Charge direction question

[terrys]

The steps to follow are:

1) The charging BG indicates the direction of the charge.

If including a wheel it MUST be able to make a legal contact on the evaders if they did not move (as previously stated)
You cannot declare the wheel beyond the first contact point, since this will be illegal.
In fact you place a measuring stick to indicate the direction of the charge.

2) The evading BG moves - in the direction of his choice, Which is either directly away from, and in the direction of the charge, or directly backwards.

3) The phasing player moves his charging BG.
a) In the direction indicated by the stick. If a new target would be hit within it's normal move distance in this direction, the charge is transfered to this new BG, and the charging BG doesn't roll a VMD. If it has no target within it's normal move distance in this direction it rolls a VMD, and MAY hit another BG if he rolls up.
b) Make a wheel in the direction of the evade, in an attempt to catch the evaders - with compulsary VMD. This may also take it into contact with another BG.

At no time can you make a random wheel not intended to make legal contact with the BG that was charged.

If you stick to the above reading I can see cheese developing where, for example, someone places the LF with their right corner just covering the right corner of the HF and immediately in front. This would prevent the HF charging the MF, whereas my impression was the intention is HF and MF essentially ignore LF.

There has never been an intention that HF and MF ignore LF. We have made it probable that they ignore them in many situations. As far as cheese goes is it more reasonable that undrilled foot can 'charge' skirmishers to their front, and effectively get a free 90deg wheel onto someones flank without a CMT?

[hammy]

I seem to have opened a can of worms

I do agree that allowing undrilled troops to ignore LF and get a free wheel is a touch odd, hence the question.

Unfortunately I didn't photograph the situation as in the end the HF were actually able to flank charge my MF (as I pointed out the diagram does not exactly represent the situation in my game but I cannot for the life of me get a correct diagram from memory).

I am not sure what is more cheesy, getting the free wheel with the chargers or stopping it my putting the light foot 1 micron away from their outside front corner.

I will put together a couple of other diagrams for consideration.

[nikgaukroger]

The steps to follow are:

1) The charging BG indicates the direction of the charge.

If including a wheel it MUST be able to make a legal contact on the evaders if they did not move (as previously stated)
You cannot declare the wheel beyond the first contact point, since this will be illegal.

Disagree - in the case illustrated the wheel indicated although greater than necessarily needed would generate a legal contact. IMO you are trying to define the rules as you think they should be rather than as they are written - the limiting factors are that you must have been able to make legal contact and that you cannot reduce the number of bases that would contact and as far as I can see Hammy's wheel did just that.

[shall]

It doesn't say that though...it says...

"indicate a direction of the charge which must be achievable by wheeling and that would"legally" contact the evaders had they remained stationary"

Its the stationary bit that defines it - your max wheel is defined by how far you can wheel without the evaders being moved at all. "legally" refers to the issue of not less bases which Hammy's would qualify for but it breaches th first condition (page 66). Then we have you can only wheel again away from that declared direction of all of your targets evade (page 68).

In the section on evades it clearly says you put down and declare a direction of charge ...then lots about responses .... and then that you can add a further wheel only if X happens. I don't see how that can be interpreted as you not having to charge along the direction of charge declared.

The only reason we state it is that its needed here for evades every time. Of course sometimes its needed for intercepts as well to see if your charge can avoid an interecept zone.

I must be missing something as it seems better covered than I recalled and very clear cut.

Si

[nikgaukroger]

Ah, I see what is being got at now

It is that you must meet two criteria, sort of "Indicate a direction of the charge such that if the evaders had remained stationary ..." and then onto the wheeling and legal contact criteria.

[peterrjohnston]

Sorry, still disagreeing on this. I realise I'm playing devil's advocate on this, but I'm reading the rules as I'm reading them, not as what might have been intended.

The steps to follow are:

1) The charging BG indicates the direction of the charge.

If including a wheel it MUST be able to make a legal contact on the evaders if they did not move (as previously stated)
You cannot declare the wheel beyond the first contact point, since this will be illegal.
In fact you place a measuring stick to indicate the direction of the charge.

But when I read this paragraph you quoted previously, for me it is about indicating the direction of the charge for the evaders, and the maximum wheel you can include in that direction indicator. It doesn't clearly say to me that the chargers must ultimately go in this direction nor that this is the maximum wheel a charger can ultimately make. Indeed, later it says they can wheel to follow, as you state. But also under charging p53, it also says one can wheel "at any stage during the charge move...[not]more than 90[degrees]".

So I would argue it would be perfectly reasonable that the HF can declare a charge on both the LF and MF. Indicate a charge straight forward or with a wheel direction up to a maximum allowed to indicate as above for the LF starting position before evading, and do a wheel of up to 90 degrees to contact the MF wheel after the skirmishers evade.

