Patriots and Loyalists- our thoughts and revisions...
| Patriots and Loyalists is a good, simple system that allows
players to recreate battles from the American Revolutionary War in an
afternoon. Players command brigades of between 3 and 6 battalions,
though the rules are simple enough that more units could be commanded by
each person once they are familiar with the system. Overall, we have been very pleased with the rules and would recommend
them, though there are some concepts that feel a bit odd when
first starting out. Perhaps the most difficult thing to get used to,
is the way that fire is adjudicated. Rather than the firing player
rolling for hits against the target unit, the player receiving fire rolls
2d10 against the unit's morale value. While this may not sound
unusual as you read it here, stand at the table and try it out- its a
little strange to be firing at the enemy and having that person perform
all of the rolls.
We played the game straight "from the box" so to speak for
the first few games and have now spent the past three months fine tuning
some changes that we think make the game more accurate and more
interesting. What follows is a brief description of what we have
changed, and why we have done so.
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Brigade Morale Value
The game assigns a value for each battalion that comprises the brigade
command. This is weighted so that militia is worth less than state
troops, which are worth less than continental or regular troops, guard,
grenadiers, etc. The Brigade Morale Value is the sum of these
individual values. When casualties among the battalions of a brigade
equal half the Brigade Morale Value, the brigade must begin to pass a
morale role, or rout from the game. The problem that we have
with this system is that the losses do not reflect the value of the
particular battalions being attacked. The loss of a grenadier stand
costs the brigade the same as a stand of untrained militia. This
results in players keeping their militia units to the rear, refusing to
allow them into combat for fear that it will cause the brigade to reach
the point of rolling against the Brigade Morale Value. Obviously
this does not reflect the period, nor the proper use of the units under
command. To remedy this abnormality, we have weighted the value of
each stand lost so that the brigade's morale is not unduly affected by
battalion casualties.
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Unit Actions
The rules call for each brigade to roll to see how many actions the
battalions may perform each turn. We have change this so that each
battalion rolls individually, which creates a more fluid series of events
across the field and makes coordination between battalions a bit more
difficult. We have also made it more difficult for militia and
poorly trained troops to attain 4 actions in a turn, which is the maximum
allowed.
Our Action Determination roll consists of the unit's base Activation
value, plus a leader bonus if the unit is in command or the leader is
attached, and 1d10. The modified roll is compared to our Action
Determination chart to find the number of actions permitted that unit for
the turn. This does not seem to slow the game down and the variation
among the battalions is worth the inconvenience of extra die rolls.
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Minor Changes
We have made several minor revisions to the system to improve
playability or to reflect our own popular misconceptions of the
period. Here are some examples:
- We use the 25mm movement chart w/ the 15mm
fire ranges. This speeds the maneuver to contact portion of the
game and allows us to fight a reasonable sized battle to a conclusion
in an afternoon.
- We have added a modifier for First Fire.
- Routing Militia must be rallied by a Brigade
Commander or CinC, they cannot do so on their own.
- Routing units may cause those units nearby to
check morale.
- NCOs killed cannot be replaced until the
following turn.
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Check out the charts
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