Special Condition - Baggage Camp

[gull2112]

Special Condition - Baggage Camp

The first time you exit a unit (that is in the green) off the enemy's board edge his entire army suffers -1 Courage. Such a unit does not count as eliminated, but it does add its PV to its players VP total.


"An unprotected Baggage Camp is phat lewt indeed!"


Commentary

  It is assumed that the army usually has left a key unit defending the baggage camp. In this scenario it is assumed that desperate commanders have dispensed with this neccessity and have left the camp unguarded. I was originally thinking of allowing a player to add 10% to his allowable build and then use this rule, or play with a standard allotment of points and assume some unit is defending his baggage so his opponent would get no points for exiting off the board. Alternatively, I was thinking of allowing a player to allocate some points for defending his camp and the opposing player had to exit a unit worth more than that many points to consider the baggage camp sacked. I then decided this was getting over involved for the complexity of the standard special conditions.

  As it is, it allows for some interesting decisions, can you afford to have one less unit on the board? Maybe you could do without the Goblin Fanatics, but that's only 85 points, If your opponent then sneaks a heavy cav off the board on the last turn...On the other hand, the earlier you exit a unit the earlier your opponent's morale suffers, but more of the battle you have to fight short handed. I just added the "in the green" phraseology, because it would avoid having some lone unit with one hit point left race off the board edge and compromise the whole enemy army. The point is for the player to have to decide whether or not he can voluntarily withdraw a perfectly serviceable unit from his forces.

  It also adds to the decision making on how valuable it is to cause the opponent's army a courage loss. Dwarves and Greyhawk could probably suck it, not that they'd want to, while Umenzi or Orcs might be much more effected. This would even effect me because even though I always make my orc courage, I usually role exactly what I need, this could upset the whole applecart!

[Kevin]

I like the flavor, but would make the penalty -2 courage.  If the penalty doesn't really bite you're better off keeping the unit around to fight.

[gull2112]

Good point Kevin. I was originally was thinking -1 per unit exited off, which is kind of cool but really too wonky. It almost becomes a seperate game in itself at that point. Both armies race on by each other and head for the baggage camp! I spose you could tweek it and say -1 per unit exited off to a maximum of three, but again, that would take some serious playtesting and since I'm not able to do that I will leave that for someone else to pick up.

I was also thinking of +2 but then scaled it back seeing as the +2 attack dice variant from california got nerfed to one die by the time it reached the east coast. I prefer the +2 and +1 for units with a base of 3 or less. However that is only IMHO and I have sort of bowed out of the rules thing while I'm in school (I'm on spring break now so that's why I'm here).

The only drawback I saw to this rule is it gets a little twisted with spearmen (-1 and +2), but that is another reason for the +2 as it makes the end result a little more meaningful for spears.

[Kevin]

Sort of a side topic here, but I'd argue the opposite--if charging spears get more attack dice than holding spears then it's almost not worth putting your spears on Hold vs. anything but the heaviest-armored cavalry.

[gull2112]

You're right. How should we handle spears? James and I are throwing down tomorrow. I'm inclined to keep spears as they are, as +1 strength for pointed sticks seems right.

[Hannibal]

I have a suggestion for a different implementation of this.  In Field of Glory (a historical game), you actually have a piece of terrain representing your camp.  And basically it's free victory points if your opponent charges it.  The game has fortified camps (like Romans used) that you have to attack like a unit.

In BGFW terms it would represent a colossal sized unit, but you could probably squeeze it down to a single card (representing the general's quarters and loot, you know, the important stuff).  Everybody gets a camp for free and they place before deployment:

Camp
O:(4)4/4  D:1/1  Rg:- Cge 11  MV:-  2G 2Y 2R
Destroyed if fails a rout check while engaged.

Treat it like a unit with zero movement that people can charge.  The attack dice represent camp followers and wounded guys defending the camp.  Make it worth 150/200/250 scenario pts.  For missions like Ticking Clock, where the goal is to destroy the enemy, you count it for your kill total.  For missions like Total Warfare, you count it as surviving.


Then people can opt to buy a fortified camp if they wish:

Fortified Camp - 50 pts
O:(4)4/5  D:2/2  Rg:- Cge 12  MV:-  3G 2Y 2R
Destroyed if fails a rout check while engaged.

Same rules as above, except this camp is worth 200/250/300 pts.

[gull2112]

I thought about doing this and then decided against it because the board is already so small and crowded that the baggage camp just gets in the way and no army had it on the very battlefield with them. Field of glory has a sliding scale and so in some of those battle it makes sense to include a baggage camp.

I'm not saying the baggage camp is horrible far away, maybe it is just a few inches behind the setup area, but historically armies did not regularly deploy adjacent to their baggage.

I had thought of all sorts of ways you could handle baggahe camps and their defense, but ultimately rejected it all as unable to fit neatly on a playing card and not worth the effort.

The best baggage camp rules are for DBM, but they still are not appropriate for BG.