placed the
way the attacker wishes.

Allan Goodall		       awg@sympatico.ca
Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall

"Now, see, if you combine different colours of light,
 you get white! Try that with Play-Doh and you get
 brown! How come?" - Alan Moore & Kevin Nolan,