Principles of War

[Luddite]

We dug out our first edition copies and it actually seems clearer in those;

"The firing player MAY choose to combine the fire of several units against several opposing units provided all units obey their target priorities."

We also poked about the Yahoo Group (I know!  I mean who still uses Yahoo after the massive data hacks?!  Its not 1996 anymore) and it seems this issue is regularly raised and the response is typically "what seems right at the time" and "always group shoot if you can as the intention is to minimise the calculations and dice rolling.

So basically we're going to play it as;

1. You can choose to form a firing group from any number of your units
2. Each unit fires according to its target priorities
3. Each unit therefore fired at is in the Target Group and casualties are spread out between them

As to the snide "maths sucks" comments, I share your pain as I'm poor at maths and don't like games with complex calculations and "fiddly". 
All I can say is Principles of War has a bit of paperwork but its really not that bad, and in fact i've found it easier than many other rulesets overall, including Black Powder!  And frankly yhe rewards in terms of game play, frictions, tactics, and outcomes are well worth it for us.

[grahambeyrout]

Never played Principles of War, but if the rest of the rules match up to your needs, would it be heretical to suggest that if you are playing amongst friends you seek to  simplify the mechanism yourself rather than attempt to master what looks like complex maths.

[Nick the Lemming]

It really isn't complex maths though. You add up a few units' strength, look on a chart, and move the result left or right depending on situational elements.

[Leman]

That is not quite how it was explained above.

[Orcs]

I used to enjoy POW.  I especially like that while you have an idea of the quality of a unit you do not know exactly what it it until its fired on.  When fired on you roll a dice and increase or decrease its quality depending on the die roll.

While this does not make a crap unit brilliant or vise-versa it does bring some realistic variability into the game.

[Luddite]

It really isn't complex maths though. You add up a few units' strength, look on a chart, and move the result left or right depending on situational elements.

Agreed.

For those who've not played it, it goes like this

French line infantry 1870 Strength 12 using breech loading rifles (blr)

2 such units fire at a target Austrian cavalry unit and so combine their factors.

So 12 x2 = 24.

The blr then modifies for range, let's say 7" which for blr is x2, so 24x2 = 48.

You always round to 5, so this rounds to 50, to you're rolling on Column 50.

Except that "firing at mounted" gives a "1 column right" shift, so you firing factors become 55.

Roll 1d6 on Column 55 will give you either 3 or 4 hits (1-3 = 3, 4-6 = 4).

You roll a 4 so the Austrian cavalry suffers 4 hits.  It drops from 12 to 8 and now has to take a Morale test...

Once you get the hang of it, its nice and simple and rips along very quickly.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Love it!

[Leman]

Again - this is not the over-convoluted explanation that was given above, and in fact would encourage me to dust off my copy and have another look. Not sure what those Austrian cavalry were doing attacking French infantry in 1870, unless they had inadvertently ridden into a police box in 1859.

[Luddite]

They were serving as an example.