I hasten to add I'm not arguing this out of shear bloody-mindedness, it's just I can see players using this to develop cheesy tactics to prevent what would seem, to my mind, legitimate charges. For example, if you have a unit of non-skirmishes at an angle to an enemy unit of non-skirmishers that requires a wheel to contact, but a straight forwards charge would miss, you could put a unit of skirmishers lined-up directly in front a millimetre away and prevent this charge. Frankly, the skirmishers should just be getting out of the way.

At no time can you make a random wheel not intended to make legal contact with the BG that was charged.

The only restriction I can see on wheels is it can't result in less bases being able to fight as a result of the wheel than otherwise charging straight ahead.

If you stick to the above reading I can see cheese developing where, for example, someone places the LF with their right corner just covering the right corner of the HF and immediately in front. This would prevent the HF charging the MF, whereas my impression was the intention is HF and MF essentially ignore LF.

There has never been an intention that HF and MF ignore LF. We have made it probable that they ignore them in many situations.

I did say essentially

As far as cheese goes is it more reasonable that undrilled foot can 'charge' skirmishers to their front, and effectively get a free 90deg wheel onto someones flank without a CMT?

Well, yes. Because on page 53 under chargers it says "Any troops can wheel during a charge without taking a CMT"

[shall]

A nice devils advocate job I agree but putting it back to you ....

Nowhere does it say they have to charge along that path takes you down a line of....

HFHFHF...........LFLFLF

.........CVCVCV

CV declare charge that wheels to the right 45 degrees...but in fact charge 45 degrees to the left thus missing where the evaders were in the first place. This is large smelly cheese to me.

The cheese you mention I find more a realistic but risky use of skirmishers if you have some. If BGs approach at a poor angle you can use your skimrishers to draw the enemy away by going close. There is a real risk to doing this as even HF will catch you sometimes when you go to 1mm - a 1 for the evade and you ar 3.1MU away so a 5 or 6 and ye be dead. So a 1 in 12 chance of getting caught. A pricey option therefore.

When we drafted the rules as is it was I recal with the idea that your options were more restricted if you got close and were at the wrong facing, but easier if you had distance and/or came at the enemy at a more useful angle.

Richard? Any thoughts. I guess an FAQ is in order.

Si

[WhiteKnight]

This has been a very interesting thread, the theme of which seems to have been the wish of all to avoid cheesy play. Great! Previous rulesets have given gamesmen the ability to use whole cheese-shops of the stuff!

Might I suggest taking this back to what might have happened on a battlefield? Your men are being taunted by a bunch of skirmishers and your boss wants you to chase them off so you start running at them....they start to run away and your boss/guys "notice" another lot of enemy, not skirmishers this time, not far away. Your boss shouts, " Now steam into that lot!", waving wildly and trying to be heard above the din. Some guys will follow orders, others will have already decided to go for it whatever and others won't hear and will be trying to catch them a skirmisher! So how to model this? In the game system I suggest a complex move test for "deviating from the direction of charge originally indicated".

On the other hand, if the boss had spotted another body of enemy somewhere beyond the skirmishers, may he not shout orders to charge in the direction of the threat? Could we not model that within the existing structure by the placing of the charge direction marker, with the existing proviso that any wheel in a charge move is limited to 90 or less?

Martin

[sagji]

Now I have taken a look at the detail of this stream and I 100% agree with Terry and he has cited the first critical part of the rules.

Can I disagree? The section Terry quotes is to indicate the initial direction of the charge for the evaders response only. It doesn't say the chargers must follow that direction - as indeed later it states they can do a further wheel to follow the evaders.

This is not how I read the rule, and not how the example is shown.
I read the rule that they may instead wheel to follow the evaders, and this is how it is shown on the diagram on p65.

Having declared a direction of charge against one target that then evades there is nothing saying they can't declare a different direction of charge against the next target - what if when the HF in the first diagram had declared the charge against both the LF and the MF (assuming they were in range?)
The direction of the charge and the path of the charge are not the same - the direction varies within the move.

[terrys]

Might I suggest taking this back to what might have happened on a battlefield? Your men are being taunted by a bunch of skirmishers and your boss wants you to chase them off so you start running at them....they start to run away and your boss/guys "notice" another lot of enemy, not skirmishers this time, not far away. Your boss shouts, " Now steam into that lot!", waving wildly and trying to be heard above the din. Some guys will follow orders, others will have already decided to go for it whatever and others won't hear and will be trying to catch them a skirmisher! So how to model this? In the game system I suggest a complex move test for "deviating from the direction of charge originally indicated".

