After playtesting, I really enjoy this game, but the one issue with the rules that bothers me the most is the one sided melee issue. This breaks down to two issues.

1. As I have noted before it is just as easy to defeat a weak unit as a crack unit in a melee attack because the opposing side's melee qualities and leaders are not included in the calculations.

2. There is no risk to the side attacking by melee.

There is probably nothing more interactive with an enemy than hand to hand combat. There should be some risk to the innitiator of the assualt. One way to do this would be to have cards with die roll results from 1 to 10 (failed melees) with consequences for the failure. Rolling a 10 or a 9 could have no effect, both sides just disengage, while rolling an 8 through a 1 would correspond to the attacker suffering the same consequences the defender would have received had he succeeded. For example rolling a modified 1 would cause the same damage to the attacker that the defender would have received on a roll amounting to a modified 18.

What do you all think? Am I missing something here?

There is always the risk that your opponent has a nice reaction card waiting to spoil your assault.

Usually, your troops must move up to the enemy before the assault, so they get shot at before attacking. Therefore, this is not without risk to the attacker. Timing is a great factor in BoN, so I like the rules as they are.

It's true the enemy has to advance to attack, so the defender gets one free shot, but that makes sense. You have to advance into range before you can fire or attack and the defender probably will get the first shot.

After they are both in range the dynamic switches to:

attacker fires (defender is vulnerable)

defender fires (attacker is vulnerable)

attacker melees (only defender is vulnerable)

So now the attacker gets 2 "shots" at the defender for every one the defender gets.

Also, if the defender has a defend order it appears melee counterattacks are prohibited as they can only "fight" in melees while troops with attack orders can "attack."

As to the defender having a nasty card in melees, the only melee defense cards there seem to be are fall back, counterattack and shoot the officer. While the shoot the officer card is nasty to the leader, all the other cards do is allow the unit to retreat (no real damage to the attacker) or launch a preemptive counter attack first. None of these alter the fact that again there is a melee where you would expect soldiers are fighting hand to hand, but only the defender is actually at risk of losing troops.

Attacker retreats seem to be taken into account as if they fail the assault they essentially return to the hex they came from in the first place. But even here you would think there would be a risk of disorder even if in column, especially after being repelled.

The more I think about it the more I think the game would be better with a melee result deck that covered modified die rolls from 1 to 18+ that allowed for the attacker to take damage as well as the defender and even allowed them both to lose a figure in the fight. This is of course just my oppinion. Maybe after I have played the game more I will change my mind, but it appears others have already made alterations in the game such as allowing a unit to fire or melee, but not both which changes the dynamic back to a 1:1 blow ratio between attacker and defender.

Newman55f9 said:

That is incorrect. The defender can melee, but he cannot advance after pushing the enemy back.

Newman55f9 said:

That is the moment when I try to have my CiC change the orders of the defending units to attack, so they get one more shot in. Of course then I have to be careful if an advance after melee might not compromise the unit.

KlausFritsch said:

Well that makes sense. What threw me off was under the explanations of what a unit can do under Attack and Defend orders it says units with attack orders can "attack in melee" and units with Defend orders can "fight" in melee." But I see there is other language that supports what you are saying. Thank you for the clarrification.

I still think though that treating melees like another form of shooting is an over simplification. I may play test a few games where a melee attack that roles a 9 or 10 still has no effect, but rolls from 1 to 8 damage the attacker in relation proportionally. For example a 1 roll hurts the attacker at a level an 18 roll would have hurt the defender. It is actually quite easy to figure it out on the cards. You just start at the 18+ result, treat it as a 1 and count upwards as you read up the card.

Defeating Crack Units are more difficult due to their Morale Value. And Commanding units can contribute to Morale as well by adding some bonus. And weak units have less fighting or firing values which usually leads to a less important fighting or firing result. However, as explained in many other wargames, a weak unit can be lucky enough to defeat a crack unit ! The use of dice represents that part of luck or fate.

If you attack with a low quality unit (melee value of 1), including only two figs, you have to roll a higher die result to suceed in your attack. And even if you succeed, the total result will be low in that case and less efficient.