Cavalry in SG2

I don't play SGII, so take comments with appropriate size salt grain.

Perhaps you could treat the Rider and Mount as one unit (no shift for
armor). But on a hit roll 1d6. 1-2 Rider hit. 3-4 Mount hit. 5-6 Both
hit. This would apply to small arms fire only. Explosive or area of effect
damage should effect both.

Brian Bell pdga6560@csi.com
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pdga6560/fthome.html

The question comes up because I just bought one of the Taun-taun figures
from Star Wars Miniatures to use as scouts for my FSE squad. Painted a nice
camel color for use in the desert to go along with the rest of my
desert camo paint scheme for the squad.  (The taun-taun, for those not
familiar, is the beastie in Empire Strikes Back on the ice world of Hoth.
There it appears as a polar creature, nice and white - well, on the
outside at least <grin>

Excuse my irreverance, but I'm having a vision...

"The Lighttaun-taunmen"

500 taun-taun mounted soldiers, swords drawn, charging the enemy line...

Hoo har!;)

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> Jeremy Sadler wrote:

Bayonets anyway.. mounted infantry rather than cavalry if you want to
stretch the analogy.. but a nice image ^_^

I'm using a squad of the old old GW Imperial Guard Cavalry.. (not the
current hi tech mongols) some of whom have slouch hats ^_-  They _will_
be in Khaki.. (With Kalashnikovs..)

> On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Barry Cadwgan wrote:

> Jeremy Sadler wrote:

Getting cut to itsy-bitsy pieces by machine gun fire...

> Bayonets anyway.. mounted infantry rather than cavalry if you want to

As much as I hate being a realist, cavalry does not survive on the modern
battlefield. It stopped surviving already in WW I. Modern firepower makes
salami out of cavalry, as the poor dump animals are not very good at dodging
from cover to cover, and anything not doing that will be shot. Mounted
infantry is the modern version of cavalry, the difference being that mounted
infantry does not ride into actual combat on horses, but just
uses them for transport. I think it was in Falkenberg (must-read series
for anyone seriously into science fiction warfare) where Niven (wasn't it?)
explained why horses would be very good things to have around on terraformed
colonies, as they require no fuel (as such), are easy to transport originally
and trivial to manufacture on site. Of course, horses are good for scouting
and recon. But, truth to tell, some of the old Imperial Guard cavalry looks
extremely cool, so what the heck, give them forcefields and ride 'em cowboy!

Personally, I'd tret the taun-taun as a SIZE 1 open-topped ARMOUR 0
vehicle, no weapons, of course, with space for two infantrymen and some cargo.
Special rule: if ridden into close combat, gives
die-shift up in addition to any weapons the infantryman has for the
first turn of close combat, representing the better position/charge.

> > Excuse my irreverance, but I'm having a vision...

Funnily enough I was going to say bayonets, but then I thought: "Nah, hang on,
that's wrong." <grin>

> I'm using a squad of the old old GW Imperial Guard Cavalry.. (not the

I have some of those sitting around somewhere... never actually thought of it
until now!:)

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> At 01:16 PM 4/19/97 +0300, Niko "GNiko" Mikkanen wrote:
Bayonets anyway.. mounted infantry rather than cavalry if you want to

> Barry Cadwgan ( BCADWGAN@FL.NET.AU )

The Mercenary series featuring Falkenberg is written by Jerry

Here is my two cents worth:

1. Maybe there should be two kinds of mounts, light and heavy. Light mounts
move 12" and can carry troops with up to D6 armour. Heavy mounts move 10" and
can carry troops with up to D8 armour.

2. Fire could be conducted from mounted troops with a 1 die type increase in
range.

3. A new action for mounted troops would be "mount/dismount".

4. Fire at mounted troops would receive a 1 die type decrease in range die.

Yee Haa! Ninja Cowboy

A nuimber of persons have commented that cavalry can't stand up to 'modern'
weapons. The reasonthat cavalry were able to achieve something in the early
stages of WW1 & 2 was that cavalry have the advantage of crossing the 'beaten
zone' of fire much more quickly thatn leg infantry. This is
essentially what happened at Beer-Sheba in Palestine - the horses got
wind of the water in the wells and bolted ( no water for days) & there was
minimal or no barbed wire to slow them down - result, infantry over-run
despite entranchments, artillery & machineguns.

I think WRG (Phil Barker et all) were going to put out a set of Colonial to
WW1 skirmish rules back before DBM/DBA, but when they had all but
finished it, someone came up with the figures to back up the above comments
and blew them out of the water so they abandoned the rules (possibly something
in an old Slingshot about it, I don't have a copy).

What stuffs cavalry up is - 1) poor terrain (mud in Flanders/France) or
barbed wire entanglements which slows them to infantry pace or slower,
 and
 2) extremely high rate of fire weapons such as emplaced 'mini-guns'
with plenty of ammo & power. I'm not sure how SGII's 'rotary action SAW' rates
here.