Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[Rÿche]

In Tattered Banners on pg 43 it references the use of drawing cards from the action deck to determine events and initiative. From my understanding of Mass Battle rules, its normally just one opposed roll per round with the side wining with at least a success doing damage to their opponent. Meaning there is no need for initiative since the roll is resolved simultaneously.

With this set up, I am not sure what the intention was for the Initiative draw other than just Battle Events.

Is it structured so that Groth's Irregulars are fighting Krost's Raiders. Groth draws an Ace and Krost gets a Ten (ignoring Battle Events for this example). Therefore Groth makes his attack with both sides rolling battle. However, if Krost wins the roll nothing happens other than he stops any loss of men. Then on the Ten Krost attacks and succeeds his check with a raise, such that Groth then loses 2 tokens. The round is concluded, morale is checked etc.

This would make sense to me and give the person who draws the higher initiative the advantage, but it does slightly change the core Mass Battle Rules.

The other option to just let them each make their checks on their initiative, but that would result in the possibility of multiple losses per battle round, for a given side.

Trying to suss out the value of the Slow Reactions Hindrance and Mobility Edge.

[kaltorak]

Yes, initiative is mainly used for checking Battle Events, which can change dramatically the outcome of a battle, but commaders declare tactics in initiative's order, and this can change a lot the outcome of the battle, given the range of tactics bonus to the Battle roll (and yes, being first isn't always a good thing).

Note on this matter on Mobility that the best card to choose is left to the player: he can decide to choose a lower card to declare actions after the opponent (and to avoid a bad event).
And the opposite is true for Slow Reactions.

[Rÿche]

Thanks for the quick response. That makes sense. Will have to force my players to start describing their tactics a bit more when it comes up. Also, good point on the mobility.