Sliding columns when routing

[Scrumpy]

My opponents luckless Gallic warband routed today, and tried to avoid supporting cavalry, can he two columns to form one on either end of a 3 wide unit, or just to form on the centre column? He had no room to slide two bases over normally, as another Warband was sat in the way of the routing one.

[gozerius]

A routing BG can never split into two columns to flow around a BG in the way. From a loose reading of the Routing rules, during the Joint Action Phase, bases behave the same as when evading except they may be shifted up to two bases widths to avoid obstacles. It seems that dropping bases back would be permitted as long as they are not shifted more than two base widths in the Joint Action Phase. This would not apply to an initial rout move.