I've always enjoyed using armies with Inert generals - a good way to place lots more troops on the table and make your army much more of a visual spectacle.
But as I've been contemplating the rules over these last few gameless months, I wonder whether the category of Inert generals might be worth looking at again, with a view to splitting it in two - Rash and Cautious.
The basic business of Inert generals is that the C-in-C loses his special PIP, and all PIP dice are reduced by 1 (fewer stratagems too, but that's not affected by this discussion). Fewer PIPs means it's harder to move lots of troops, but also harder to prevent impetuous troops from going spontaneous.
And here lies the problem: for some armies with Inert generals, letting the bulk of the troops go sponno is just fine. You use the available PIPs to move the Sp and Bw in your Later Crusader army, and let your extra Kn available to Inert Guy de Lusignan go haring off towards the enemy for free. Conversely, the list notes suggest the Caledonians under Calgacus sat around instead of charging impetuously, yet under the rules, taking Calgacus as the Caledonian C-in-C makes an impetuous charge more likely, not less.
So what I'd like to suggest for a future version of the rules is to replace Inert generals with Rash and Cautious generals. Rash generals are just like the current Inert generals, except that all troops under them (except perhaps Hd (O) and (I) and Art) are impetuous. Cautious generals are just like the current Inert generals, except that all troops under them are not impetuous.
Current Inert generals in lists would then be re-classified as one or the other. For example, I'd say generals like Rameses the Great, Varro and Charles the Bold would be Rash, while generals like Nikias, Darius, Lepidus and Calgacus would be Cautious.
Rash generals: This doesn't automatically mean that you'll have massive regular armies swarming across the table like crazy warband armies, because you'll have large groups of troops who are still quite cheap to hold or to move in the ordinary way. But it does mean that the occasional bad PIP dice will result in groups being moved forward when the player might prefer to keep them in place, or individual elements moving into disadvantageous contact. This would seem a good way to re-create the disasters the named generals above experienced, with otherwise well-trained armies moving forward into combat perhaps more eagerly than tactical circumstances would have recommended.
Inert generals: This would re-create the lumpish behaviour of armies led by the named generals above, such as the Athenians sitting around on their backsides at Syracuse, or Calgacus's Caledonians passively awaiting a Roman charge when they could have instead been doing good warband things to the Romans.
I'd be curious to hear your comments and criticisms of any flaws with the idea.
Cheers
Peter