As you say - Some guys will follow orders, but the majority will probably not. Since a BG represents a number of smaller formations, then the likely outcome of an officer trying to change the direction of charge would result in the (smaller) formation under his immediate control changing direction, while the rest would continue after their original target. At the very least this would end up with the charging BG disrupted - and in game terms the majority (and therefore ALL) would follow the original target.

But when I read this paragraph you quoted previously, for me it is about indicating the direction of the charge for the evaders, and the maximum wheel you can include in that direction indicator. It doesn't clearly say to me that the chargers must ultimately go in this direction nor that this is the maximum wheel a charger can ultimately make. Indeed, later it says they can wheel to follow, as you state. But also under charging p53, it also says one can wheel "at any stage during the charge move...[not]more than 90[degrees]".

You are trying to use 2 different rules to allow you to 'bend' if not 'break' the rules. The section under charging is overuled by the section under evading. i.e. If you opponent doesn't evade you can wheel as much as you want up to 90deg as long as it results in a legal contact of at least the same number of bases.
Once your opponent evades then you have to indicate the direction of charge with an indicator.

The are 2 reasons for declaring the direction at this point:
1) So that the evaders can choose to evade in that direction if they wish.
NB - If the charge was a wheel - how could they then choose a direction?
2) So that you can direct the charge against a target exposed by the evade - within the restriction defined in the rules.

>> What part of 'direction of charge' don't you understand?
Once you put down your stick, that determines the direction that you move your BG. There is no deviation from this except to wheel in order to follow the evaders. 'Direction of charge' means 'The charge will follow the path determined by the direction indicated by the stick placed on the table' - Any other definition is pure fiction.
The reason we don't insist that you place a stick for a charge against a non-evading BG is that there isn't anything the defender can do to change it, therefore it isn't needed.

[sagji]

A nice devils advocate job I agree but putting it back to you ....

Nowhere does it say they have to charge along that path takes you down a line of....

HFHFHF...........LFLFLF

.........CVCVCV

CV declare charge that wheels to the right 45 degrees...but in fact charge 45 degrees to the left thus missing where the evaders were in the first place. This is large smelly cheese to me.
Si

Except you don't declare a charge 45 degrees to the right - all you declare is that you are charging.
You then use the (as yet unspecified) path of this charge to determine who can evade, and who can intercept.
Your opponent then decides who intercepts and who evades.
You then declare the direction of the charge if a target evaded, or move the chargers if they didn't.
This is the first point the rules indicate you have to determine anything about the path of the charge.

[sagji]

Might I suggest taking this back to what might have happened on a battlefield? Your men are being taunted by a bunch of skirmishers and your boss wants you to chase them off so you start running at them....they start to run away and your boss/guys "notice" another lot of enemy, not skirmishers this time, not far away. Your boss shouts, " Now steam into that lot!", waving wildly and trying to be heard above the din. Some guys will follow orders, others will have already decided to go for it whatever and others won't hear and will be trying to catch them a skirmisher! So how to model this? In the game system I suggest a complex move test for "deviating from the direction of charge originally indicated".

But what if the orrigional order was "charge the medium foot". What about the annoying skirmishers? Kill them if they get in the way.

[shall]

Might I suggest taking this back to what might have happened on a battlefield? Your men are being taunted by a bunch of skirmishers and your boss wants you to chase them off so you start running at them....they start to run away and your boss/guys "notice" another lot of enemy, not skirmishers this time, not far away. Your boss shouts, " Now steam into that lot!", waving wildly and trying to be heard above the din. Some guys will follow orders, others will have already decided to go for it whatever and others won't hear and will be trying to catch them a skirmisher! So how to model this? In the game system I suggest a complex move test for "deviating from the direction of charge originally indicated".



But what if the orrigional order was "charge the medium foot". What about the annoying skirmishers? Kill them if they get in the way.

That is exactly what the current rule is set up to represent........ thus

a) if you are aligned towards the MF yourself already you will be able to do it
b) if you are far enough from the skirmishers to wheel enough towards the MF you will be able to do it

so you only can't do it if

c) you are badly aligned to MF and the skimsihers are too close to wheel enough and then surely in reality Terry's explanation above applies

Si

[shall]

HFHFHF...........LFLFLF

.........CVCVCV

CV declare charge that wheels to the right 45 degrees...but in fact charge 45 degrees to the left thus missing where the evaders were in the first place. This is large smelly cheese to me.
Si

Except you don't declare a charge 45 degrees to the right - all you declare is that you are charging.
You then use the (as yet unspecified) path of this charge to determine who can evade, and who can intercept.
Your opponent then decides who intercepts and who evades.
You then declare the direction of the charge if a target evaded, or move the chargers if they didn't.
This is the first point the rules indicate you have to determine anything about the path of the charge.

Ok I admit I was a bit loose with some words.

