gozerius wrote:And yet if both bases of cav hit the front base only, they would not both fight. Steeper angle, same configuration, slightly different end position, totally different outcome. Why?
"The front rank bases are the key troops at impact..."
The effect of the current interpretation is that you have created a situation where the charger can gain an advantage by charging obliquely into a semi-flank charge. Because the impact rolls more dice by contacting non-front rank bases. This is an advantage to the charger, since he can set up the charge to his benefit.
Hello gozerius, hope you are well. I won't join in on the RAW vs, interpretation debate here. It's been some while since I've had this situation occur and it's less common in v2 than v1 and it was rare enough in the latter. So it's a while since I've read through the rule.
But I can perhaps shed some light on the reason the authors wanted it to work the way that it is commonly played, as they've explained it to me in conversation. Make of it what you will.
The interations between troop types in the game are designed to give a historical effect (as perceived by the authors) when battle groups fight head to head. For example, For example, protected Impact foot, sword against protected offensive spear. Here, the IF are at an advantage at impact. If they disrupt the spear they will then have equal factors but more dice in the melee. If the spears remain steady the advantage is to the spears with a POA.
If these BGs hit head on, say three bases to three bases you'll get the range of results that the authors wanted. Essentially, that the warband should win and get a decent chance to break into the spears. They wanted to make sure that you got the right interaction, so, for example, the warband can usually wheel and charge to hit the spears head on and fight along the front rank. And the "can't wheel to reduce the number of dice at impact" and "can't contract in a restricted area" rules stop cheesy moves by the spears to just hit one base.
They were concerned though that, for example, the spears could contract into a single element wide column before the Warband can get close and so restrict the impact to 1 base. Hence, they allowed the Warband to step forward into subsequent ranks to get more dice fighting. It's probably only an extra base but 4 dice at a + are likely to do two hits, which would make the spears test on a -3 (lost impact, 1 hit per 2 bases, lost impact to impact foot) i.e. to make the unhistorical column formation no better than the nomal formation for the spears.
That's what they were trying to do (hence I suppose the FAQs); whether they achieved that in the rules is a different thing of course.
