Rule Question about Combat Factor

[Robin Mitra]

We are playing the Dragon Pass board game for the first time – and the rules are driving us crazy.

Three Sartarite units with CF4 defend Boldhome, three Lunar units with CF4 attack Boldhome from an adjacent hill. How do you resume the situation? My guess is:

First the attacker determines his total CF, that is 3×4=12. He rolls a die on the Attacker’s table. Does he get a terrain bonus? The defender gets the terrain bonus, but not the defender bonus, correct? The defender may or may not lose units at this point. After the first resolution the players swap sides, correct?

That means the Sartarites are launching a counter-attack, but rule-wise they are still considered defenders? Or are they now the attackers? Assuming the Sartarites did not lose any units before, they also roll on the 12. The Sartarites get the x2 bonus for defending the city, right? Who gets the terrain bonus, Sartarites in the city or Lunars on the hill?

[Keith Nellist]

The attacker does not get any terrain bonus. The attacker is the player who is active. i.e he has just had a diplomacy phase, movement phase, etc. He rolls D6 and gets a result. This is the number of CFs modified by defensive terrain that can be removed. So, on a six he can remove 12 points, on a 4 he can remove 6 points etc. Boldhome is a fortress so the defenders get the terrain bonus – the terrain being “fortress”. So each unit takes 8 points to kill. With 12 points, the attacker can remove the top unit, but no more. The defender (inactive player) then gets to fight back – He now has two units, each with CF 4, total 8. These are doubled for the defensive roll – ie 16. If he rolls 6, he does 16 points of damage. The attackers (the Lunars) do not get any terrain bonus, so 16 wipes them out. On a roll of 4, the defenders would do 8 damage, removing two units. Fortresses are hard to capture. You need to remember that only the bottom three units in a fortress hex are actually in the fortress – the rest are outside and do not get any defensive bonus. When the Sartarites become active, they may choose, because they are in a fortress, not to attack. If they do attack, the Lunars get the benefit of hills when they are taking damage, and defensive doubling when they are doing damage.

[Robin Mitra]

So, on the first strike the active player gets no bonus and the inactive player gets the terrain bonus.
On the counter-strike the inactive player gets the defender bonus and the active player gets no bonus again. Is that correct?

Another question: Are you sure the defensive doubling is done before the die roll? We thought the result of the die roll was to be doubled. Because otherwise you would easily get off the chart (e.g. 3 units with CF7=21, doubled would be 42).

[Simon Phipp]

I am fairly sure that defensive doubling increases the effective value of the defence. So, three CF7 units would get a CF of 42.

I’ve got a DP-NG crib sheet at http://www.soltakss.com/dpngcrib.xls‎ that goes up to 80, which should be enough.

[Robin Mitra]

ok, thanx to both of you. We will give it another try 🙂

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