I was looking for a color Terrain Effects chart for Le Bataille’s QB title.. call me a snob but the text heavy black and white follow the numbers this was not doing it for me.
So I thought hmm I bet some OCD wild man did one in the VASSAL module! [No joy]
Well that of course led to me downloading it, and seeing the Last Eagles QB module which I also d.loaded.
Sitting side by side I was struck by the distance differences.
Check this out. Hmm note to self dont use red on white font EVER again. Sorry guys.
Interestingly from Frasne outskirts to the cross roads at 4Bras its 4000 metres in Last Eagles and only 3100 m in Le Batt. Distances are shorter also from the cross roads to next village in the two versions 1600 vs 1200 metres, which impacts reinforcement arrivals. Now where the map edges start matters, for game reinforcement entry and of course I cant ‘really’ tell how similar or different the two are in that respect, they are clearly different. With Last Eagles having more area south of Frasne and North East of the cross roads, whereas the Le Batt module has a lot more ground North West, and west in general. With the scale difference where the streams and marsh terrain is located seems to be markedly different in the map center as does the size and location of the woods.
Anyway food for thought about ‘scale’ in games. Of course both systems use different time scales also, and different unit overall sizing. But are positioned tho as tactical games, and both have clearly got their own views on distances and locations of key map elements which is odd in the days of exact geography.
I had seen in other places that there might be some issues with the scale of this QB map….
Yeah, we’ve chatted about this. At the time, CoA wanted it to be a one mapper and so Barber had to make it fit. His redo of the maps are more accurate scale wise though it has a road/trail running North to South (ish) through the Bossu de Bois which was not there. If used as he has it drawn, it will greatly aid the Allies in getting reinforcements set in the West so don’t use it.
I know Ed W stated that the COA game had issues as the Allies are able to more easily defend due to the condensed map.
Ed posted this on BGG:
One thing to keep in mind is that, because Wellesley anticipated facing a vastly superior number of enemy cavalry, he ordered his infantry to form 4 rank lines for the duration of this campaign. No British units, therefor, should ever be deployed in two hexes. In fact, volleys should no longer be based on the usual 4 increments firing from line, but half the unit instead. In other words, if there are six increments in the unit, then only a maximum of 3 increments may fire from the hex while in line. If there are 8 or more increments in the unit (or stack), then yes, the 4 increment maximum applies.
This may help curb some of the aforementioned imbalance.
That would be the second game I’ve played where that is the case. Interestingly the French Le Retour series, the French kinda have their way with the Coalition. So I guess there is no balancing this battle! But it sure does make it hard when scale is off.
is that a rule or some long forgotten comment on CSW?