Questions and Observations From Last Nights Game

[bddbrown]

Hi,

Another of those rambles about a game Richard and I played last night.

1. Richard was playing the Late Republic Roman army - Brutus and Cassius variant. Should he be allowed to field Elite legionaries? The list allows it but should it?

2. I've noticed that with Knights against impact foot it actually makes sense to go into combat on a narrow frontage to minimise impact and then expand at melee (where you have the advantage). Even cheesier, it makes sense to go into impact at an angle so that you only fight one or two bases at impact (by having multiple of your bases touching a single base of the enemy BG - I have a photo I'll post a little later when I get home) and then when you conform and expand get all 4 bases fighting.

3. Medium Foot get a -1 on their CT for having lost a close combat against mounted, and yet Light Foot do not?

4. We had a weird situation where a BG of LF was in Close Combat but an overlapping base was causing a restricted area "pin" on another BG. Seemed a little weird as the pinned BG could not move into contact with them or shoot - maybe a should have charged in the impact phase.

5. Extending this a little, it seems the restricted area still applies even if there is a friendly BG entirely in the way. So for example if you had two BGs in line one behind the other and both within 2" they would both be affected by a enemy BG restricted area. Is this right according to the rules? Should there be some sort of breaking of the pin for intervening troops?

6. We had a situation last night where the break-off rules worked prefectly for me but in a cheesy way. I contacted a BG of legionaries and cavalry with a BG of knights. This meant I did not have to break-off so my better melee factors counted against the legionarries for a few turns - until the cavalry broke. At that point the legion was still steady, and the knights flank was about to be charged by another BGof legionaries. As the knights were only in contact with steady foot they broke off. Perfect. Of course it seemed a little silly that having broke opponents the unit decided to break-off!

7. I flank marched last night with the new rules. When I arrived there was a BG in contact next to the table edge. We did not see anything about this in the rules and so assumed that they did not evade. However it did mean I was not able to charge or contact the enemy BG when I came on.

[hammy]

1. Richard was playing the Late Republic Roman army - Brutus and Cassius variant. Should he be allowed to field Elite legionaries? The list allows it but should it?

A good point, they were not known for their top quality troops.

2. I've noticed that with Knights against impact foot it actually makes sense to go into combat on a narrow frontage to minimise impact and then expand at melee (where you have the advantage). Even cheesier, it makes sense to go into impact at an angle so that you only fight one or two bases at impact (by having multiple of your bases touching a single base of the enemy BG - I have a photo I'll post a little later when I get home) and then when you conform and expand get all 4 bases fighting.

Possible. Actually I am moving towards fighting knights in two ranks or certainly more than one rank simply because they are so fragile.
The above would work against foot of equal or better quality but where the knights have a quality advantage they want more bases in contact.

3. Medium Foot get a -1 on their CT for having lost a close combat against mounted, and yet Light Foot do not?

Ooh, ooh, I know this one....

It is because the LF get half dice against LH and having an extra minus one of their CT would be a double whammy. Let's face it LF should generally get battered in melee by LH.

4. We had a weird situation where a BG of LF was in Close Combat but an overlapping base was causing a restricted area "pin" on another BG. Seemed a little weird as the pinned BG could not move into contact with them or shoot - maybe a should have charged in the impact phase.

I think I noticed this too but when you think that a BG is not one unit, more a collection of units say half a legion of five cohorts etc. then it makes more sense. In you example though LF only restrict other skirmishers anyway

5. Extending this a little, it seems the restricted area still applies even if there is a friendly BG entirely in the way. So for example if you had two BGs in line one behind the other and both within 2" they would both be affected by a enemy BG restricted area. Is this right according to the rules? Should there be some sort of breaking of the pin for intervening troops?

True.... It would appear that FoG has indeed borrowed a mechanism from DBMM

6. We had a situation last night where the break-off rules worked prefectly for me but in a cheesy way. I contacted a BG of legionaries and cavalry with a BG of knights. This meant I did not have to break-off so my better melee factors counted against the legionarries for a few turns - until the cavalry broke. At that point the legion was still steady, and the knights flank was about to be charged by another BGof legionaries. As the knights were only in contact with steady foot they broke off. Perfect. Of course it seemed a little silly that having broke opponents the unit decided to break-off!

