[Note, this is cross posted from BGG]
Since I'm the 'evangelist' for BoN at our local game club
www.nycwargames.com
, it falls to me to get people to try the game, teach, coach, encourage. So far, very positive.
One very common observation is that there seems to be no down-side at all to leaving your skirmishers out all the time. The only impact is that if they get driven in you have to spend a formation change segment to send them out again. This seems a bit blunt to me. Has anyone considered some house rules like:
1) If you assault or are assaulted and your skirmishers are pushed back in they don't contribute to the resulting melee or morale checks in any way. This way, as an attacker you have to decide between attacking with one less fig or taking the extra segment to pull in the skirmishers.
2) The first casualty from fire must come from skirmishers. This balances the great -1 mod they give on incoming fire against the possibility of losing them.
What do you think? Or, is there some nuance to the skirmish rule that I've overlooked that forces some more thoughtfulness around their use?