True to its central goal of being command focused, Pub Battles handles forts with great simplicity, they count as cover and can’t be flanked. Boom simple.
What if we took this a little further though, and added just a tweak?
First, a slight differentiation. Forts and Improved Positions. Improved Positions are linear, like ACW hasty works. Great versus direct assaults, but vulnerable to flanking efforts.
In true Pub Battles fashion, I wanted this to be more nuanced than a simple die modifier. I also want it to be easy to grasp. So here goes:
Forts: cover, no flanking, ignore retreat, ignore first hit.
Improved Positions: ignore retreat, ignore first hit.
Together, they are referred to as Fortifications.
Forts count as cover and can’t be flanked, same as before. Additionally, blocks in forts ignore retreat results, and ignore the first hit.
Improved Positions don’t count as cover unless they are in cover already, and they can be flanked.
Ignoring retreat results means that the hit counts as a step towards elimination, but the block doesn’t actually have to retreat.
Ignoring the first hit stacks with Elite and Militia, which means elite ignore the first two hits, and when fresh Militia suffer a hit, they ignore the retreat result.
When spent units receive a single hit, they ignore the retreat. Two hits will eliminate a spent Militia, the first hit is absorbed by the Fortifications, the second hit is the first hit the unit suffers so counts as two hits, thus eliminating it.
Due to the temporary nature of Improved Positions, I use the wooden Pub Battles bases available from TREGames. You may also have seen these used for denoting march column status in my videos. Currently, due to the experimental nature of these rules, they aren’t used in any Pub Battles scenarios, but if you DIY any late ACW battles, they would be highly appropriate.
Actual Forts could be used in any current scenarios that use Forts, Like Hougomont in the Waterloo scenario, or any European walled town.
Boom Simple Pub Battles 