Slitherine

Third question is about conforming



The mounted have charged in and played the inmpact combat - so far so good.

How do they now conform? The problem is the centre battle group fighting two.

We decided to leave them all where they were and to fight the column and the centre BG against the left hand enemy (the one in contact with the other enemy counting as an overlap) and the two Right hand BGs against each other.

What would you have done?




After the second combat, one of the foot BGs was disrupted (indicated by the stone) - clearly the RH bg breaks off - OK and the LH not - also OK

The middle one is a problem - it only fought agains the disrupted BG.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks

Ian

OK - impact done, onto conforming. The middle BG (I presume there were three BG's of four) cannot confirm - therefore it doesn't. However the far right and the far left BG can conform - therefore they do.

The BG on the left would be unable to expand because of the BG in the middle.

At the end of the combat if all dice were the same then both the middle and the right BG would break off as they are in front edge contact with equal or more bases of steady than disrupted troops.

I think that is "relatively" straight forward

How can the RH BG conform - there is no room.

My thoughts, the left hand cav should have comformed to the middle base in front of them, the cats would conform to the end of the infantry line the rear part of the cat unit would have counted as an overlap against the far right infantry. the far right infantry would have conformed to the infantry in front of them, the cat that hit the corner would not have fought in impact since the cav to their right (hope your not losing track of all this) since it hit less of the roman foot than the cav unit did.
When coforming you can shove over friends as long as there is room which you could have done with the back cat units, thus making them overlaps. No room to expand which makes a tight formation a bonus for the roman foot, less dice for you in combat.

deadtorius wrote:My thoughts, the left hand cav should have comformed to the middle base in front of them, the cats would conform to the end of the infantry line the rear part of the cat unit would have counted as an overlap against the far right infantry. the far right infantry would have conformed to the infantry in front of them, the cat that hit the corner would not have fought in impact since the cav to their right (hope your not losing track of all this) since it hit less of the roman foot than the cav unit did.
When coforming you can shove over friends as long as there is room which you could have done with the back cat units, thus making them overlaps. No room to expand which makes a tight formation a bonus for the roman foot, less dice for you in combat.

This is how we played the combats even though we did not move the figures. This would have allowed the column to expand as well

I do not see the justification for moving the right column of cats.

So far three answers

According to the rule book, you must conform to the enemy bases you are in contact with, but if the minimum move to do so is blocked then you don't conform.

In this case nothing conforms.

In melee each base fights frontally the one it is on contact with, except the right hand cataphract, which overlaps the base it is in contact with (as if it and the cavalry had conformed to that BG it would have gone to the overlap position). Both cavalry BGs will be overlapped.

Breakoffs, according to page 106, do not count enemy bases in contact only as an overlap. Therefore the cataphracts do not break off.


One of the authors (Shall) has made it clear in other threads that his intention was that you conform to whatever unblocked enemy base requires the minimum movement.

In this case the cavalry column conforms to the left and the cavalry on the right conforms to the right.

In the melee the cataphracts fight frontally one file against each infantry BG, the cavalry fight as conformed and the middle file in the left hand infantry overlaps both the cataphracts and the cavalry column.

In this case the cataphracts are in frontal combat against the steady infantry and must break off.



So I think we are up to 5 answers now.

timurilenk wrote:Third question is about conforming

...

This is how I would have played it. The key for me are Cats, which I suppose they charged RH foot and then stepping forward reaching LH foot. I would have conformed RH cavalry so this BG was aligned 2 bases against the 2 rightmost of foot. Then I would have shifted right Cats a little to clear the centre base of LH foot BG, and against the centre base of such BG I would have conformed LH cavalry, which in this way could also expand to its left (if I interpret well picture). I hope I explained what I meant, and anyway is just my opinion.

The centre cataphracts should not be moved at all because they cannot conform. Unless there were issues we do not know about, their owner should have wheeled them during the charge to allow the left hand cavalry to conform.
This is a nice reminder to always think about how the conforming will work before you charge. It can save a lot of problems.

lawrenceg wrote:According to the rule book, you must conform to the enemy bases you are in contact with, but if the minimum move to do so is blocked then you don't conform.

In this case nothing conforms.

In melee each base fights frontally the one it is on contact with, except the right hand cataphract, which overlaps the base it is in contact with (as if it and the cavalry had conformed to that BG it would have gone to the overlap position). Both cavalry BGs will be overlapped.

