Slitherine

Not a Britcon issue but something that I thought about today. The only bow* foot I am aware of at the moment are highlanders but these were a fairly late addition and came I suspect after the support shooting rule was constituted. I would contend that these should support shoot as per lf. In this connection the notes are wrong on the list as while the rear ranks were armed to a lesser degree than their social superiors in the front rank the use of bow by all ranks seem pretty universal. The reason for the bow* was to reflect aggressive desire to make contact.
John

marshalney2000 wrote:Not a Britcon issue but something that I thought about today. The only bow* foot I am aware of at the moment are highlanders but these were a fairly late addition and came I suspect after the support shooting rule was constituted. I would contend that these should support shoot as per lf. In this connection the notes are wrong on the list as while the rear ranks were armed to a lesser degree than their social superiors in the front rank the use of bow by all ranks seem pretty universal. The reason for the bow* was to reflect aggressive desire to make contact.
John

In fact Bow* were specifically excluded from support shooting, and this was done after Highlanders became Bow*. (Not much point in a specific exclusion before any such troops existed!)

Impact Foot already have a good enough factor against foot and mounted. Giving them extra dice for support shooting would make them super troops.

So don't worry about bottom-up reasoning, they can't have support shooting because it would make them unhistorically overeffective. (And it can easily be rationalised from a bottom up point of view anyway).