Activation check

[phoenix]

Quick novice query. Does anyone know what the activation check is for? I mean, what is it meant to simulate that happens in reality? Thanks.

[Gray Fox]

The CW was fought by much less than professional armies. Orders got lost, riders were late and some officers just didn't get it. They were either slow to act or ignored the orders entirely. The activation rule is an attempt to replicate this situation. Some players swear by the so called "Veteran Activation". I was a professional soldier and I can tell you that if this happened once then somebody would not be able to sit down for several days. If you recall the scene in "Patton", the General fired a Battalion commander on the spot and ordered his XO to take the objective by the end of the day or he would be fired too. In the RW this sort of thing would get fixed PDQ.

[phoenix]

Thanks! I thought it must be something like that.

What's 'veteran activation', though?

[Gray Fox]

At normal level, you can see who is not active...and perhaps do something about this. At Veteran level, the game does not indicate which leaders are going to be inactive for the turn of play. This is to prevent clever fox like players from "fixing the problem" by using more than one leader per stack.

I was a real soldier once. If something gets between me and tomorrow, then you can bet that you will see me tomorrow.