Breakoffs, according to page 106, do not count enemy bases in contact only as an overlap. Therefore the cataphracts do not break off.

Lawrence

It seems you agree with how we played it except the overlap should have been on the other battle group.

I am sorry, I have to ignore your second alternative prefaced by 'One of the authors (Shall) has made it clear in other threads' - I saw some of that discussion and am horrified by the thought that we might go back to the days of 'I spoke to Phil last week ...' That way lies madness and we should play the rules as written.

As you say the answer is not so clear cut as somebody initially says and we now have at least 6 interpretations (7 if you count the one I disqualify) - It seems there is a majority view that the cats do not move.

Thanks for your answers.

Ian

timurilenk wrote:

lawrenceg wrote:According to the rule book, you must conform to the enemy bases you are in contact with, but if the minimum move to do so is blocked then you don't conform.

In this case nothing conforms.

In melee each base fights frontally the one it is on contact with, except the right hand cataphract, which overlaps the base it is in contact with (as if it and the cavalry had conformed to that BG it would have gone to the overlap position). Both cavalry BGs will be overlapped.

Breakoffs, according to page 106, do not count enemy bases in contact only as an overlap. Therefore the cataphracts do not break off.

Lawrence

It seems you agree with how we played it except the overlap should have been on the other battle group.

I am sorry, I have to ignore your second alternative prefaced by 'One of the authors (Shall) has made it clear in other threads' - I saw some of that discussion and am horrified by the thought that we might go back to the days of 'I spoke to Phil last week ...' That way lies madness and we should play the rules as written.

As you say the answer is not so clear cut as somebody initially says and we now have at least 6 interpretations (7 if you count the one I disqualify) - It seems there is a majority view that the cats do not move.

Thanks for your answers.

Ian

I remember it differently too. I thought you move the mimimum distance to conform - and if you cant for any reason you dont move at all.

expendablecinc wrote:I remember it differently too. I thought you move the mimimum distance to conform - and if you cant for any reason you dont move at all.

Well yes - but it does also say 'basses you are in contact with' (sorry I do not have books with me so I cannot give a page number)

1. the cats in the middle dont conform for sure

I think that after impact, the left-hand file of the cavalry unit on the right (phew!) would not be in a position to contribute to the fighting, as it is only contacting an enemy base which is also being contacted by a base from the cat unit.

It can therefore be moved to the other end of its unit as part of the "adding more bases into melee, meaning the right hand cavalry unit ends up in contact with the 2 end bases of the RH infantry unit anyway. I guess there is some technicality about whether the "conform" takes place before, after or simultaneous to the "adding bases to melee", but the end result is the RH cavalry unit gets all its bases fighting against the RH infantry unit.

So you agree with Lawrence (and I think me too although we played it slightly differently) then Tim but for different reasons. So although we have a few which net out the same, we have 7 alternatives.

Conforming
Cats - can't conform so don't.
RH Cav - would conform left but are blocked by the Cats so don't conform.
Column - from the picture it isn't clear if the move left would be more or less than that move right. If left is less they conform, if right they can't as blocked by the cats.

Breakoff
The cats should have fought as an overlap on the first BG.
However for breakoff you only count front rank base that fought other than as an overlap, so they don't break off as they aren't fighting any steady bases.

Conforming
Cats - can't conform so don't.
RH Cav - would conform left but are blocked by the Cats so don't conform.
Column - from the picture it isn't clear if the move left would be more or less than that move right. If left is less they conform, if right they can't as blocked by the cats.

Breakoff
The cats should have fought as an overlap on the first BG.
However for breakoff you only count front rank base that fought other than as an overlap, so they don't break off as they aren't fighting any steady bases.

I second this interpretation. This is in agreement with the rules covering fighting when unable to conform.

In the impact phase, the charging player decides which base fights the base contacted by cav and cat.

Assuming that none of the bases conform, melee would be as follows:
The cav column on the left fights the middle base of the foot, and is overlapped by the foot base which is free. The lefthand Cat base fights the foot to it's front. The righthand Cat fights as an overlap on the enemy foot base it is touching. The cav fight the two bases to their front, with the far right foot base counting as an overlap against them.
If the lefthand cav column should have conformed to the left, then it fights the leftmost foot base, with the center foot base counting as an overlap agaiinst either the cav or the Cats.

sagji wrote:Conforming
Cats - can't conform so don't.
RH Cav - would conform left but are blocked by the Cats so don't conform.
Column - from the picture it isn't clear if the move left would be more or less than that move right. If left is less they conform, if right they can't as blocked by the cats.

