Routers Contacted Question

[BrianC]

Hey Guys, I am doing a solo playtest right now and ran into a situation where a Carthaginian Elephant BG has broken a Roman HF BG. After all cohesion checks and death rolls I rolled a VD die of 1 for the Roman and 5 for the elephant which is obviously bad for the Roman. So I removed 1 stand from the Roman.

At this point there is a 15mm gap between the elephants and the HF. Do I do the opposite of a face to face battle and drag back the remaining 2 stands so that they are in contact with the elephants? And by opposite I simple mean the direction, normally you would move a base forward to contact the enemy, in this case its a move backward.

Here is what I mean:

Elephants contact routers


Routers lose 1 stand


Routers close up to maintain contact with elephants.



Thanks

Brian

[rtaylor]

Brian,

Pursued routers don't break contact by losing bases. They lose bases away from the pursuers so as to leave the maximum number of bases in contact. This is covered in the "Battlegroup Disintegration" section of the rules.

[BrianC]

Thanks rtaylor, I see it now. The end result is the same but the stand loss was wrong. To rout this BG I turned it 180 degrees and moved it one move + VMD. I kept it in the same formation as previous. So after the stand removal I would then shuffle the remaining stand back into contact with the elephants. Or did I get the formation wrong? Instead do I keep the formation exactly the same but turn each base 180 degrees then rout?

[hammy]

When you rout you turn each base round not the whole BG.

So if you were:

Code: Select all

A^AB^B
C^C

You end up:

Code: Select all

AvABvB
CvC

and not:

Code: Select all

   CvC
AvABvB

N.B. the ^ and v are to indicate facing.

[shall]

Turn each base around and rout away. The formation may change with fall backs to get around things.

Take losses of from the side away from the rout

Si

SP Nicely sqaushed legionaries by the way

[Scrumpy]

I was concerned by the idea of an elephant needing a vd roll. Who would administer the penicillin ?

[Keith]

Good stuff , go the elephants
Thanks for the pictures , we played it wrong in our 1st game

[BrianC]

I just found it easier with pics than trying to explain things in words, what was that saying a picture is worth a thousand words. : ) I'm glad its helping others, as for a while I thought I was pretty lame. But coming from a WWII background to ancients is a little different. What may seem basic to others who have played other ancients games is brand new for me. I read that a lot of things were used from other game systems which is great, take the best concepts and make a better game sort of thing. But if you have not played those games it steepens the learning curve. But the curve now is flattening a little.

Thanks for the update on routing formations. I couldn't find anything in the rules that stated you just turn the bases so I decided to turn the entire BG 180 degrees. But it makes more sense to just turn bases.

So an addon question if I could. In the routing formation as given above when you contract to get around obstructions and you are routing can I assume that you add bases to the point furthest away from the enemy rather than in behind ( which in the case or routing would be closer to the enemy)?

Brian

[nikgaukroger]

So an addon question if I could. In the routing formation as given above when you contract to get around obstructions and you are routing can I assume that you add bases to the point furthest away from the enemy rather than in behind ( which in the case or routing would be closer to the enemy)?

I believe that any bases contracted are placed at the back of the formation as they are when evading - so indeed close to the enemy. Think of this as the effect of routers bunching up and getting in each others way in a desperate attempt to save themselves which means that they get caught more easily.

[BrianC]

Thanks for that Nik. Under the circumstances of routing it would be more logical as it would reflect the chaos better.