Slitherine

It is obligatory if conditions are met. It reads, "Otherwise, mounted troops break off if . . ." the steady foot test is met seems clear. Then there is the wording of the rest of the section, including the penalty if "a battle group that should break off is unable to move back at least 1MU . . . ." The word "must" in the rules seems used mainly to fit the sentence structure or emphasize things I suspect playtesting showed were being misconstrued.

The break-off mechanic is well done and gives a nice historical feel.

I tried lighter Cav Sup/Avg Prot Lancers/Sw 1 deep against Sup Arm legionaires. The cav finally won after a long fight mainly due to good fortune including boxcars on general rolls and breaking the Roman flank supports. Mathematically, the odds favored the Romans. The mounted want to charge as much as possible and avoid getting stuck in extended melees since the POA and rolls are dead even on Impact but with the depth and lighter armor the POA swings to the Romans on melees. The Cataphracts have staying power in melee thanks to their armor - the goal is to disrupt the Romans and keep stuck in melee. For hard charging but lighter lancers, the focus is on impact, not melee.

Well I have to agree with Mike,
I was pretty clear for me as well that they have to break off. It simply says that if the conditions are met they break off, not "may break off". It is clear that it is not a question of what is more convenient, if they cannot disorganize the enemy they'll break off.

I think this is a great rule, and I tend to like very much the way cavalry is represented in the rules, it matches very well with my understanding of how this cavalry worked in ancient warfare based on the material I've read.

Seldon

Yep the break off is required if the circumatances warrent. The idea is the cavalry act the way they do not the way the player may want.

last night I charged a MF bow unit with Armoured sword cav. Bounced off. Would have loved to stay in melee with a ++ POA but not allowed.

Then he charged me with defensive spear. I missed my rolls again this time the break off wasn't allowed because i had crowded too many units together.

Although it was a small price to pay for destorying 6 superior knights.

Break off rules are mandatory and work quite well.

miffedofreading wrote:I thought it was obligatory?

It is:

"mounted troops break off if at least half their close combat opponents are STEADY foot. (Counting only front rank bases in contact other than only as an overlap)"

If your mtd troops charge in in the impact phase and lose the impact, they do their death roll and CMT as appropriate but do not break off at that point, by my understanding. They have to stay and do a round of melee (unless they broke at impact...) and only break off in the JAP.

Martin

I belileve that is correct. You only break off in the JAP after one round of impact and one round of melee if at this time the infantry are still not disrupted.

miffedofreading wrote:I belileve that is correct. You only break off in the JAP after one round of impact and one round of melee if at this time the infantry are still not disrupted.

Correct.

Note you can impact the infantry then melee them and disrupt them so you stick. And then fail to hurt them in a future melee watch them bolster back to good order, then you break off.

So it is NOT only 1 round. But it ONLY occurs in a JAP phase whenever eligible.