Breakoff
The cats should have fought as an overlap on the first BG.
However for breakoff you only count front rank base that fought other than as an overlap, so they don't break off as they aren't fighting any steady bases.

Thanks for all your answers - I agree with this now as a couple of others have also come up with. It is interesting to note how many variants there werre though.

All

As there is some confusion over conforming - and we have 7 options here - I am prioritising an official clarry on it for the next FAQ and working on it next week. We all agree that we do not want an "I spoke to Phil" mentality, and indeed the forum and FAQ are the tools for that. Anything on the forum is a personal position of an author until and FAQ - albeit often it is simply a clarification that needs nothing further.

I have asked all 3 authors what they intended on this one. The general principle of conforming is very simple - tidy up as much room allows. It is not IMHO healthy to have some minor technicality get in the way of it, although given we have set the rules up to work perfectly well with no conforming it doesn't do great harm either.

A couple of genuine questions to assist me creating this as I am swamped at present so cannot spend my usual time going through everything ...

1) Where do we say a BASE must conform to an enemy in contact with it? This seems to be cited a lot. Unless I am missing something I think we have said a BG must conform to bases in contact with it ... which is rather different. See opening para on page 70 read exaclty as written. Or am I missing something else? So the BG cannot conform to other things, and must stay in contact, but not necessarily the same bases. Haven't looked at the above enough yet to see if it makes any difference, but on a first read just saw things quoted that seems different.

2) We say that you go up to 1 base-width sideways on the shortest distance possible in the conform section (but then as I have said have a diag which is incomplete later in the book in a different section on page 87 that need clarifiying one way or the other). Taking conforming alone, why wouldn't you go a longer distance if there is one that is possible and the other isn't at the time of doing (all the rules working that way).

Just to clarify my understanding of wheere the thoughts processes are coming from and whether it is all coming from diag on 87 which isn't in fact in the conforming section of the rules, and if played that way would result in everyone having to not conform a simple BL vs BL offset fight (which I have never seen anyone do yet in perhaps 1000 games of play and umpiring).

Thanks for the help. Will fix with a good clarry once all thoughts gathered with your help.

Si

shall wrote:All

As there is some confusion over conforming - and we have 7 options here - ...

I agree with you. In particular for the point where you say that if shortest move to conform isn't possible, but longest it's, go for the longest. I would say also that this section of rules, conforming I mean, hardly will can be ruled without let a few to interpretation. I know this can be a big problem in a tournament, but I think it's impossible to rule perfectly each possible case. Better say something like: "the philosophy of conforming it's this, and you can accomplish it doing so..."

Let's examine the case of this thread. At impact you have:

• centre base of left hand foot BG which fight against cav
• right base of the same BG which fight against Cat
• left base of right hand foot BG which fight against Cat or Cav (owner of Cat choice I guess)
• center base of right hand foot BG which fight agains Cav

When we go for melee, I would aspect that:

• left hand Cav fight at least with one file
• Cat fight with two files
• right hand Cav fight with two files

To achieve this, right hand Cav should conform to foot aligning to right end with the opposing foot, while other BG can remain in place. Anyway, even if in the rules has written you cannot shift BG in contact with enemy, I would shift a little right Cat, so left hand Cav can conform and even feeding more bases in melee. I know that likely this wouldn't have needed with a better charge planning, but with this mentality FOG would seems more a game for surveyor than one for history fans.

Simon,

Thanks for commenting. I will address your points as I see them

1. This is in the first para of the conform section at the foot of page 70. It refers to the enemy bases in contact and conforming to them.

'... must ... pivot and/or slide bases by the minimum necessary to conform to the enemy bases in contact:'

I have had this argued that I can only therefore pivot and line up with bases that are already in contact.

2. The same section is for me the controller here - it says minimum necessary - there is no option to do anything else - the only exception is physical impossibility which by rerading means they do not have to conform. I am not sure what you mean with 'all the other rules working that way' This rule does not give the option.

Moving to the other bases would have caused a problem here as there was insufficient room to break off as they would have been dragged in front of a friendly unit.