The Commander Series Forum

I have two questions re: terrain. And forgive me if I'm being dense.

First, it appears from the description of high area terrain that it has no effect on vehicle movement. It only says that "troops" must stop at the edge of the terrain feature. I presume "troops" means infantry stands, otherwise the more generic term "unit" would have been used. So tanks and trucks can blast through dense forests and cities without slowing?

Second: Difference between tracked and wheeled vehicles. It appears that as far as movement is concerned, the only difference between tracked and wheeled vehicles is that tracked vehicles can cross linear barriers, whereas wheeled vehicles cannot. Is there any other difference?

Troops represent all types of units. If you look at the Linear Terrain description it talks about 'troops on foot' to describe all no mechanised stands, infantry, engineers, AA etc.

One of the differences for movement between tracked and wheeled is the -1 command penalty for moving through or out of dense terrain. For trucks and towed guns, dense terrain is classed as anything that isn't open ground or roads. For tracked it is only high, wet and frozen terrain

Just getting out my rules-lawyer hat temporarily...

So I went through the rules carefully looking for every mention. There seem to be times it says "troops," sometimes "troops on foot," sometimes "all troops," and once a mention of "all other troops." There is never a mention of "non-infantry troops" or anything clearly describing vehicles only. It does seem to indicate that the generic term "troops" includes both infantry and vehicles, but this is never explicity stated.

As for the Dense Terrain section, there is no differentiation between tracked and wheeled. It calls out trucks and towed guns specifically, which is a sub-category of wheeled vehicles. But it appears a LAV-25 and a M1 Abrams both fall into the "all other troops" category.

Pete, any chance for a clarification? Sorry to be anal about this, but my mind thinks in terms of Venn diagrams. Perhaps if you were to state that anywhere you see the term "troops," treat that the same as if it said "units," that would solve the issue easily.