Slitherine

Hello, I have played three games in the last two weeks. Here are our initial impressions (mine, my opponents and public):

1- First of all, the game seems very fun and realistic, which after all is what it should be. Well done.
2- Altough movement allowances are greater than in DBM, deployment zones are closer to the table edges, so the net effect is that the clash of the main battle lines (excluding skirmishers) will come as the same time as in that game.
3- Use of BGs instead of elements produces more reasonable tactics. No more obssesive protection of a flank because a lone element could roll up your whole line of troops. Also, the battlefield looks clearer.
4- We feel that quality is more important than numbers, so we are deploying the best troops we can, in terms of armour and quality. In fact, no many skirmishers have been seen. I am aware that a debate is running about skirmishers shooting and how effective it is (or it is not). We have had no problems pushing skirmishers away. Maybe we are not massing their fire or maybe we have attacked them very aggresively

The game is very fun and interest is growing here in Seville, people want to test it. As, up to this moment, I am the only official beta tester here, I have a full agenda of games waiting

Here are some questions that arose in our games:

1- Is a charge in the impact phase needed to attack an enemy camp?
2- Can a BG charge an enemy BG that is fighting with all his bases with a charge that is not a flank or a rear one? The charging BG could touch an enemy base side edge with a front corner, so it was a legal charge, but the enemy base was already fighting with his front edge.
3- We had a situation where a spearmen BG was fighting with a frontage of 4 bases, but only had 6 bases (4 in the front row and two in the second). It only had 3 dice to impact the enemy. How would POAs be allocated? Should we use 2 dice with 2 POAs and 1 dice with one POA, or the other way around?
4- Another similar situation, this time with shooting. A BG was shooting at two different enemy BG. How are dice allocated? We couldn´t find an exact rule.
5- Expandind and contracting. Can you expand or contract 1 or 2 BASES, or 1 or 2 FRONTAGES? Can a 6 element column expand in a single turn to a 3x2 BG (which is a frontage of 2 but 4 bases moved)?

Thank you.

Javier.

Javier

Pleased you are enjoying it. Skirmishers have their place but we feel they are well balanced. There are a lot of subtletis that emerge as one tries different types of games.

1- Is a charge in the impact phase needed to attack an enemy camp?

You contact the camp in the Movememnnt phase. It gets fought ina different way during melee.

2- Can a BG charge an enemy BG that is fighting with all his bases with a charge that is not a flank or a rear one? The charging BG could touch an enemy base side edge with a front corner, so it was a legal charge, but the enemy base was already fighting with his front edge.

You cannot charge a BG in combat except by:

Frontally charging a base that is unengaged frontally
Charging legally in flank or rear

In botht he above cases fight an IMPACT phase

Otherwise move up to overlap in movement and join the melee

In this case they add to the MELEE phase

3- We had a situation where a spearmen BG was fighting with a frontage of 4 bases, but only had 6 bases (4 in the front row and two in the second). It only had 3 dice to impact the enemy. How would POAs be allocated? Should we use 2 dice with 2 POAs and 1 dice with one POA, or the other way around?

Do the POAs by file. The one file that is 2 deep gets all the +s. The 2 that are 1 deep will lose their + for spears but will usually keep any Sp cancellation effects say vs lancers.

4- Another similar situation, this time with shooting. A BG was shooting at two different enemy BG. How are dice allocated? We couldn´t find an exact rule.

Each file has its own target priority. Work out these strictly and split dice that way. At times you will get your fire split on too many groups and find it rounds down to nothing of value. This is deliberate.

5- Expandind and contracting. Can you expand or contract 1 or 2 BASES, or 1 or 2 FRONTAGES? Can a 6 element column expand in a single turn to a 3x2 BG (which is a frontage of 2 but 4 bases moved)?

1 or 2 files - in the detail it says front rank bases and then re-organise into legal formation behind.

Simon

shall wrote:

2- Can a BG charge an enemy BG that is fighting with all his bases with a charge that is not a flank or a rear one? The charging BG could touch an enemy base side edge with a front corner, so it was a legal charge, but the enemy base was already fighting with his front edge.

You cannot charge a BG in combat except by:

Frontally charging a base that is unengaged frontally
Charging legally in flank or rear

In botht he above cases fight an IMPACT phase

Otherwise move up to overlap in movement and join the melee

In this case they add to the MELEE phase

This reminds me of a question that has bouncing around my brain for a while. Can a BG contact an enemy BG's flank without charging, if the enemy BG is already fighting to its front? Assume that the friendly BG is in position to make a legal flank contact if it wanted to, but does not move in the impact phase (player forgets to charge; LF can't charge HF; something like that). Can the friendly BG move into contact in the movement phase and fight in the melee phase as an overlap?

Marc

shall wrote:

1- Is a charge in the impact phase needed to attack an enemy camp?

Yes you charge a camp. It gets fought ina different way but you still impact it.

Actually not. You move into the camp in the manoeuvre phase.

babyshark wrote:This reminds me of a question that has bouncing around my brain for a while. Can a BG contact an enemy BG's flank without charging, if the enemy BG is already fighting to its front? Assume that the friendly BG is in position to make a legal flank contact if it wanted to, but does not move in the impact phase (player forgets to charge; LF can't charge HF; something like that). Can the friendly BG move into contact in the movement phase and fight in the melee phase as an overlap?

Only if it moves into side edge to side edge contact or front corner to front corner only contact.

