Slitherine

Hello

Some questions about charge and steeping forward because it appears to us very difficult to understand how it works. For better comprehension i make some diagram.

When can we see diagram for the rules ?


First Situation




The Cavalry with Bow shoot at the medium foot which becomes fragmented. The Red player moves his light horse in order to threaten the Cavalry on the flank.
In his turn, the Blue player declares a charge with his cavalry.

Question 1 : What is the target priority ? The blue player wants to charge the light horse, is it possible? The red player thinks it is not possible but we assume it is. So we get to part 2.



The Cavalry make a wheel then a forward advance. It contact the light horse but also the medium foot.

Question 2 : Is this movement correct ?

Question 3 : Is it possible for the cavalry to only contact the light horse ?

The fragmented medium foot has to make a cohesion test but they failed and become broken so it flee.



Before the impact phase the Cavalry have to make a stepping forward but we don’t know exactly how to proceed …

Question 4 : Is the part 3 diagram correct ? What happen with the light foot ?

Question 5 : Do the cavalry have to make a pursuit with the medium foot ?

Question 6 : What happen if the Medium foot stay in combat ? The cavalry cannot line up wit light horse and medium foot.


Second situation



The Red player declares a charge with Medium foot against Bowmen. He doesn’t want to contact the Blue heavy foot.

Question 1 : Do the Blue heavy foot can make an interception charge ? We assume it is not possible because you cannot make a slide when intercept and the heavy foot and bowmen are not perfectly lined up.



So the Red medium foot charge and impact the bowmen. Now the problem is how it can lined up with bowmen and how the steeping forward occurs.



Question 2 : Is it possible to be in this situation after steeping forward ?

Thanks

Situation 1
As I read it and there are no distances, so Ill estimate these from the base sizes

Q.1, Q.2, and Q.3 . No to all as the MF are in range of Cavalry charge of 5MU , as more bases would be contacted by going directly forwards from Diagram 1, (the 2 cavalry on the right and centre of the BG would contact the MF and the one on the left can step forwards and can contact the LF), as the rules say and I quote

CHARGING WITH YOUR BATTLE GROUPS
A charging battle group must make a charge move in one of two ways:
1. Advance directly ahead, up to the full extent of its charge move (plus any variable move distance to contact evaders) to ‘legally’ contact any part of the target battle group(s).
2. Combine such an advance with a single wheel, made at any stage during the charge move. Any troops can wheel during a charge without taking a CMT. Unless required to avoid friends, a wheel cannot be made if this would result in less bases being eligible to fight in the impact phase combat than would occur if the battle group charged straight ahead. A wheel while charging cannot be more than 90 degrees.

Q.4, Q.5, & Q.6 irrelevant as the answer to 1, 2 & 3 is no so would not occur, unless they set up in such a way that the answer is yes to Q. 1

Situation 2

It looks again from the diagram scale in diagram 1 that the HF are out side 2 MU so can not intercept the charge the MF vs the Bow.

However I think Diagram 2 is correct as and I quote

"CONFORMING TO ENEMY IN CLOSE COMBAT
At the start of the manoeuvre phase, the active player’s battle groups already in close combat with enemy must (if this is physically possible) pivot and/or slide bases by the minimum necessary to conform to the enemy bases in contact:
• Conforming usually means lining up each base in full front edge to front edge contact with an enemy base, or conforming to an overlap position (see below). If fighting against the flank of bases which were unable to turn to face, it means lining up in front edge contact with the enemy flank edge, with at least one base in front corner contact with an enemy front corner.
<snip>
• All of the bases in a battle group must end the conform move facing in the same direction and in at least partial base edge or corner contact with another of its bases.
<snip>
• Troops that cannot conform by any of the above methods do not move but continue to fight in an offset formation. They may however be able to conform at a later stage.


FEEDING MORE BASES INTO AN EXISTING MELEE
A battle group involved in close combat can gradually feed more and more of its troops into a protracted melee until they are all fighting. The following mechanisms are used to represent this (the contraction and expansions mentioned are merely rule mechanisms to achieve this). They do not require a CMT and are not compulsory:
• A battle group that is already in contact with enemy can expand its frontage by one file (a base frontage) on one side only.
• The active player expands first. The non-active player can match this expansion, or expand by one file to match an existing overlap, if there is room to do so. The non-active player cannot expand unless the active player expanded on the same side or already had troops on that side in position to fight as an overlap in the next melee phase."

Well to cause discontent I will give my own understanding (which could well be wrong)

In the first case the cavalry can wheel before they charge. If they wheel sufficiently to bring the LH in front of them (which looks possible from the diagram) then they will charge the end of the MF and then step forwads with the middle file to hit the LF and the end file steps forwards if needed to hit the end of the LH.

When the MF break on being charged the charge would instead stop on contact with the LH and step forwards into the LF. If you assume the LF are sensible enough to evade then in the movement phase the cavalry will align to the LH.

Hope that makes sense.

In the second questuion the answer is that stepping forwards to contact is compulsary unless you are light troops that would hit non lights.

Hammy

hammy wrote:Well to cause discontent I will give my own understanding (which could well be wrong)

In the first case the cavalry can wheel before they charge. If they wheel sufficiently to bring the LH in front of them (which looks possible from the diagram) then they will charge the end of the MF and then step forwads with the middle file to hit the LF and the end file steps forwards if needed to hit the end of the LH.

When the MF break on being charged the charge would instead stop on contact with the LH and step forwards into the LF. If you assume the LF are sensible enough to evade then in the movement phase the cavalry will align to the LH.

Hope that makes sense.

In the second questuion the answer is that stepping forwards to contact is compulsary unless you are light troops that would hit non lights.

Hammy

Yes thought about that too, It's difficult to assess without exact distances (it looks to me like the LF are more than 1/2 a 20mm base width behind the MF) so I can't tell if the cavalry can step forward far enough to contact LF legaly as it may be more than 2MU from the point of contact with the LH and MF.
So I erred to a cautious measure of that distance with my suggestion as to the answer and assumed it was it was more than 2 MU-

Amendment to my answer
I double checked by printing it out it and if the drawing is accurate then it would be over 2 MU in both metric and imperial measures

However I have also checked the charge positions at the end of the move and both the centre and right end cavalry can only contact the same element of MF, therefore my original assumption that the centre element would contact the rear element of the MF was not correct and the answer to Q.1 is therefore yes, as you can wheel as you will not contact less bases, and therefore I will bow to Hammy's (mostly) correct answer: as it is more than 2 MU from the point of contact to the LF, the centre column can not step forward to contact them.

Missed the stepping froward bit on the second situation so I was wrong on that too ; I did not go down the list of options far enough with my scroll, and I don not have V.6 on paper yet

spike wrote:Situation 2

It looks again from the diagram scale in diagram 1 that the HF are out side 2 MU so can not intercept the charge the MF vs the Bow.

They don't have to be within 2" at the start of the enemy charge, they can intercept if the enemy charge will cross their ZOI. In this case it clearly will, so they could normally intercept. However, as you say, they can't in this case because they can't slide to avoid their friends.

The Part 3 diagram is wrong. No wheeling occurs after contact. Conforming and feeding more bases into combat occur in the manoeuvre phase, not in the impact phase. The bases can only step staight forward. Therefore 1 base will fight the bowmen and 3 will fight the HF.

(Of course, the BG could have wheeled before contact to get more vs the bowmen)