Slitherine

In one of your games you just posted, a unit of longbows (MF??) were pinned by some of your dudes twice. Once just to the longbow front and then by some other dudes (MAA??) coming at them from the flank.

The longbows ended up (it seemed) moving (contracting??) into a column and moving past the dudes to their front. I get they could ignore the dudes to their front since they only have to respond to the restricted area of one of the pinning BGs.

Could they have contracted? I thought no contractions possible. Or did they do something else there?

If you take each bullet under the restriction on movement while pinned you will see that contraction is only prohibited if remaing in place.
You can cintract if it is part of a move that takes the BG further away from the pinning battle group.

At least this is how we have played it. (ALTIHWHPI) - too long for an abbreviation I guess.

Gino
SMAC...ABB

Hmmmmm....on rereading those bits...that sounds right. Dang...always learning something!

But then...if I'm drilled and pass a CMT, can I move a "nat's todger" forward and contract by 2 bases?

I would not see why not but perhaps an author would weigh in on "intent"
Thank You
Gino
SMAC....ABB

Blathergut wrote:But then...if I'm drilled and pass a CMT, can I move a "nat's todger" forward and contract by 2 bases?

onlyif you are facing away from the enemy

Why only if away? Why not if I get that little bit closer?

Why only if away? Why not if I get that little bit closer?

This has been done to death and desparately needs a FAQ.

See the definition on page 41 of advance. An advance does not include a contraction.

So advance on page 74 is exactly that - no expansion / contraction / double wheel or turn. It can remain in place and expand or turn, but is not permitted to contract.

Authors - please, include this as a FAQ?

petedalby wrote:

Why only if away? Why not if I get that little bit closer?

This has been done to death and desparately needs a FAQ.

See the definition on page 41 of advance. An advance does not include a contraction.

So advance on page 74 is exactly that - no expansion / contraction / double wheel or turn. It can remain in place and expand or turn, but is not permitted to contract.

Authors - please, include this as a FAQ?

Yes it needs an FAQ, when somebody does it the rules are not definate enough to bother arguing. Its as well just letting the game continue. Just means the Varangians have to squash somebody else.

You can contract as long as the move ends up further away from the pinning BG (and still infront of it).

You cannot contract and remain in place or contract and move closer.

I just assumed it was legal as it was drilled troops weaseling their way out of the way of some of my men. That seems to happenin every game I play

madaxeman wrote:I just assumed it was legal as it was drilled troops weaseling their way out of the way of some of my men. That seems to happenin every game I play

It is not always possible to escape. One thing that a lot of people seem to ignore is that if you turn and then move you can only make one wheel which can rather restrict your options.

hammy wrote: It is not always possible to escape.

Not quite true. Its always possible for Dave Ruddocks troops to escape

To an extent you can stop it by being careful as to which of your troops are pinning the enemy. I managed to make the same mistake at Warfare with comedy consequences. I'd worked my way to quite a handy flank attack. This turned into "why didn't I just pin him from the front! Now he's bought a move by wriggling away. Not to worry, all I need it to hold him frontally for a pair of bounds". And that was that.

madaxeman wrote:

hammy wrote: It is not always possible to escape.

Not quite true. Its always possible for Dave Ruddocks troops to escape

Even if they have to 'escape' by the simple expedient of defeating troops that are better quality and have POA advantages by simply outdicing them

What's the rationale for only having to take notice of one pinning BG? Seems odd to me.

Carches the boy Porter out - what more reason do you need?

ShrubMiK wrote:What's the rationale for only having to take notice of one pinning BG? Seems odd to me.

If you could pin with 2 BGs it would be easy to totally prevent an enemy BG from moving. Making a move that is legal in respect of two different pins when the pins are at angles and just clip your BG is not going to be trivial.

hammy wrote:

ShrubMiK wrote:What's the rationale for only having to take notice of one pinning BG? Seems odd to me.

If you could pin with 2 BGs it would be easy to totally prevent an enemy BG from moving. Making a move that is legal in respect of two different pins when the pins are at angles and just clip your BG is not going to be trivial.

Beyond that as soon as you start allowing multiple groups to pin a battle group you start getting into all the geometric issues and angling that is one of the biggest faults of DBx. This seems to have been the type of thing that the authors went to great lengths to avoid in FoG and seem to have done so quite successfully for the most part.

Chris

>If you could pin with 2 BGs it would be easy to totally prevent an enemy BG from moving.

Isn't that exactly what should happen? It should certainly be hard for a BG to escape when boxed in, without committing to combat.

>you start getting into all the geometric issues and angling that is one of the biggest faults of DBx.

This rationale gets quoted a lot, but it's a rather selective justification IMO...the fact is that there is plenty of other geometry in FoG. A second pinning BG allowing the "pinned" BG more freedom of action being in itself an example of a geometrical effect.

The rules should, as far as possible, produce situations and outcomes that feel like they represent what woul likely happen in reality, so I'm more interested in a rationale of why, in reality, the presence of the second pinning BG would allow the first to be ignored.