Couple of questions

[GCoupland]

1. Some maneuvers allow for a turn followed or preceded by a simple advance. Does simple advance mean just moving forward, or can a wheel be involved?

2. If you have 8 stands of MF in two ranks, and they perform a turn to the right or left, do they end up in the same formation, just facing a different direction?

[gozerius]

1. Some maneuvers allow for a turn followed or preceded by a simple advance. Does simple advance mean just moving forward, or can a wheel be involved?

2. If you have 8 stands of MF in two ranks, and they perform a turn to the right or left, do they end up in the same formation, just facing a different direction?

A simple advance is one that is described as simple on the maneuver table. Wheeling or moving short is considered complex for some undrilled troops moving without a commander, if it is within 6MUs of the enemy at any point of the move.

A BG of MF turning 90 degrees would end in a column one file wide and 8 bases deep facing the intended direction.

[deadtorius]

Simple advance is forward move with no more than a single wheel for all troop types. After that it gets a bit more wordy.
For undrilled its a non issue since undrilled foot can turn but can't move so no worries there.
Undrilled cav and drilled troops, difficult forward move is, single wheel while trying to do less than full move without a commander present, or the same move or just making a wheel while less than 6 MU form the enemy.
So if the enemy is closer than 6MU or you are trying to turn and then do less than full move before or after, or both apply it is not a simple move. Kind of confusing with the wording on that one hope that helps.

When turning you look at the total depth of the sides of the bases that are turning, the new front must be at least that wide, so in your example your depth would be 40 or 60mm (25mm guy here) so your new frontage would have to be at least that wide which means 1 base wide and everyone else fills in behind the new lead base, so they would be in a column.
Turning back again would make your side 160-180mm so you would turn back as at least 3 wide and the rest would form up behind the new 3 front bases. hope that helps.
Pike Blocks of 8 and cav in BG's of 4 bases will always keep their formation when they turn.

[Ghaznavid]

Simple advance is forward move with no more than a single wheel for all troop types. After that it gets a bit more wordy.
For undrilled its a non issue since undrilled foot can turn but can't move so no worries there.
Undrilled cav and drilled troops, difficult forward move is, single wheel while trying to do less than full move without a commander present, or the same move or just making a wheel while less than 6 MU form the enemy.
So if the enemy is closer than 6MU or you are trying to turn and then do less than full move before or after, or both apply it is not a simple move. Kind of confusing with the wording on that one hope that helps.

Neither Cv nor drilled troops fall into the 'other undrilled' category so the difficult move rule does not apply to them. Accordingly there is no such thing as a turn followed by a difficult move.
In effect all troops allowed to turn and move can also include a single wheel in that move (and/or move short) without problem.
Even IF the difficult move rules were to apply turn and move already require a CMT for all but skirmishers. So the must make a CMT to ... requirement would be fulfilled anyway.

[Blathergut]

Took this olde brain a while but I finally managed to keep remembering that some difficult forward moves are simple.

Just curious: Has FoGR changed the wording of all that slightly?