Skirmishers

[stubby]

My rule is, if a rule is too long to fit on a unit's stat card, then in actual play you'll find that it's probably more complex than it's worth. So I'm leaning towards the simple 1d8 roll still.

Units in squad melee don't have specific opponents, and a larger group is less nimble than a smaller group. A squad should actually find it more difficult to withdraw cleanly from a small group of opponents than a large one.

[Legofighter]

I reword it into "If you have more troops in your squad than in the opponent's, you can auto-withdraw troopers of your choice, 1 at a time, as long as you have more troops in your squad than your enemy. Said troops are not affected by any critical failure or other dice roll." That's actually simple and you can easily summarize it on a stat card.

Also I don't agree with

A squad should actually find it more difficult to withdraw cleanly from a small group of opponents than a large one.

because there's no one to hold them back, and even if the enemy counters if they fail to withdraw, your enemy wont have enough counterattacks for every trooper in your squad, anyway.

[stubby]

No one's holding them back except their own numbers. But hitting somebody when they run away from you has nothing to do with being held back. If ten guys are running away from me, it's more likely that I'll be able to hit one of them than if one guy is running away from me. Especially if they're trying to stay in a group instead of scattering.

At the end of the day though, you can use whatever house rules are appropriate to the kind of game you want to play. If hit-and-run tactics are a major part of your tactics, then it may be worth it to do some math every time you want to use the maneuver. If it's not central to your gameplay, then it's better to roll a die and move focus to more aggressive actions as immediately and rapidly as possible.

In any case, you can achieve the same result just by following the current rules. If I withdraw ten units from a battle with three units, they'll only get three counterattacks in any case.

[Legofighter]

by following the current rules. If I withdraw ten units from a battle with three units, they'll only get three counterattacks in any case.

And that was the reason I proposed that if you have more troops than your enemy, you can withdraw excess troopers of your choice without having to roll the dice. Slight misunderstanding, I guess.

[stubby]

A lot of people have been having that misunderstanding lately, which is always a sign that I didn't write the rules well enough the first time around.

[Bragallot]

Yeah I always let the entire squad attack even if it was just 1 guy running away from them, and had the withdrawing cost them their action. Both seem to have been misinterpretations and it made withdrawing practically suicide.

The skirmish ability in 'After the Rift' didn't see much use and that's probably a bad sign. In Andelmere the other one so far worked the one time it was used, but I didn't like that the attackers lost their actions and could only hit the skirmishers if they got a '1' and it doesn't really remove the problem of using the rule in squad combat either.

For an upcoming battle I'm rewriting it like this:

Skirmishing: when withdrawing from cc they may avoid free counters as long as their skill rolls are higher than the enemy's attack rolls.

Example:

6 skeletons attack 4 archers in cc. They kill 2 of them.

On their turn the 2 archers use their skirmish ability to try and get away, rolling a 4 and a 3. The 2 skeletons counter, rolling a 5 and a 2. I'm not sure if this is the Brikwars way but when there's multiple dice I always resolve it Risk-style so I don't have to roll every die separately and put the highest rolls against the highest opposing rolls, so that would mean 4 vs. 5 and 3 vs. 2, meaning that one ranger will have to take damage before he gets away.

The surviving ones can then move out of combat and fire.

Alternately I could just give them the ability to fire ranged weapons in cc - it's the most simple option and it also works to make them 'feel' like skirmishers imo. If you restrict the ability to ranged units, that is, but those do benefit most from it since melee units have less reason to want to avoid melee in the first place.