Berserkers and Battlefields

 Earlier in the week I sent this email to my regular opponents who l was due to have a game with today. We had been talking last week about changes needed-

Subject: DBV thoughts

Afternoon all,
I’ve been pondering aspects of DBV this week.
I think the loss of a unit leader is too drastic. The unit that has lost a leader might as well be removed as its ability to fight is so utterly diminished. One way of dealing with this might be to lessen its negative in combat . Another might allow it to rally ( effectively sort itself out ) if it throws a six, after which its demoralised negative no longer counts.
Another idea I had was to have one figure as a separate unit who is the general/ leader/Count etc. He gets another dice added to the bag. On activation the leader can move to join a unit, fight with a unit he is with or rally a unit he is in contact with. He will get a +2 in combat ( making him far less easy to kill, as he is a hero) and can leave or join units as the player wishes.
Finally berserkers- +1 in combat, never get demoralised and each time their unit is activated needs a 5,6 on a d6 not to charge nearest enemy. Sort of like dbm and impetuous. 
Thoughts and questions…
Cheers
Alan

One replied-

Hi guys,

Some interesting points, Alan, and I have gone back to the original WRG document to see if any of these were addressed then, and subsequently edited out in our amendments:

On the question of leader figures, the document states "One figure of the most expensive mounted type or most expensive foot type present is nominated as the force's commander and one figure of each group is nominated as its leader". It doesn't then mention said figure again, nor define what there is, except for the effect on morale if they are lost: "A sub-unit reduced to or deprived of its leader or force commander by members being slain, disabled or leaving the table is demoralised", where demoralised means -4 on morale and no defined mechanism for recovery. There is no mention of Fanatics.

I think that the solutions that you propose nicely address the issues that we have encountered with the rules, with perhaps a further suggestion for the role of the force commander, whereby a unit which has lost its leader retains the -4 combat factor until it has been joined by the force commander, removing the -4, and who can then promote one of the remaining figure to the leadership role and restore the moral for subsequent bounds, even after the force commander has move on.

We can discuss these in more detail tomorrow, and perhaps play-test some of them.

Cheers

He also looked at WRG 3rd and 4th edition ancient rules for parallels and idea.

So we play tested this afternoon. Some photos-

Animated berserker figure in action…

Start postions, I was the Viking commander today.

My Saxon opponents…

My second berserker in action…

All in all the berserker rules and general rules worked well. Play testing and tweaking continues next week.

Memo to self need to read up further on berserkers and their battlefield role…