Slitherine

If a pursuit would contact fresh enemy that cannot be charged e.g. they are already in close combat and it is not a flank charge do they stop 1 MU away or are they allowed to drop back bases to get past ?

Wouldn't that qualify for an overlap? So move the pursuit into an overlapping position?

You can't drop back to avoid enemy, only friends, so they would stop 1 MU away.

You can stop 1MU away by passing a CMT, but unless skirmishers who would hit non-skirmishers you don't do this automatically.

If chargin you could not contact the side edge of a BG in combat frontally - this allowed too much cheese when we allowed it. SO it was a game pragmatic decision not to allow it. Too much setting up of multiple impact charges for instances.

Pursuits are a little different as things are out of control and you can't easily engineer cheese from them.

The only time I have rules this - and a personal view at present - is that as a pursuit it makes contact and is resolved as a charge in the next IMPACT phase just like everything else. So you will get a 2 vs 2 frontal impact phase. They then conform and become an overlap. I think its the best answer and technically seems to be what the rules say, albeit different from the charge situation where you have control.

Its the "treated as a charge" phrase again ... but its not a charge.

Sensibe?

Si