You could of course argue that the presence of the cavalry was preventing the knights from rallying back (I wouldn't like to rally back from enemy mounted that are faster han me) and once the cavalry were broken the knights coould finally pull back from the legions they were making no impact on.

7. I flank marched last night with the new rules. When I arrived there was a BG in contact next to the table edge. We did not see anything about this in the rules and so assumed that they did not evade. However it did mean I was not able to charge or contact the enemy BG when I came on.

I believe that the BG on the edge of the table turns 90 and runs away but I have a feeling there was a similar issue raised by Dave Ruddock a couple of weeks back.

Hammy

[nikgaukroger]

1. Richard was playing the Late Republic Roman army - Brutus and Cassius variant. Should he be allowed to field Elite legionaries? The list allows it but should it?

A good point, they were not known for their top quality troops.

As good a chance as any other Roman army of the period of having Superior legionarii IMO - some of the legiones were by that time quite long service formations.

Academic anyway - that list (book indeed) is now locked down I believe.

[rbodleyscott]

5. Extending this a little, it seems the restricted area still applies even if there is a friendly BG entirely in the way. So for example if you had two BGs in line one behind the other and both within 2" they would both be affected by a enemy BG restricted area. Is this right according to the rules? Should there be some sort of breaking of the pin for intervening troops?

True.... It would appear that FoG has indeed borrowed a mechanism from DBMM

But as there is no element shuffling in FoG it isn't likely to have much impact on games - To the extent that it probably isn't worth adding an exception, especially as it is rationalisable anyway - you don't know your friends are going to stand. Moreover, the exception would I think itself have to include an exception for the intervening friends being skirmishers and the enemy being non-skirmishers. Hardly worth the bother IMO.

I cannot think of any good reason for the BG behind to be so close, so why not penalise poor play?

[nikgaukroger]

I can't see any problems with it. Supporting lines should be a goodly distance away from the troops they are supporting - look at the Strategikon where the second line is supposed to be something like 2+ bowshots behind the front (a bowshot in the Strategikon has been calculated to be something like 130m) specifically so they don't get caught up with any problems the front line has.

FWIW IMO DBMM has it better than DBM

[bddbrown]

2. I've noticed that with Knights against impact foot it actually makes sense to go into combat on a narrow frontage to minimise impact and then expand at melee (where you have the advantage). Even cheesier, it makes sense to go into impact at an angle so that you only fight one or two bases at impact (by having multiple of your bases touching a single base of the enemy BG - I have a photo I'll post a little later when I get home) and then when you conform and expand get all 4 bases fighting.

Possible. Actually I am moving towards fighting knights in two ranks or certainly more than one rank simply because they are so fragile.
The above would work against foot of equal or better quality but where the knights have a quality advantage they want more bases in contact.

I am coming to the same conclusion. Holding a base back to expand, not exapnd or plug a gap is definitely worth it. Not sure about two. I am of course assuming 4 bases per BG.

3. Medium Foot get a -1 on their CT for having lost a close combat against mounted, and yet Light Foot do not?

Ooh, ooh, I know this one....
It is because the LF get half dice against LH and having an extra minus one of their CT would be a double whammy. Let's face it LF should generally get battered in melee by LH.

Fair enough. Might be worth noting in the main rules somewhere as it can look a little odd.

6. We had a situation last night where the break-off rules worked prefectly for me but in a cheesy way. I contacted a BG of legionaries and cavalry with a BG of knights. This meant I did not have to break-off so my better melee factors counted against the legionarries for a few turns - until the cavalry broke. At that point the legion was still steady, and the knights flank was about to be charged by another BGof legionaries. As the knights were only in contact with steady foot they broke off. Perfect. Of course it seemed a little silly that having broke opponents the unit decided to break-off!

You could of course argue that the presence of the cavalry was preventing the knights from rallying back (I wouldn't like to rally back from enemy mounted that are faster han me) and once the cavalry were broken the knights could finally pull back from the legions they were making no impact on.

Well you could argue this, but it would be a little weak.

7. I flank marched last night with the new rules. When I arrived there was a BG in contact next to the table edge. We did not see anything about this in the rules and so assumed that they did not evade. However it did mean I was not able to charge or contact the enemy BG when I came on.

I believe that the BG on the edge of the table turns 90 and runs away but I have a feeling there was a similar issue raised by Dave Ruddock a couple of weeks back.

Cool, I'll dig through the forum then.