Making Combat Bloodier In Hold The Line

Richard Borg’s Commands and Colors system, first introduced in Battle Cry, has been an immensely popular system. As such it has influenced many other games, from the home brewed (creative gamers had already created fantasy and ancient warfare systems long before Battlelore and Ancients) to the professional works of Gio games of Italy and Worthington Games.

Worthington Games launched their company with Clash For A Continent, a Revolutionary War game with a strong Commands and Colors feel. Their system was not a direct copy of Borg’s though, substituting a die based activation system for card play, and a “to hit” based combat resolution rather than iconic dice. Other aspects of the game, from the steadily decreasing number of strength points in a unit to the variable map creation, were pretty much standard Borg fare.

Recently Worthington Games released Hold The Line, essentially an upgunned version of Clash For A Continent with much better production values. While not an exact copy (most noticeably in the choice of scenarios, most of which do not appear in Clash and those that do have been reworked) it is close enough that if you’ve played the earlier game you can dive right into the new title.

While Hold The Line is enjoyable my fellow gamers and myself found the combat system to be rather lacking. It works, but it’s not very bloody. Not to mention that close assaults are rather peculiar affairs, with absolutely no risk to the assaulting unit. Oh, and there’s also the lack of retreating (except in close assault combat).

Rather than reinventing the wheel we decided to experiment with lifting Borg’s combat system, making a few tweaks specific for Hold The Line, and seeing how it would fare since both game systems are so similar. And if it didn’t we could always use Blitzkrieg rules, right?*

Not surprisingly Borg’s mechanics fit like a glove with Hold The Line. In fact, we found the game to be much more enjoyable with them in place. And with that I wanted to share the changes.

The only thing from Battle Cry that you’ll need are the dice. We did not want to change how Hold The Line’s units were activated, so card play is still out and Action Points in. If you do not own Battle Cry it is easy enough to use a standard d6 for a Battle Cry die. Just keep a table nearby of what each side of the die refers to.

For reference a Battle Cry die includes the following sides: Infantry x2, Cavalry, Artillery, Flag, and Crossed Sabers.

STANDARD COMBAT

Infantry – Range of 3 hexes. Reduce the number of combat dice rolled for each hex away from the firing unit as in Battle Cry. If you are not familiar with Battle Cry when a unit attacks another unit at one hex away roll three dice, at two hexes away two dice, and at three hexes away one die.

Artillery – Range of 4 hexes. Reduce the number of combat dice rolled for each hex away from the firing unit as in Battle Cry. If you are not familiar with Battle Cry when a unit attacks another unit at one hex away roll four dice, at two hexes away three dice, and at three hexes away two dice, and at four hexes one die.

Cavalry – Range of 1 hex. Three combat dice are always thrown at adjacent units.

Leaders – Add one additional die when attached to a unit.

Terrain Modifications - Substitute die roll modifiers for dice modifications. So, a unit being attacked in woods would cause the attacker to lose one die.

NOTE: Remember, action point usage remains unchanged, so you can still only move or fire (besides special exceptions such as with Dragoons).

ANOTHER NOTE IF YOU DO NOT PLAY BATTLE CRY: Hits are scored on units by matching the unit’s symbol on the die face. So, if you roll one die and it shows an Infantry, the targeted unit loses one infantry figure. A Flag represents a retreat. For each Flag rolled the targeted unit must retreat one hex, losing one figure per hex they cannot retreat. Crossed Sabers are “wild”, hitting Infantry, Cavalry, or Artillery.

CLOSE COMBAT

Close Combat is modified as follows.

The initiating player must spend 2 APs to initiate a Close Combat. Both the attacking unit and the defending unit must make a morale check. If the defender fails but the attacker passes then only the attacker will roll his combat dice. If the attacker fails but the defender passes only the defender will roll his combat dice. If both sides fail then nothing occurs; the attacking unit’s move is over and the 2 APs have been lost. If both attacker and defender pass then combat is simultaneous.

Assuming both sides pass morale each unit will roll one die per figure, with Elite units receiving a bonus of one die. Damage is taken simultaneously. If one side failed then they do not roll any combat dice, but are on the receiving end of their opponent’s Close Combat roll.

LEADERS

As mentioned earlier attached Leaders give a bonus of one combat die to its unit. Leader casualty checks are done per standard Hold The Line rules. Leaders can rally damaged units by rolling one combat die. If the symbol matches the attached unit, or is the Crossed Sabers, one figure is added to the damaged unit.

MORALE

If a friendly unit has two adjacent friendly units then it may ignore the first Flag rolled against it.

Elite units ignore the first Flag rolled against them.

Militia units must retreat two hexes for each Flag rolled against them.

Rangers/Indians may retreat three hexes for each Flag rolled against them.

And there you go, all the modifications. The fact that units can retreat now makes a world of difference. Likewise, by adding the morale boosting line confidence rules found in Ancients and Battlelore, the battles unfold in a logical manner; with wings being picked away and lines dissolving when the center is crushed. The game, while already fairly fast playing, plays even quicker.

Hopefully you’ll find they add to your experience, and if not the beauty of house rules is picking and choosing what works best for your group.

*This has been a running joke in our gaming group. Many years ago Jim Dunnigan was talking to a fan about The Next War, his monster game on a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, and was surprised to learn that this fan was able to knock out a couple games of The Next War in a single weekend. How could that be?

“Are you playing by the rules?” Dunnigan asked.

The fan responded, “No, we ditched them and substituted the rules and CRTs from Blitzkrieg.”

And so now any time we have a question about a game’s official rule, or want to change something, we say that we can always just play it like Blitzkrieg.

By the way, since Blitzkrieg uses such standard wargaming tropes you can pretty much play any common wargame using its rules.