Quote:
Originally Posted by Black Leviathan
Fighting a platoon would arguably be a Strategy roll but the default from Tactics-25 is pretty generous. Getting swordsmen within a hex of riflemen doesn't take magic, it takes camouflage and a relatively compelling distraction.
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Yes, sure, as I mentioned. It might happen that one or two swordsmen manage to get within a hex of one or two
isolated riflemen.
But if we're talking about a platoon, in a platoon in any sensible formation many riflemen will have another riflemen behind them. In some cases (#1 in a LMG or SAW team and his #2, the officer and the radioman, etc.) literally within a couple of steps. Yes, there will be a few soldiers, at the tail, who have no friendly behind them. These are known as the rearguard, and the word itself tells us that this security detachment will be doubly aware of what happens behind them. It's geometrically impossible that each and every rifleman in a 30-man platoon moving in a sensible formation gets an enemy behind him, and not because it is that rifleman who spots the enemy - it's because
another rifleman will spot that enemy. It's the reason of teamwork and the reason why a platoon can be called a
unit.
Alternatively, if the CO is a madman and the NCO is either incompetent or dead, and if no private has the sense to quietly disregard the order, the platoon might be ordered to advance in single line. Now no soldier has a friendly behind him.
Well, in that case, apart from any Tactics skill, it still takes one initial Stealth roll (probably done against the skill of the swordsmen's commander) to deploy the swordsmen to the starting area. Then each and every one of the swordsmen must make a Stealth roll when he's at, say, 10 yards behind his target. Then another Stealth roll at -5 when he's at 5 yards. You can do the calculations of how likely it is that, even with Stealth-18, with some 60 skill rolls, somebody rolls a critical failure.
Now let's say no failure, critical or otherwise, happens. What about timing? Soldier A is an IQ-9 replacement and is walking noisily and with no thought about what's happening behind him. Soldier Z is a veteran and hates the situation, walks very quietly and constantly looks back. So swordsman A is already in a position to strike, but swordsman Z is 15 yards behind soldier Z and feels he might never get a chance. And these two swordsmen at the ends of the line have no way to know anything about this difference. How will they, and their B-Y colleagues, decide when to strike? If they don't act all at once, the first two or three attacks might succeed - and give away the game for the other 27.
The other situations you describe
are to varying degrees normal tactical measures, in which a good tactician may push the enemy around.
Unlike this sword-platoon-vs-rifle-platoon unreal situation.