stupid army list question

[arnimlueck]

Probably discussed somewhere before but i couldn't find it.

While putting together an 800 points force of eager tax collectors for the pharao I stumbled across the rule that a BG must be made up of an even number of elements (with some exeptions). While I never really noted this fact as an issue when doing heavy foot BGs, it seamed strange when coming to light Chariots and skirmishing foot. These BG will mostly fight in one row, so why should they be affected by such a rule?
Is the sense behind this rule just to create BGs that start the game with all ranks completely filled in their "standard formation"? If so we could maby find a different wording expressing just that and allowing e.g. 9 Pikes in a BG.

Or did I miss a second function of this rule?

[sagji]

Probably discussed somewhere before but i couldn't find it.

While putting together an 800 points force of eager tax collectors for the pharao I stumbled across the rule that a BG must be made up of an even number of elements (with some exeptions). While I never really noted this fact as an issue when doing heavy foot BGs, it seamed strange when coming to light Chariots and skirmishing foot. These BG will mostly fight in one row, so why should they be affected by such a rule?
Is the sense behind this rule just to create BGs that start the game with all ranks completely filled in their "standard formation"? If so we could maby find a different wording expressing just that and allowing e.g. 9 Pikes in a BG.

Or did I miss a second function of this rule?

The rule is there to prevent the use of 5, and 7, base BG because break points make them unusally effective.

[plewis66]

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, and wondered if perhaps the restriction could be relaxed to be 'no prime numbers'.

For example, I wanted to field two BG's of 9 roman auxiliary spear, three wide and three deep, but instead had to do a ten and an eight, both teo deep, which made them quite wide and less manoeverable.

[rbodleyscott]

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, and wondered if perhaps the restriction could be relaxed to be 'no prime numbers'.

For example, I wanted to field two BG's of 9 roman auxiliary spear, three wide and three deep, but instead had to do a ten and an eight, both teo deep, which made them quite wide and less manoeverable.

If I recall correctly the Roman lists only allow auxilia to be in BGs of 4-8.

However, there are game balance reasons why we intended to stick to the current restrictions on BG size.