Slitherine

edward wrote:We also had issues with the different moves, in our case using battle lines and having mixed movement distances which ended up causing CMT's for the whole battle line as some troops were not moving their full distance (i.e. a simple advance)...

I suppose it will take us a few games to get the hang of all the subtleties!

You have missed two rules on battlelines.

1) The speed of a battleline is the speed of its slowest BG. Thus if it has both MF and HF it moves 3 MU in the open.

2) A battleline requires a commander, and thus never performs a difficult forward move as a commander is with the battleline.


One fix for the different charge distances is to have the MF refused 1 MU back. This means they charge to the same line, and if charged the opponent either steps forward, or you can intercept by moving forward to the HF's line.
This doesn't stop you moving as a battleline - there is no requirement to be in corner2corner contact. The only disadvantages are that it may leave your HF slightly easier to gang up on with shooting, and he can charge you HF, and then move up a BG to act as an overlap.

Somebody asked about the starter armies inthe book. I played it out 3 times in testing.

Basically if you go for stand up fight along the line I would expect the Romans to win 4 out of 5 games. They are just too tough frontally.

It needs a bit more creativity to win and after all this is what Hannibal did at Lake Tresimine and Cannae and perhaps Trebia too. I am not sure a straight frontal fight would have led to such fame for him.

If as the carthaginians you refuse the centre for as long as possible and keep Hannibal with them for all his pluses you should be able to to delay the main crunch with the legions for a while. As an IC Hannibal gives 2+s on CTs and can stop the Gauls and Spanish getting carried away. I put the El in the centre betwen the two MF to give them some support when needed.

Then use you skirmishers and mounted to swarm the flanks and knock down the Roman cav. Helped by skirmishers. If all goes well you take the legionary fight either with several legionary BGs peeled off to help the cavalry or with you mounted getting into some flanks. Generally best to go for both flanks as with a LF. LH and Cv Bg on each its hard for the Roman to hold either and gives you two chaces. Put both generals into the combats with the Cavalry but don't get stuck in without a bit of warming up from your skirmishers and LH. Put the skirmishers in front of the cav and they can evade through them.

Carthaginians won 2 out of 3 test games. Both wins came from timing where the cavalry had won a wing before the main legionary line engaged. With Hannibal in the center you can usually hold a losing fight for some time too.

Si

Sorry I don't under stand;

To auto Brake a superior unit it has to lose more than half its bases >50%, so a 2 base superior unit must lose more that 1 to auto brake.

In reality they will never auto brake?

Or am I missing something?

Thanks

To auto Brake a superior unit it has to lose more than half its bases >50%, so a 2 base superior unit must lose more that 1 to auto brake.

In reality they will never auto brake?

True - they never auto-break.

They do however get removed at the end of the JAP if they have fallen to only 1 base.
Other BGs within 3MUs then test as if they had broken

Ok thanks will look this up in the book