Morale: “the confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline of a person or group at a particular time” – Oxford Languages Dictionary

Morale, in miniature games, as well as board games, can be a very tricky thing to get “right.” All too often, a set of rules allows for an entire army to crumble at once, whereas others make morale an unrealistic restriction, in my view.

One example being that in a certain set of rules, a player dices for unit activation based on that units’ morale level. So, even moving, before any action takes place, can be a real challenge.

Other rules combine morale and experience, which I believe to be a fairer system, but then they set modifiers in such a way that units still have no option other than to perform poorly. Altar of Freedom does this, unfortunately, with more than one scenario, using a -3 DRM on a single die 6, for shooting, for more than one brigade in a scenario. That makes those units mostly useless in fire combat, and only slightly better in melee due to other modifiers that can help them out.

This is not a criticism of AoF, per se, but rather an honest opinion of how one way morale is handled in a game.

From my perspective, morale and experience go hand-in-hand, although they are entirely different things. Experience, whether training or actual combat experience, can temper extremes and expectations of morale. A less experienced unit may take longer, usually, to perform formation maneuvers in comparison to one that is well-experienced, but there is no guarantee that the latter will withstand a crisis of morale. The Middle Guard at Waterloo is but one example.

However, certain mental shocks are likely to be withstood or weakened, based on the overall experience and training of a unit. Thus, a modified die roll.

Where I am not completely happy with how I happen to think a particular set of rules falls short, just like a great many other gamers I come up with my own “solution.”

There are some very good books on mass psychology or how crowds handle situations differently than individuals, I am probably going to write a review of one or two of these. My general point being that there is a certain “threshold” of mental and physical stimuli which can be better withstood by a group, as the “weaker” individuals are buoyed up by the “stronger.” I place the words in quotes because weakness and strength are general terms and not to be taken literally in this sense.

Therefore, in my rules, brigade morale is determined by the number of battalions in a brigade, and then adding one to this total, for the group psychology bonus. Starting from seven, as that is one pip more than what is available on a d6, “good” modifiers are subtracted, with “bad” modifiers being added.

So, a brigade comprised of five battalions has a morale of 1, needing to equal or exceed that number to pass a morale test. However, as a roll of ‘6’ always succeeds and a roll of ‘1’ always fails, the actual die result would need to be a 2 or better to pass.

Conversely, a brigade of just two battalions would pass a morale test on a 4+. Where some may see this as a little too brittle, I have that covered.

A brigade is given three opportunities to avoid breaking, with a reduction in their morale resilience after each failure.  The two brigades, in this example, would each have a morale table of  

1|2|3

And

4|5|6

There are different circumstances for the boxes to be crossed out, but essentially if a battalion from the brigade is broken or if a combat result chit indicates a morale test, which is then failed, one box, starting from the left side, is crossed off and then number in the left most box is the new morale value.

Once all the boxes are crossed off, the next time a morale test is required, the brigade shatters and is removed from play