Thank you very much for your answers.

Do the POAs by file. The one file that is 2 deep gets all the +s. The 2 that are 1 deep will lose their + for spears but will usually keep any Sp cancellation effects say vs lancers.

Yes, but in this situation we had four files fighting, two with two bases and two with one base, and three combat dice to throw. Do we assign two dices to the two bases files and one dice to a one base file, or the other way around? I hope I´m explaining myself

Each file has its own target priority. Work out these strictly and split dice that way. At times you will get your fire split on too many groups and find it rounds down to nothing of value. This is deliberate.

So, is it possible to lose shooting dice due to this? Let´s imagine an 8 bases MF bowmen BG, in a 4x2 formation. It should fire with six dices. Now. in an extreme situation, it faces four enemy BGs in columns one base wide directly ahead, so each file of the bowmen shoot at a different enemy BG. In this case, do the bowmen BG shoot with 4 dice only (one dice for first rank and zero from second rank) or with 6 dice and then the dice are assigned to the enemy BGs?

Another question: skirmisher shooting says nothing about x dice per first or second range, but "1 dice per 2 bases in effective range". If we have a 3x2 BG of skirmishers, does that mean that the second row must be in range to be able to shoot? I mean, I understand that a second row of bowmen in a non skirmisher BG can shoot if the first rank is in range, with that second row not needing to be in range as they are supporting the first row shooting, but if the BG is an skirmisher one, all bases must be in range. Is that correct?

moncholee wrote:Thank you very much for your answers.

Do the POAs by file. The one file that is 2 deep gets all the +s. The 2 that are 1 deep will lose their + for spears but will usually keep any Sp cancellation effects say vs lancers.

Yes, but in this situation we had four files fighting, two with two bases and two with one base, and three combat dice to throw. Do we assign two dices to the two bases files and one dice to a one base file, or the other way around? I hope I´m explaining myself

With six bases you would normally get 6 dice so I assume you were fragmented and lost 1 dice in two.

In this situation you would get (if you were steady) 2 dice from the 2 files in one rank and 4 dice from the two files in two ranks (one dice per base). If you lose 1 dice in two you will end up with 1 dice for the 2 single rank files and 2 dice for the 2 double rank files. It is a bit like allocating dice between multiple enemy BG's.

If you had 3 double rank files and 1 single you would be due 4 dice and that would split as 1 for the single rank and 3 for the double rank (I think)

Each file has its own target priority. Work out these strictly and split dice that way. At times you will get your fire split on too many groups and find it rounds down to nothing of value. This is deliberate.

So, is it possible to lose shooting dice due to this? Let´s imagine an 8 bases MF bowmen BG, in a 4x2 formation. It should fire with six dices. Now. in an extreme situation, it faces four enemy BGs in columns one base wide directly ahead, so each file of the bowmen shoot at a different enemy BG. In this case, do the bowmen BG shoot with 4 dice only (one dice for first rank and zero from second rank) or with 6 dice and then the dice are assigned to the enemy BGs?

Unfortunately yes. Unlike close combat split dice are lost.

Another question: skirmisher shooting says nothing about x dice per first or second range, but "1 dice per 2 bases in effective range". If we have a 3x2 BG of skirmishers, does that mean that the second row must be in range to be able to shoot? I mean, I understand that a second row of bowmen in a non skirmisher BG can shoot if the first rank is in range, with that second row not needing to be in range as they are supporting the first row shooting, but if the BG is an skirmisher one, all bases must be in range. Is that correct?

All shooters measure range from the front rank of their formation (note not even the front shooting rank, just the front rank)

Hammy

hammy wrote:

Each file has its own target priority. Work out these strictly and split dice that way. At times you will get your fire split on too many groups and find it rounds down to nothing of value. This is deliberate.

So, is it possible to lose shooting dice due to this? Let´s imagine an 8 bases MF bowmen BG, in a 4x2 formation. It should fire with six dices. Now. in an extreme situation, it faces four enemy BGs in columns one base wide directly ahead, so each file of the bowmen shoot at a different enemy BG. In this case, do the bowmen BG shoot with 4 dice only (one dice for first rank and zero from second rank) or with 6 dice and then the dice are assigned to the enemy BGs?

Unfortunately yes. Unlike close combat split dice are lost.

"Unfair" as this might seem when it happens to you, it is an intended part of the game design, together with the target priority rules. The underlying idea is that split fire is far less effective in affecting enemy cohesion than concentrated fire, and that troops would shoot at the enemy in front of them rather than concentrate fire on enemy off to one side. (Especially when there is no visible difference between those enemies).

Hello again, I had a game last night and we found no answer to some situations.

1- What happens to a general fighting in a BG that autobreaks?
2- Do BGs that were fighting against a BG that autobreaks have to pursue?
3- What is the current state of the pursuing rule? Can you make a CMT to avoid pursuing? Do quality rerolls apply?
4- We had a BG of four bases (in a single row) charging three enemy BG due to stepping forward in an angle. 2 bases fought one BG and the other 2 bases one BG each. In the manoeuvre phase, conforming to the enemy would cause the charging BG to fight only two of the three enemy BGs, due to sliding and so. Is that possible? We thought it wasn´t and continued fighting offset.
5- Imagine a disrupted BG of 6 bases (not skirmishers) in a 3x2 formation, fighting against two different BGs (two files against one BG and one file against another). How many combat dice does it roll and how are they assigned to the enemy BGs?

Thank you.