Slitherine

had another odd situation happen in our last game
my pike block was fighting 2 BGS of romans. I had previously lost 1 rear base of pikes. A few turns later I got the worst of the melee and blew the death roll with the same pike block. As I understand it you have to remove casualties from in front of the unit that inflicted the most hits, in this case it was from the 3 deep part of the battle group. I removed a stand from the third row of that half of the pike block which left the other half of the block still 4 rows strong. My opponent said I could not leave the pikes in that odd formation with 2 rows and then a full 4 rows so I removed the 4th row from in front of the roman bg that had caused less hits in the impact.

Effectivley I removed the 3rd row from the in front of the romans who had caused more hits and then shuffled the 4th row stand into the vacated space. Hopefully that is not too confusing.

So my question is did we do the casualty removal correctly?
In the end the understrength pikes managed to rout both roman units shich made me pretty happy with them

Front rank bases are removed as you said, they are replaced by any rear rank base. But the BG must remain in legal formation. So you would have ended three deep.

I think you did this correctly. The stand officially removed is the front rank stand in the three deep pike file. After that you fill in from back ranks and I believe you need to end up in a legal formation, hence all but the rear rank must have the same number of stands.

Chris

I don't believe you have to end up in a legal formation. This is not possible if you are fighting with any bases stepped forward, or in two directions, so it wouldn't make sense for the rules to mandate it. You just have to remove a front rank base in contact with the enemy that did the most hits, then replace that base with a non-front-rank base from anywhwere in the BG.

IMO your initial idea of fighting with 4 and 2 was allowed.

Unless somone can point me at the text that proves me wrong.

You must remove a front rank base facing the BG that inficted the most damage.
You must then fill the vacated front rank position - with a rear rank base.

This filling is not a compulsory move, so doesn't enable you to disregard the normal formation rule.
If however the BG is already out of formation (perhaps because it has stepped forward) your aren't required to (indeed normally can't) follow the normal formation rule.

sagji wrote:You must remove a front rank base facing the BG that inficted the most damage.
You must then fill the vacated front rank position - with a rear rank base.

This filling is not a compulsory move, so doesn't enable you to disregard the normal formation rule.
If however the BG is already out of formation (perhaps because it has stepped forward) your aren't required to (indeed normally can't) follow the normal formation rule.

Filling is certainly compulsory, the only issue is whether it is a move or not.

p23...only a rear rank can have fewer bases

any chance we could have an author wade into this one just so we can get an official clearing up, thanks for your input all

The way you said was correct, because in a pike formation all four ranks are fighting and you can't move from a fighting position. So the one bg of romans would be fighting a two deep formation of pike and the other a four rank deep. The only times this becomes really important is when the bg that is loosing stands is spear or pike, because there extra ranks give them POAs. Reread the base removal section again and you will see what I mean.

thought just the first two ranks fought...you get poa for 3rd and 4th...

They are considered fighting.

poa is for 4th rank alone, i lost a poa against both romans in that fight although it might appear that i should have kept it against the one roman unit.

would have lost all my poa's against the romans that were kicking my butt by the sounds of it since i need at least 3 ranks to get the pike poa

rich0101 wrote:They are considered fighting.

Can you point to rules page or this site discussion that says this? Page 93 states front rank fights and 2nd rank fights.

rich that is what I thought, you have to remove the stands from the BG that caused the most hits.
I was getting hammered by the one roman and either tied or beat the other one oh well, I still managed to break both of them in the end so who knows how it would have happened if blathergut had not insisted on my keeping a 3rd rank in the entire pike block.

deadtorius wrote:poa is for 4th rank alone, i lost a poa against both romans in that fight although it might appear that i should have kept it against the one roman unit.

would have lost all my poa's against the romans that were kicking my butt by the sounds of it since i need at least 3 ranks to get the pike poa

pikes get + when in 3 ranks...then an additional + for 4th rank

Also, if we extended this another combat round, and the pike file lost another base, you couldn't have an original 8 base pike block with one file with 1 base and the other file 4 bases.

i would assume that since the 4th rank gives a + on the POA that they are considered to be fighting so not sure they can abandon their position and head off to help the other side of the block.

still hoping for an author ruling on this one.... (feels bad now that he thinks he has opened a dreaded can of worms)

In response to request for author to wade in ....

Page 116

• You remove a front rank base
  Other bases shuffle up to retain contiguity and fill vacaged front rank positions.
  All vacated close combat positions must be filled using non-front rank bases (not rear)and they can come from any part of the battlgroup, and you can and must use unegaged front rank bases thereafter to fill gaps.
  You can end up out of formation with a comulsory move.

I can see how that combination can create some different interps for this particualt case - largely dirven by the 4-deep nature of pikes Indeed it is ane where I can imagien the authors differing so take this as a personal view for now ...

Your only requirement is to refill the front space with a non-front rank base of the BG. So you can fill it from the rear of the 1st column creating a 3-3 formation.
It is arguable whether this is a compulsory move or not, but the general principle was that you can be forced out of formation by something you are forced to do by the rules.
Thus I would also allow the option to fill from the short column leading to a 4-2 formation.

Thus to me both are legal and at the choice of the person losing the base.

That said I think I would prefer in a version 2.0 one day to treat the options as sequential in that you shift up first and fill the front 2 ranks with non-fighting bases, but we didn't say that. Such a rule would mean the pikes had to fight in a 4-2 formation which perhaps better reflects the detrioration of the RH pike file. Toughts on that welcome, but nothing in the current rules would insist on it as far as I can see.

Si

So when would the pike BG have to conform to proper BG formation? Next time it moves?