Intervening terrain

[Jeff965]

During a game the other night I had 8 musket men open fire on some irregular cavalry, the range was 14" the musket men were resting their muskets on a wall and there was another wall between them and the target at a range of 10". My question is should the cavalry get a cover save as they were not against the intervening wall but it was clearly an obstacle between the firers and their target?

[quindia]

I don't allow cover saves for walls in that instance unless the target is within two inches of the wall...

Yes, the wall is in the way on our tabletop, but most real battlefields are not perfectly flat. Even a gentle grade allows a reasonably clear range of sight over low obstacles. You could throw a die to account for these variables in your example 1-3 the target may have cover, 4-6 the target may not have cover.

You could make a call more realistic (and complicated) for individual pieces of terrain. Maybe a low wall DOES offer cover for foot beyond 2 inches, but not horse... Some fences (like split rail) might offer penalties to movement but offer no cover even for targets hard against them. Of course these determinations are best made before the game in competitive matches!

In the end I would say use whatever seems best to you!

[Jeff965]

Thanks for the prompt reply Clarence, I did not allow a save as per the written rule and the cavalry were decimated because of high dice rolling. However I think in the future as you say we will probably come to some agreement and try to be consistent. In a skirmish game like Donnybrook it is becoming clear to me after a couple of games that I am not putting enough terrain on the board, I will give that a try as well as tweaking the rules to suit our style of play.