Slitherine

Just when you think you understand the rules.....

In my current game against Cheahn, I have my longbows lined up on the steep hills....as you'd expect facing hordes of Aragonese spearmen....

The terrain underneath them is all steep hills and they all show cohesion as disordered. However, some of them roll 3 dice in missile fire and others roll 2dice.

Can someone help? Bug or feature?

Sounds like a bug. Disordered MF archers should always shoot with 2 dice instead of 3. I think the game currently gets it right when they're in terrain where they can't shoot from a rear rank, e.g. forrest, but not in other disordering terrain like steep hills. I've notced this as well but never got around to posting about it. This alsoshould affect disordered cavalry as well.

Chris

Why should they lose a dice if the rear rank can fire?

Surely the loss of an attack should be more related to the terrain rather than the cohesions state?

In the TT rules, only the front rank can shoot in woods and such. On the PC, archers are assumed to be two stands deep so lose the second rank die.

Deeter

Morbio wrote:Why should they lose a dice if the rear rank can fire?

Surely the loss of an attack should be more related to the terrain rather than the cohesions state?

The effect of disorder is the same for combat and shooting. It causes the loss of 1/3 of the BGs attacks, rounded down. This is separate from the restriction on back rank shooting in forest and plantations. For MF and cavalry no overhead shooting means losing 1 attack out of 3. For LF and LB it means losing 1 out of 2.

Chris

So, if I understand the responses correctly, there is no logical reason why those at the rear are restricted in their ability to shoot when on steep hills? Indeed, it seems more logical to me that those at the rear, being at a higher elevation, would be better suited to shooting since they could possibly see their enemy. So logically they should NOT lose a dice and if anything gain a bonus?

Morbio wrote:So, if I understand the responses correctly, there is no logical reason why those at the rear are restricted in their ability to shoot when on steep hills? Indeed, it seems more logical to me that those at the rear, being at a higher elevation, would be better suited to shooting since they could possibly see their enemy. So logically they should NOT lose a dice and if anything gain a bonus?

MF archers depend on massed shooting for their effect, not on individual aimed shots by the archers. Therefore any terrain that is difficult enough to disrupt their formation is going to lessen the effectiveness of their shooting which is why the disorder due to being on a steep hill does effect their shooting. You have to remember that historically these are fairly close formations (about 3 feet of frontage per archer) of archers in 8 or more ranks so their fire isn't based on each archer being able to pick their target.

Chris