BKC3 rules - initial query

[Superscribe]

Hi all

What an excellent ruleset - I spent coach journey traveling back to Wiltshire from Salute familiarising myself with the rules.  Well done Pendraken.

I have some initial rule queries:

1.  Recce - simplified makes it easier/quicker, however we play at 1/100 and being limited to Tactical Doctrine Range is quite harsh at this scale (and will be same for those who play at 1/72), and does not allow for any long range recce actions.  I suggest that TWICE Tactical Doctrine Range would be more realistic when playing at these larger scales.  Thoughts?

2.  Engineer actions now in Command Phase (which I agree with) but you may wish to remove para 4 on page 19 as it it indicates these still occur in the Initiative Phase!

3.  Commander Units - do they no longer have AA capability as BKC2?

4.  FOs - can observe for off table air or artillery, which suggest that if you have two on the table they can swap roles during a game.  Can they do this or must they be designated a role?  However if they can swap from air to artillery, or vice versa, can they do this without penalty, or should they be allocated to a formation (of themselves and their air or artillery units), and their ability to 'command another formation' is same as for HQs and determined by their Tactical Doctrine?

5.  Smoke/Barrage - it seems we no longer have barrage option which would provide linear smokescreens when several units fire smoke together (in BKC2 was 20 x 20 square per unit).  Thoughts please?

6.  Command modifiers - in BKC2 movement entirely on road, distance to recce and distance to on-table artillery that were firing in support did not affect the CV value.  Is this the same in BKC3?

Again brilliant work by Pendraken - great job team  

Regards to all

Chris

[Leon]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll reply to some of the points and then the author can reply to some of the others:

1.  On the opening page, the recommended range increases for larger scales are: +50% for 15mm games, +100% for 20-28mm games, so I'd use those for the Tactical Doctrine as well.

2.  Yep, a lag over from the BKC-II text there, that sentence needs removing.

3.  They don't, no.

4.  As I read it, they can swap between roles throughout, it was just to simplify that aspect of the game.  The off-table units would need to be assigned to a formation though (pg. 23 - Formations) so if you had more than one FO unit then there would potentially be penalties for attempting to issue orders to off-table units belonging to the other FO's formation, depending on the Tactical Doctrine.

5.  The smoke barrage isn't a specific option, but in theory several off-table and/or suitable on-table units could still create the same effect.

6.  There was some discussion on some of these so I'll wait for the author to clarify. 

[Steve J]

See page 67 Special Abilities: Remote.

So units that have this ability do not suffer a CV penalty for distance. Hope this helps?

[Superscribe]

Hi Leon and Steve J thank you for responses. 

I see that 'Remote' ability applies to mortars as in bkc2, but has been added to engineers and support MGs. Seems odd that it has been removed from recce.
Any reason for these changes? Is the 'remote' ability for recce in fact an omission?

Regards

Chris