??? On front and rear contact in melee

[madcam2us]

Copied from a PM .....

thoughts....


In a related question ( since for some reason I cannot post in the forums) I was curious as to your take in this circumstance. Besides when a rear contact takes place when else can bases turn around to fight enemy which has contacted them to the rear. I can find no place where it describes allowing units to turn around if they are still in contact to their front.

The example in a recent game was when fighting a 12 stand unit in a 4X3 block. It was contacted siulataneously to its front by a 2x2 unit (at position 1 and 2) (there being positions 1 through four depending upon columns) and to its rear at positions 2 and 3.

The initial contacting was easy to decipher only the rear 2 and 3 bases turn around to fight the rear contact. The hard part was in determining in manouver phase which other units were able to either turn around ( to help fight off the rear attack) or feed in to fight unit to the front.

A1A2

B1B2B3B4

B1B2B2B4

B1b2b3B4

--C2C3-

Hopefully the diagram is not distorted when I send the email. But small b denotes the units turned around.The number denotes the column which the units are aligned with.

So the ultimate question is can the whole B4 column move to essentially the 0 column and who can also turn around to fight C.

( If this doesn't make sense maybe I'll send a photo of the alignment.)

Thanks

Silvio

[gozerius]

Since the sandwiched BG is in contact on two sides, he cannot Reform. Since he has been contacted in the Impact phase he does not conform, the enemy BGs must conform. From your diagram they have completed this. At the start of the manuever phase, the first 2 ranks ofB1, B2 are in combat to their front with A1, A2, with the first 2 ranks of B3 providing overlap. The rear rank of B1 is not in combat with enemy. The entire file of B4 is not in combat with the enemy.
As far as I can tell, no bases may be turned to face C, since the "feeding more bases into an existing melee" rules do not allow you to turn around. The only way to get bases turned around is to turn in response to a contact, or to replace lost bases. Or to defeat (rout or force to break off) the enemy on one side and then reform facing the other enemy BG.
You cannot expand in this turn because as the non-active player, you can only expand to match the active player's expansion, or to match an existing overlap.
You cannot contract because there is no place that can contribute dice or POA to either combat available.
In your manuever phase, assuming that you somehow survive both the enemy impact and ensuing melee intact, you could expand to the B0 file using the rear rank base in B1 and/or any base from B4 because the movement represents internal shifting within the battlegroup, and does not mean that the bases are physically moving through the battlegroup to their final positions.

[gozerius]

Also, if the sandwiched BG (B) was pike, all ranks of B1 would be considered contributing to the melee against BG (A), so wouldn't be eligible to expand. You could however move all of file B4 to B0, or fill in one base at B1 and expand 2 deep at B0.