• You declare you are charging the LF.
  The LF say they will evade
  You then put down you path of charge 45 degrees to the right to make the LF evade
  Are you then saying you can declare your direction of charge 45 degress to the left?

The rules say - bullet on page 66 - you lay down a stick to show the direction of charge
Next to last bullet page 68 says you now move their charge DISTANCE
End of bullet on page 68 says if all evade then they can wheel to try to catch them

Thus you cannot change diretion in the bullet on page 68 unless the last condition applies.

But also see the FAQ where we have said it is self-evident that it is often needed to show a direction of charge in order to see who has been charged and who can intercept (albeit we only mention it for evades as this is the one time it is ALWAYS necessary)

Si

[terrys]

But what if the origional order was "charge the medium foot". What about the annoying skirmishers? Kill them if they get in the way.

That is an illegal order. You can't declare a charge on a BG that couldn't be contacted if the evaders remain in place.

[mikekh]

An interesting thread this, I think it might be worth posting a summary once you've reached an agreement.


Thanks

Mike

[sagji]

HFHFHF...........LFLFLF

.........CVCVCV

CV declare charge that wheels to the right 45 degrees...but in fact charge 45 degrees to the left thus missing where the evaders were in the first place. This is large smelly cheese to me.
Si

Except you don't declare a charge 45 degrees to the right - all you declare is that you are charging.
You then use the (as yet unspecified) path of this charge to determine who can evade, and who can intercept.
Your opponent then decides who intercepts and who evades.
You then declare the direction of the charge if a target evaded, or move the chargers if they didn't.
This is the first point the rules indicate you have to determine anything about the path of the charge.

Ok I admit I was a bit loose with some words.

• You declare you are charging the LF.
  The LF say they will evade
  You then put down you path of charge 45 degrees to the right to make the LF evade
  Are you then saying you can declare your direction of charge 45 degress to the left?

No I think you are "commited" to that part of the charge required to contact the orrigional position of the LF with the declared charge direction. At that point you are free to charge any revealed BG in range. The normal rule on a single wheel in the charge still applies, so if you have wheeled and then advanced you can't wheel again, if you have wheeled into contact then you can immediatly continue the wheel [subject to a max of 90 degrees to the combined wheel], if you haven't yet wheeled you are free to wheel at any point

The rules say - bullet on page 66 - you lay down a stick to show the direction of charge
Next to last bullet page 68 says you now move their charge DISTANCE
End of bullet on page 68 says if all evade then they can wheel to try to catch them

Thus you cannot change diretion in the bullet on page 68 unless the last condition applies.

But also see the FAQ where we have said it is self-evident that it is often needed to show a direction of charge in order to see who has been charged and who can intercept (albeit we only mention it for evades as this is the one time it is ALWAYS necessary)

Si

I am not using the bullet on p68 - as you say that is only used to persue the evaders, and the example on p65 shows that this wheel is instead of the declared direction, not as an additional wheel afterw reaching the evaders' orrigional position.

[WhiteKnight]

Actually I am now 100% behind Terry's very straightforward approach to this. You puts down your stick to show charge direction and have to live with it! The limit of any wheel in your charge is the position you would get to if the enemy chose to stand, ie first contact...after that it's straight ahead (...or directly after the evaders?) , surely?

Martin

[ecnomus]

Hi guys, this is a vary interesting thread, but i think we need an agreement about what can be able or not to do.

In this discussion, if charge target evades (2 front bases), and there are two groups revealed because of this, can a pivote to evade contact wiht one of them even with less than original base eligible to fight (i.e: not contacting one BG and also one base from the other group)?. I assume that i only can wheel before hiptetical contact with stationary evaders in this example.

Another question: can i consider a single wheel if my group beings wheeling up to the point of contact with hipotetical evaders, and also continuing wheeling after overrunnig evaders position?

Thanks,

Carlos.

[hammy]

Hi guys, this is a vary interesting thread, but i think we need an agreement about what can be able or not to do.

In this discussion, if charge target evades (2 front bases), and there are two groups revealed because of this, can a pivote to evade contact wiht one of them even with less than original base eligible to fight (i.e: not contacting one BG and also one base from the other group)?. I assume that i only can wheel before hiptetical contact with stationary evaders in this example.

Another question: can i consider a single wheel if my group beings wheeling up to the point of contact with hipotetical evaders, and also continuing wheeling after overrunnig evaders position?

Thanks,

Carlos.

The amount you can wheel is limited by the initial position of any BG that might evade. You can only wheel as far as you could without contacting the evaders. This wheel is limited by the you must not reduce the number of bases that will contact enemy rule but only in the context of the evaders.

When the evaders get out of the way your charge either continues in the direction it is now going in but if all target BGs are now no longer in the path of the charge the chargers may wheel again to follow the evaders.