Slitherine

BG A is fighting BG B in frontal combat. BG A wins and inflicts a casualty on BG B. Formation is as follows:

AA
BBB
_B

Looking at page 116, the rule states that in close combat "Any front rank base facing the enemy battlegroup which inflicted the most hits on the battlegroup" is removed.

Can the owner of B remove the overlap base of the BG so that the final formation looks like so?

AA
BB
_B

He can remove the overlap base, but any base removed is then replaced by a rear rank base, unless there are no rear ranks left, so the formation in your example becomes 1 deep.

Page 116 Second Bullet: Any front rank base facing the enemy battle group which inflicted the most hits on the battle group (which bases must be removed as casualties)

Next column over:
All vacated front rank close combat fighting positions (except overlaps) must be filled if the battle group has any bases available to do so.

Yes you can remove the overlap figure no you don't replace it with a second rank base.

deadtorius wrote:Page 116 Second Bullet: Any front rank base facing the enemy battle group which inflicted the most hits on the battle group (which bases must be removed as casualties)

Next column over:
All vacated front rank close combat fighting positions (except overlaps) must be filled if the battle group has any bases available to do so.

Yes you can remove the overlap figure no you don't replace it with a second rank base.

That is what my ruling was. The arguement was pretty heated.

one the players did not want the overlap removed?
Either way they will still end up with the same number of bases in combat.

The number of bases was not the issue. Player A argued that the rear base had to be removed as he was looking at Player B having to break off in joint action and the overlap base may have encountered another one of his units in the break off.

Ahh so A was a cav unit that B was hoping to take advantage of, well I guess that explains the upthight nature of one of the generals then.

You can't remove the overlap base because it is not facing the BG that caused the hits.

Really? It is facing the same direction, so could you not argue that it has the same facing? I thought it was included to avoid players removing a base that was fighting a different direction.

JanChris wrote:Really? It is facing the same direction, so could you not argue that it has the same facing? I thought it was included to avoid players removing a base that was fighting a different direction.

You can argue what you like, but you would be wrong because the rules as written say "facing", not "same facing".

By your logic, if you were 4-wide fighting 3 LF and one knight frontally, you could choose to remove a base fighting the knight even if the LF did more hits.

IMO the rule is intended to make you remove a base that it seems reasonable to remove, not one somewhere else to gain advantage. Unfortunately this is another case where the wording does not match the intention and which did not get picked up in beta testing. If a BG in frontal combat misses completely and you take a hit from a BG in overlap, then NONE of your bases is facing that BG and you can't remove a base. This is clearly wrong, so an erratum is needed if there isn't one already.

The rule ought to be that you remove a base that had dice rolled to hit it by the BG that did the most hits.

Would the issues be resolved to everyone's satisfaction if it said "Any front rank base fighting the enemy battle group which inflicted the most hits"?

This sounds like a very strange ruling.

The rules are clear in that if a front rank base is removed then it MUST if possible be replaced by another base from elsewhere in the BG.

I don't believe that removing the overlapping base is an option but it would only ever be relevant if the overlapping base was the only base not fighting enemy to its front anyway in which case the overlapping base would be used to replace the destroyed base.

Dead. and I had a weird situation with an elephant as overlap...It caused more casualties than the BG fighting beside it. Plus it added the -mod for vs elephants. But I still think that one of the front two bases here should have been removed as they were the ones in actual contact. You could almost think in files instead of BGs but that would get sooOooOoo tedious and complicated....but one of the enemy files had to do casualties....that's where the base should be removed.

lawrenceg wrote:By your logic, if you were 4-wide fighting 3 LF and one knight frontally, you could choose to remove a base fighting the knight even if the LF did more hits.

I agree with some of your argumentations, but your example IMO is wrong. The base which is fighting the knight is not facing the enemy battle group which inflicted the most hits on the battle group (from a dictionary, facing: "the act of confronting bravely", so the base in front contact with knight is facing knight, not LF).

Hammy I think you said what I was saying. As long as the bases in over lap are in a fighting position you can't remove those bases until all the second rank is removed, removing second rank fighting overlap last. Completely different if you have overlap bases that aren't fighting.
And No I didn't have that argument in the situation presented.

rich0101 wrote:Hammy I think you said what I was saying. As long as the bases in over lap are in a fighting position you can't remove those bases until all the second rank is removed, removing second rank fighting overlap last. Completely different if you have overlap bases that aren't fighting.
And No I didn't have that argument in the situation presented.

P116

"Close combat: Any front rank base facing the enemy BG which inflicted most hits on the BG"

....

"Other bases of the BG immediately shuffle up to retain contiguity and fill vacated front rank possitions"

A base in overlap is in the front rank, it is also not facing any enemy BG.

The base removed must be in frontal contact and then must be replaced by a base from somewhere else in the BG. A rear rank base is first priority to perform this replacement. If the whole BG is in one rank then the next priority would be to replace the loss with the overlap.

The thing I am still hazy on is can you take a rear rank base from the overlap to fill in so as not to lose POAs from say a Sp/Pk file?

So I start out as (S=spears, E=enemy)

EE
EE
SSS
SSS

The spears lose and lose a stand

So after the loss they are:

EE
EE
SSS
S_S

Can the rear rankd shuffle around to be:

EE
EE
SSS
SS_

ethan wrote:The thing I am still hazy on is can you take a rear rank base from the overlap to fill in so as not to lose POAs from say a Sp/Pk file?
The spears lose and lose a stand

So after the loss they are:

EE
EE
SSS
S_S

Actually after the base loss the spears are:

EE
S_S
SSS

then one of the rear rank spears (any of them will do) is used to replace the dead base.

There is nothing in the rules to say that the replacement has to be from directly behind the dead base.

ethan wrote:The thing I am still hazy on is can you take a rear rank base from the overlap to fill in so as not to lose POAs from say a Sp/Pk file?

So I start out as (S=spears, E=enemy)

EE
EE
SSS
SSS

The spears lose and lose a stand

So after the loss they are:

EE
EE
SSS
S_S

Can the rear rankd shuffle around to be:

EE
EE
SSS
SS_

Removed bases are replaced by ANY rear rank base. so yes

Yeah, but you can't move a base that is already in a fighting position except to move up because the one in front is dead. So that would stop the overlap base from moving wouldn't it.